"Being" Lesbian
Jun. 17th, 2011 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kelly_chamblissA second supposed "lesbian" blogger has been outed as a fraud, just days after the celebrated "Gay Girl in Damascus" turned out to be a Straight (Married) Boy in Edinburgh.
Yes, on many levels, this sort of thing seriously pisses me off. But it also raises fascinating questions about the nature of internet identity and friendships and trust. Impersonation is nothing new; for centuries, there have been people who pretended to be other than they are. But the internet makes it much easier to be extremely convincing and in categories in which someone could never succeed if s/he actually had to show hir face and "be" the person s/he claims to be. Internet cons like this have the potential to take in literally millions of people, as opposed to more conventional cons, which usually have far less impact. (The "Gay Girl" blog was just recced the other day on![[info]](https://stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
lgbtq_recs, for instance.)
It's interesting to speculate about what the perps get out of these masquerades. I mean, why would a straight male Scot choose to be a gay female Syrian? Just for the "I can do it" hell of it? Some of these cons are no doubt set up to sucker people out of money, but most of them seem just to give their originators a sense of power, the kind that comes with knowing secrets, with exercising (illegitimate) authority, with subversively trying on different personae.
These people are listened to, taken seriously -- and believed in by scores of people, many of whom consider themselves genuine friends. The sense of betrayal must be tremendous.
Online, it's just so damned easy to be "someone else." Many of us do it all the time, though on less-deceptive levels than these "lesbian" guys -- we can be outgoing online when we're shy in RL, for instance; we can be popular and sought-after electronically even if we're the world's biggest dork when we're at home. I haven't sorted out all my deep, thinky thoughts about these topics, but every time I read about these sorts of deceptions, I find myself speculating about the whole nature of performance and identity in even the ordinary ways we live our lives.
What are your thinky thoughts?
Yes, on many levels, this sort of thing seriously pisses me off. But it also raises fascinating questions about the nature of internet identity and friendships and trust. Impersonation is nothing new; for centuries, there have been people who pretended to be other than they are. But the internet makes it much easier to be extremely convincing and in categories in which someone could never succeed if s/he actually had to show hir face and "be" the person s/he claims to be. Internet cons like this have the potential to take in literally millions of people, as opposed to more conventional cons, which usually have far less impact. (The "Gay Girl" blog was just recced the other day on
lgbtq_recs, for instance.)It's interesting to speculate about what the perps get out of these masquerades. I mean, why would a straight male Scot choose to be a gay female Syrian? Just for the "I can do it" hell of it? Some of these cons are no doubt set up to sucker people out of money, but most of them seem just to give their originators a sense of power, the kind that comes with knowing secrets, with exercising (illegitimate) authority, with subversively trying on different personae.
These people are listened to, taken seriously -- and believed in by scores of people, many of whom consider themselves genuine friends. The sense of betrayal must be tremendous.
Online, it's just so damned easy to be "someone else." Many of us do it all the time, though on less-deceptive levels than these "lesbian" guys -- we can be outgoing online when we're shy in RL, for instance; we can be popular and sought-after electronically even if we're the world's biggest dork when we're at home. I haven't sorted out all my deep, thinky thoughts about these topics, but every time I read about these sorts of deceptions, I find myself speculating about the whole nature of performance and identity in even the ordinary ways we live our lives.
What are your thinky thoughts?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-18 03:02 am (UTC)To me, the internet has been a place where I can be honest. It's a place where I don't hesitate to identify as pansexual (I first came out online) or to talk about my race/ethnicity or about family dysfunction, or to express myself the way I want to. Online, there aren't nearly as many social pressures urging people to present as "normal" or restrict themselves to acceptably distant levels of disclosure...
...which is maybe why, amidst all this freedom and honesty, some people feel the need to lie in order to stand out from the crowd and get the special attention they crave.
I've seen firsthand the devastation people can cause by willfully deceiving others, but at the same time I don't want to assume that deception is their primary motivator. There are some, like trolls, who probably just get their kicks by being able to manipulate other people. But others obviously have some sort of emotional need that's not being met that drives them to do these things. After seeing multiple friends come to terms with their own gender identity after playing with presentation online, I hesitate to assume that in the Amina case, both individuals were wholly appropriating the identity of lesbians...but at the same time, there is such a fetishization of minority groups in certain privileged corners these days. We have a culture that purports to worship the underdog, and we have people who have always had their opinions sought after and accepted as authoritative who are unable to deal with not being—to their mind—sufficiently applauded for their knowledge and interest, and the combination is just ugly.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-20 03:09 am (UTC)Early in my internet days, I was surprised at how few people actually did misrepresent themselves. It would be so easy to do. . .and yet, in my experience, anyway, most people were fairly straightforward in what they said of themselves. Of course people concealed things, for reasons of safety or self-protection or privacy or whatever, but when I had occasion to learn some people's RL details, I found they turned out to be pretty much what they'd said they were, both in terms of external details (occupation, etc.) and personality. I think many people feel as you do -- that they can more honest on-line than elsewhere.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-20 03:24 am (UTC)Well, in the case of the couple behind "Amina," I strongly suspect it was at least in part along the aforementioned fauxgressive lines of: "We have so much knowledge and we care so much, but we're never going to get famous like we deserve for our altruistic learnings if we don't pretend to be one of those lucky, exciting oppressed minorities instead of boring privileged people."
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-18 09:35 pm (UTC)I think this guy's even worse; it's fine to explore your identity in cyberspace (I'm another person who first came out online), but he put people's lives in danger with his hoax. That's not okay. There were actual Syrian activists risking their safety trying to find out what had happened to "Amina". He can claim he was trying to bring international attention to the situation in Syria all he wants, but I don't buy his BS.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-20 03:11 am (UTC)