An Experiment...
Jan. 23rd, 2009 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ht_murrayAn experiment in how many ways I can insert my foot into my mouth in ten minutes or less. It's Friday night, so hopefully not many people will be around to laugh and point fingers. LOL.
I don't want to be one of those people who posts about wank every time it crosses my flist. I don't see the need to jump on the train, but at the same time, I'd be hard-pressed to read about it for over 24 hours and not have something to say.
That being said, this is not really about the wank. Ha! Fooled ya. I know what it's about now. I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon and this afternoon scouring wank_report and blah, blah, blah, cuz nothing's more likely to get my attention and make me want to snoop than people posting about something and saying the details aren't important. Details are important!! LOL.
So, yeah, I don't know any of the people involved. I friended one of them once, realize we had absolutely nothing in common and defriended promptly, not because people aren't allowed other opinions than my own but because I don't keep an flist for intellectual stimulation and debate material. I keep it for entertainment. I can read fic off the newsletter and spare myself the drama.
So, here's what's got my attention. Not what happened so much as how everyone responded. So much OMG! If my journal was outted to my family and friends, I'd just die.
This bothers me. I mean, I totally respect that, at the point this all happened, it's a little too late to question what was posted, and most likely deletion was the only option, and for people who are in the same boat where they've already said too much, obviously the flist cutting and locking down are pretty much the only remaining options.
But why are we posting things in our journals that we're not willing to accept responsibility for? What are we doing writing about gay people in all their 'out of the closet' glory while hiding under the desk?
I realize I'm pretty blunt sometimes. I realize this makes people uncomfortable sometimes, but I don't really have any secrets. Sure there have been times when I've been all, hush, hush, I"mma comment in your journal and then delete it so only you and I will know what I said, but I've pretty much gotten past all my hangups about what people think of me.
That's not to say I'm not flip about it sometimes. I write slash in the break room at work. I do. People ask me all the time what I'm writing. I grin and say, "an expose about Nampac and all the crap that goes on behind the scenes," which usually gets a laugh and gets people throwing ideas in my direction, because everyone's got dirt they wanna dish. And on occassion, I'll even say, 'gay porn' cuz none of them would believe it anyway. If someone were to call me on it, though, I'd own up. The only reason I don't talk about it openly is because most people don't know slash even exists, and they're probably quite happy in that bubble. Why pop it? If they were to find out, I'd man up. Hell, most of 'em know I'd totally kick their asses in a fight anyway. I grew up this little mouse that everyone made fun of and no one would play with, why should I care what anyone thinks of me now?
Does my family know? Not all of them. I've linked both of my sisters more than once, but as far as Iknow, they've never bothered to check it out. I'm a hundred percent sure my mother's sisters and their husbands would corner me at a family gathering and try to change my mind about gay rights and gay love and sexuality, but hell, they tried to cram their opinions down my throat before I wrote that stuff, why would it change now? And if they want to go all mightier than thou, tell me that's not real love, well, I can always throw back in their faces how their nieces and nephew were starving and lice-infested living in a house with no heat and no windows while they rounded up cargo containers full of clothing and food to send to Romania. Yeah, I have issues. Here they are. Again, I have no secrets.
But I just want to say, in addition that not all people are complete dicks. One time I said to a coworker (I'll call him Figaro, lol) that I was writing gay porn, and he was all like... oooh, girl on girl, and I shrugged and said, 'sure, why not?' And every day after that he came up with plot points to include in my story he was writing in my head,lol. It went something like this, a lesbian minister who leads a polygamist cult is in a love affair with her daughter who drives the cult bus, and who she conceived while she was in a coma and did not know she ever had... For real. Give people some credit.
It's too late to cover our tracks now, people. Just look at the wank report and how much is screencapped and passed around. Maybe it's time we put more thought into what we post and what we think of ourselves for posting it. To be honest, the one argument I'm not prepared to debate is, "Why are you doing this for free?" Because the answer is, because I'm afraid to put myself out there in the pro world and I don't feel worthy.
I will defend any content I post in here and my right to post it. So, friend or defriend away.
And that's not all I wanted to say, but I have to go to work now.
ETA: This is a huge ETA cuz I didn't get to say everything I wanted before i ran out of time. But I'm not trying to shift blame on anyone. This is all really unfortunate and of course the biggest fault lies with the person who maliciously acted without taking any responsibility for it. The whole point of this post is this, I think:
Don't give people that kind of power over you. Internet anonymity is only an illusion. You can lock, sock puppet, filter everything you want, but if it's really secret, then it shouldn't be posted at all. Anything you say can and will be used against you. And I don't know about you, but I don't know if I can really call myself a friend if I'm one person online and someone else entirely in real life.
