Posts Tagged ‘identity’

on straight dudes posing as lesbians

Jun 14th, 11 / 4 Comments

As my pal Wessel says, on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dude.

You may have heard of these two recent stories:

1. Gay Girl in Damascus is really a Straight Guy in Scotland:

The life of Amina Arraf was a good story. On a website called “Gay Girl in Damascus,” this purportedly Syrian-American lesbian blogger wrestled with issues surrounding her national identity, her sexuality, her faith, and the future of her country at a time of open revolt. At a time when most of the information coming out of Syria comes in the form of choppy, graphic YouTube videos or breathless tweets about the Assad regime’s crackdowns, here was a young woman writing from Damascus in flawless English about her country’s social and political turmoil.

And then it all fell apart.

It fell apart because the blog’s author, who turned out to be a straight American man named Tom McMasters, decided to add in a kidnapping plot: He had “Amina Arraf” disappear, had her “cousin” write a post notifying readers of “Amina”‘s disappearance. Readers sprung into action, mobilizing to search for their missing Gay Girl in Damascus. At which point it became increasingly clear that there was no gay girl in Damascus.

2. LezGetReal editor IzRealStraightGuy.

Only days after we learned that the author behind A Gay Girl in Damascus was a straight man from Georgia, The Washington Post is reporting that the purported DC-based lesbian mother who edited the lesbian news site Lez Get Real (“A Gay Girl’s View on the World”), which re-published Gay Girl in Damascus posts and helped the blog get started, is actually a 58-year-old former Air Force pilot and construction worker from Ohio named Bill Graber (pictured at right)….
Garber and MacMaster have offered similar explanations for their actions. Garber, like MacMaster, explained that he started out with the best of intentions–to demand the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and advocate for other gay issues–and assumed the identity of a lesbian woman because he didn’t think people would take him seriously as a straight man. And, just like MacMaster, he rationalized his actions, pointing out to the AP that he helped reveal the Gay Girl in Damascus hoax by tracking the blog’s posts to computer servers in Edinburgh. MacMaster ”would have got away with it if I hadn’t been such a stand-up guy,” Graber said.

Based on the general tenor of responses across the web, I surmise that I am supposed to do the following:

1. Register my disappointment and anger.

2. Reassure my readers that I am, indeed, the precise person I purport to be.

(See: Shakesville. Michellebird on the DailyKos.

I guess I’m a little annoyed, but I don’t feel the level of anger that, for example, these writers (Shakesville. Michellebird) do. For one thing, I wasn’t invested in the story like they were–I only heard about the Gay Girl in Damascus blog when it was mentioned in the comments section of a recent post (to argue that there are more serious issues for LGBTQ folks worldwide than those that American queers experience! Ha!).

I’m also firmly in the identity-is-slippery camp. A few years back, when I was first coming out as a queer, I identified as cisgendered. (The term means that my gender identity aligns fairly well with the features that are built into my body: that I am a biological female who identifies as a female.) [Note: I'd link you to that post, but I can't find it!] But later, I came out as genderqueer. I wasn’t “lying” early on; I simply didn’t understand myself in the same way then as I do now.

Of course, the identity-is-slippery camp does not assume that the LezGetReal and Gay Girl in Damascus bloggers are simply struggling with their own gender and sexual identities. They’re straight white guys who posed as dykes. Which is annoying.

Here’s an interesting take from CurrentMom:

People are messy. The technology we invent is messy, too. Deal with it.

Here’s an even more interesting take, from Something the Dog Said on the Daily Kos:

What we have here are two white guys running up against that fact that their gender and sexuality are going to make it harder for them to have an impact in a certain area. So instead of busting their asses to build their credibility to speak in this area, they take on the role of a someone who automatically has some credibility. The expectation that it is okay to do this just screams that they feel entitled to jump to the head of the queue with their opinions.

What do you think?

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Uncategorized

moving beyond the gender binary (or: why I wear men’s clothes)

Oct 1st, 10 / 1 Comment

I want you to know some things about my approach to gender performance.

I want to tell you because my friend Lina asked me today how I think about gender and gender performance, which got me thinking, which made me realize that I have some strong ideas about this, which made me wonder if it’s time to state them out loud.