And even people who only write Gen might want to think more about what they post online. Fandom personas can be just as conflicting. I mean,I'm sure Jensen and Jared both cringe at some of the things posted online by their own fangirls. How can you claim to be a true Jensen fangirl and then turn around and bash Jared in your journal, and how can you be a true Jared fangirl and bash Jensen? They're best friends, right? I wouldn't say anything about Jared that I wouldn't repeat in front of Jensen, and vice versa. I'm just saying, we'd all get along a lot better if we didn't give people knives to stab us in the back with in the first place. We're all entitled to our gossip, but that probably belongs on IM and not in long involved comment threads where anyone, including the boys and the boys' friends and family can read it.
Man, did my ETA get convoluted. BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! But you already knew I was crazy, so whatever.
I don't want to be one of those people who posts about wank every time it crosses my flist. I don't see the need to jump on the train, but at the same time, I'd be hard-pressed to read about it for over 24 hours and not have something to say.
That being said, this is not really about the wank. Ha! Fooled ya. I know what it's about now. I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon and this afternoon scouring wank_report and blah, blah, blah, cuz nothing's more likely to get my attention and make me want to snoop than people posting about something and saying the details aren't important. Details are important!! LOL.
So, yeah, I don't know any of the people involved. I friended one of them once, realize we had absolutely nothing in common and defriended promptly, not because people aren't allowed other opinions than my own but because I don't keep an flist for intellectual stimulation and debate material. I keep it for entertainment. I can read fic off the newsletter and spare myself the drama.
So, here's what's got my attention. Not what happened so much as how everyone responded. So much OMG! If my journal was outted to my family and friends, I'd just die.
This bothers me. I mean, I totally respect that, at the point this all happened, it's a little too late to question what was posted, and most likely deletion was the only option, and for people who are in the same boat where they've already said too much, obviously the flist cutting and locking down are pretty much the only remaining options.
But why are we posting things in our journals that we're not willing to accept responsibility for? What are we doing writing about gay people in all their 'out of the closet' glory while hiding under the desk?
I realize I'm pretty blunt sometimes. I realize this makes people uncomfortable sometimes, but I don't really have any secrets. Sure there have been times when I've been all, hush, hush, I"mma comment in your journal and then delete it so only you and I will know what I said, but I've pretty much gotten past all my hangups about what people think of me.
That's not to say I'm not flip about it sometimes. I write slash in the break room at work. I do. People ask me all the time what I'm writing. I grin and say, "an expose about Nampac and all the crap that goes on behind the scenes," which usually gets a laugh and gets people throwing ideas in my direction, because everyone's got dirt they wanna dish. And on occassion, I'll even say, 'gay porn' cuz none of them would believe it anyway. If someone were to call me on it, though, I'd own up. The only reason I don't talk about it openly is because most people don't know slash even exists, and they're probably quite happy in that bubble. Why pop it? If they were to find out, I'd man up. Hell, most of 'em know I'd totally kick their asses in a fight anyway. I grew up this little mouse that everyone made fun of and no one would play with, why should I care what anyone thinks of me now?
Does my family know? Not all of them. I've linked both of my sisters more than once, but as far as Iknow, they've never bothered to check it out. I'm a hundred percent sure my mother's sisters and their husbands would corner me at a family gathering and try to change my mind about gay rights and gay love and sexuality, but hell, they tried to cram their opinions down my throat before I wrote that stuff, why would it change now? And if they want to go all mightier than thou, tell me that's not real love, well, I can always throw back in their faces how their nieces and nephew were starving and lice-infested living in a house with no heat and no windows while they rounded up cargo containers full of clothing and food to send to Romania. Yeah, I have issues. Here they are. Again, I have no secrets.
But I just want to say, in addition that not all people are complete dicks. One time I said to a coworker (I'll call him Figaro, lol) that I was writing gay porn, and he was all like... oooh, girl on girl, and I shrugged and said, 'sure, why not?' And every day after that he came up with plot points to include in my story he was writing in my head,lol. It went something like this, a lesbian minister who leads a polygamist cult is in a love affair with her daughter who drives the cult bus, and who she conceived while she was in a coma and did not know she ever had... For real. Give people some credit.