So here we go.

Typical cultural activity associated with “womanness” include: femininity and / or motherliness; degree of attractiveness to men; and engagement in sexual activity with other people.

I wear primarily men’s clothes and wear my hair short, in a men’s cut. I am regularly mistaken for a boy, more often by men than by women; (I think this is because men are less likely to look directly at me, since I’m clearly not going to really hold their interest. Based on what they see out of their peripheral vision, they assume I’m a boy. So when they call me ‘Sir’ and I respond in a female voice, they get startled and confused. Women seem more likely to look before assuming, and they’re therefore more likely to refer to me as ‘ma’am’ or ‘miss.’ More on this in a second.) I think children are the bees’ knees, though I don’t have any kids of my own and don’t spend much time with children outside of my research. I’m not involved with anyone at all right now, and haven’t been for some time.

So much for the key indicators of “woman-ness.”

Yet for the first time in my adult life, I am comfortable identifying as a woman. That’s weird, right? That

embracing gender ambiguity would make me feel more comfortable inhabiting a genetically female body? But it does. See, I’m comfortable in this body now. I’m comfortable holding forth from within it.

But let me tell you what I’m not trying to do:

1. I’m not trying to ‘pass’ as a male. I think that for the most part, anyone who looks hard enough can figure out that I’m female, albeit a really queer looking female. But I’m also fine with being mistaken for a male, even though it’s not exactly what I’m going for. I have female friends who feel bad for people who mistake them for males, because they’re usually so embarrassed when they find out their mistake. I say fuck ‘em. It’s their problem for making assumptions and using those assumptions to substitute for paying attention. I say you play with gender, you have to own the whole ball of wax.

2. I’m not trying to straddle male and female gender norms. Nor do I consider myself to be a little bit of each gender. My identity performance falls somewhere between the two poles, which by the way were just arbitrary social constructs in the first place. I don’t have times when I feel or act more feminine, or when I feel or act more masculine. There are days when I dress in a more feminine way and days when I wear more masculine clothes; there are times when I’m more emotional or when I’m more of a dick; but there are never times when I think of myself as more girlish or more mannish.

I know. This is tough to understand. It’s even tougher to explain. Bear with me.

3. I’m not trying to wear my gay for the world to see. And I also sort of am trying to wear my gay for the world to see. A year ago, all I thought about was how gay I looked. I obsessed over it. I thought about it all the time. I don’t obsess anymore, though I do like making my queerness evident to the world. Basically, I don’t care if you think I look gay, and I also care if you think I look gay.

Rock Ruffergood, a performer in the Bloomington, IN-based Gender Studs

Someone asked me today why LGBTQ life gets easier with time. I can’t speak for everyone in the LGBTQ community, but I can say that for me, the biggest change and the biggest relief came when I began to embrace an identity that felt more authentic to me and, by default, less a reflection of cultural values. I’m sure that for many women, their self-concepts align fairly closely with how our culture tells us female identity should look; it just happens that cultural values and my (gendered) identity don’t overlap very much at all. Eventually, as I explored this fact, I realized that the coming-out process was also a sort of (re)gendering process, and one that led to a small shift in almost everything–the way I carry myself, the way I sit in a chair, the jokes I tell, the way I wear my hair, where I choose to stand in a room. Everything changed, just a tiny bit. Everything shifted just a tiny bit toward a body and a self that I’m far more comfortable being inside of.

And lord, it’s been such a relief.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Uncategorized

“be cool, you guys” revisited: on identity theft and ignorant behavior

Sep 2nd, 10 / 5 Comments

Last updated: Tuesday, Sept. 7, 10:05 a.m.: The author of the blog described below has acknowledged that the comments posted using my sister’s online identity were not, in fact, posted by the “real” Laura, and she has removed them from her blog. Obviously, I believe this was the right decision and I’m glad and relieved that the comments have been deleted.


My sister learned today that someone has been using her information to troll other websites. This person has been posting ignorant, hateful things and linking them to Laura’s online identity. She has contacted the owner of one blog in particular, asking to have the comments removed, but the blog’s owner has refused to respond to her requests and has even deleted two different attempts* to post a disavowal of the most offensive comments.