It's too late to cover our tracks now, people. Just look at the wank report and how much is screencapped and passed around. Maybe it's time we put more thought into what we post and what we think of ourselves for posting it. To be honest, the one argument I'm not prepared to debate is, "Why are you doing this for free?" Because the answer is, because I'm afraid to put myself out there in the pro world and I don't feel worthy.
I will defend any content I post in here and my right to post it. So, friend or defriend away.
And that's not all I wanted to say, but I have to go to work now.
ETA: This is a huge ETA cuz I didn't get to say everything I wanted before i ran out of time. But I'm not trying to shift blame on anyone. This is all really unfortunate and of course the biggest fault lies with the person who maliciously acted without taking any responsibility for it. The whole point of this post is this, I think:
Don't give people that kind of power over you. Internet anonymity is only an illusion. You can lock, sock puppet, filter everything you want, but if it's really secret, then it shouldn't be posted at all. Anything you say can and will be used against you. And I don't know about you, but I don't know if I can really call myself a friend if I'm one person online and someone else entirely in real life.
And even people who only write Gen might want to think more about what they post online. Fandom personas can be just as conflicting. I mean,I'm sure Jensen and Jared both cringe at some of the things posted online by their own fangirls. How can you claim to be a true Jensen fangirl and then turn around and bash Jared in your journal, and how can you be a true Jared fangirl and bash Jensen? They're best friends, right? I wouldn't say anything about Jared that I wouldn't repeat in front of Jensen, and vice versa. I'm just saying, we'd all get along a lot better if we didn't give people knives to stab us in the back with in the first place. We're all entitled to our gossip, but that probably belongs on IM and not in long involved comment threads where anyone, including the boys and the boys' friends and family can read it.
Man, did my ETA get convoluted. BWAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! But you already knew I was crazy, so whatever.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 10:03 am (UTC)My boss has thing. We run shit where I work. A whole lot of it. And sometimes it comes back and bites us in the ass in a big way, and when it does, we address it, and then he stands up in front of the employees and says, "Moving Forward," and then we do.
But it'd be a shame if we didn't learn anything. Didn't question what it is we are willing to stand behind and what we aren't. I'm not naive enough to believe everyone I know or have ever met would be okay with what I post online, but at least if they don't I can say, "Don't like that, then you don't like me," because that stuff's real and honest, and I have no shame in it. Take it or leave it.
That's not to say I don't sometimes consider f-locking just to spare people my emo moments. I'm not afraid of what I say when I get like that, but I can certainly respect that it's not fun to read and not everyone who adds me looking for schmoopy fic is going to want to see that side of me. Same as I've got some fic journals floating around just because I know not everyone who reads my Gen stuff wants to hang to come into my slashy journal to read it, and blah, blah, blah.
I'm not saying we shouldn't compartmentalize, just that we need to not have to worry that things in one compartment might know about the things in the other, because you can't just divide yourself up like that and still be whole.
Damn, I should not try to figure out what I am talking about at four in the morning. I totally fail. LOL.
The long and short of it is, I just want people to know that it's a lot easier to not have secrets than to it is to keep them hidden.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-27 10:13 am (UTC)I have always been VERY VERY VERY out in re: sexuality (HELLO I'm bi), and so when my mom (who is mystified but figures she can't stop me re: bisexuality) was like, "THIS BOOK MEANS YOU WANT TO BE MAIMED AND ABUSED and you have a death wish and you want them to kill you!" and all that... it BROKE me. I just had no idea how to deal with that. Still, I got out of dodge, and I was out and active in the kink community elsewhere. And I am sure my mom is not over it, but she got over it enough to start supporting me as her daughter again, you know? And she would again. And if she didn't, well, I'd deal with that too. I just NEVER want to have that happen out of the blue again if I can help it...
And unfortunately she's getting kind of less rational as time goes on.
That said--yeah. The time before my assault, when I was out as kinky and queer and participating in the community for both and everything... it was one of the happiest times of my life. Unfortunately, with the assault and everything... every single thing I used to enjoy takes a lot out of me. So... I'm kind of turtle-shelling right now, possibly til I move out of the area because the weather severely effects my health which is part of it.
But I do know that now that my life is much more compartmentalized it hurts more. So I fully intend to fix that, I just... can only take so much at a time and right now my focus is on getting through the stupid PTSD. *sigh* Not even sure it will ever go away, but at least it's scads better than it was.