My sister is crushed. I, on the other hand, am deeply pissed.

Because it’s bad enough that someone is evil and mean-spirited enough to slander someone else’s name–if my sister is right in her guess, the guy who’s using her identity is someone who spent a lot of time posting mean and petty comments on her blog, which she deleted until she finally decided to block him.

You hear that? When someone posts offensive material to your blog, you have two really good options: remove the offensive content, or block the commenter.

The owner of the trolled blog did neither. Instead, she took the low road: She tossed out insults, told “laura” to go fuck herself, and used the offensive content to spew even MORE offensive content.

For example:

The blog author, who is a Muslim, wrote about her frustration over American anti-Muslim rhetoric over a proposed masjid near Ground Zero, and as one of her key points explained that Muslims are a tolerant and diverse group, and that masjids

host a very wide cross-section of people. There are old people there, like, really old people who are so conservative and traditional it’d make your head spin. There are people like Mama and Papa Hoomster, nearing retirement age, people with one foot in each country. There are middle-aged folks who were the first real folks born here. There are people my age, young professionals who are more closely tied to America than they ever will be to another country. There are people younger than me, school children. It’s not just a bunch of crusty immigrants who barely speak English talking about the white devil and the imperialist America. There are folks that converted to Islam – Caucasians, African Americans, Asians. People from all walks of life who identify themselves as Muslims and Americans and find the idea that the two are exclusive in any way completely laughable.

Point one made by the author: Muslims are tolerant and willing to embrace diverse peoples. Hold onto that while I identify point two: That she’s tired of people who reinforce “the ‘ignorant American’ stereotype.” She’s tired, she explains, of people repeating the ridiculous argument that building a masjid near Ground Zero means the terrorists have won. She writes:

Give me a fucking break. I’ve seen so many people (that I follow on Twitter), people that I thought were intelligent and well informed, or at least made a semblance of an attempt to be, express this sentiment. And my respect for them plummeted in the face of such a ridiculous, xenophobic remark. Guys, you’re really not helping the ‘ignorant American’ stereotype. You’re really not.

Ok, just to recap: Muslims are tolerant and she’s sick of Americans acting hostile and ignorant. Now let’s take a look at how this author, who abhors intolerance, hostility, and ignorance, responds to the comment posted by the “laura” sockpuppet.

First, some apparently ‘real’ person posted a comment arguing that building a masjid near Ground Zero would be ‘inappropriate.’ The laura sockpuppet wrote this:

And the blog’s author, the one who hates intolerance, ignorance, and hostility, responded with this:

This same blogger, the one who hates intolerance, ignorance, and hostility, has used my sister as a foil multiple times, even once going so far as to suggest Laura and people like her are “retarded.” Talk about intolerance, ignorance, and hostility!

Seriously: be cool, you guys. And if you can’t be cool, then at least be smart enough to realize when you’ve just turned into a caricature of yourself.

We know that trolling, griefing, and sockpuppetry–use of an online identity for the purpose of deception–are the cost of interacting with social media. What we hope is that people who are smart and motivated enough to maintain an active blog are also smart, motivated, and mature enough to address these in a productive way. I’ll tell you what’s not productive: Using a griefer to grief right back–not only allowing but actively contributing to a hostile, ignorant, and intolerant discourse. It’s not productive, it’s not helpful or useful, and it’s certainly not worth the waste of energy and time it takes to read.

It’s not clear to me why this blog’s owner allowed the sockpuppet’s abhorrent comments to remain on her blog but deleted* my sister’s attempts to set the record straight–Laura was only trying to explain that she absolutely did not subscribe to the ideas attributed to her by the griefer. The only thing I can think is that this is someone who doesn’t particularly care about pesky things like truth, decency, and common courtesy.

*Update: Thursday, Sept. 2, 10:48 p.m.: It appears that the two comments that the real Laura posted today were not deleted, as I wrote above, but delayed for moderation. The author of the blog has since published today’s comments, though as of this update the earlier comments, posted by the sockpuppet laura, remain intact. I’ll post another update if and when the previous comments are deleted.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Uncategorized