Because I'm struggling with this more and more, myself.

[hope]

Against Pseudonymity and Sexual Shame

The thing is, writing under a pseudonym is absolutely great for blogging. Unfortunately, it's not much good for anything else. If you want to write for a major publication, even one that's just online, and if you want to get paid for your work writing anywhere, you basically have to write under your own name. Which is all well and good, except for that without my writing that I've done under a pseudonym, I'm nobody, just a young lawyer with a little work experience and a lot of attitude.

...

What is the source of my nagging feeling that if those things were on the internet, popping up under a Google search for the name I was given at birth, that a wide swath of the employers I might someday want to work for would never hire me?

It's one thing only: externally-imposed bogus sexual shame. It's not as if my political opinions are so far out as to represent some kind of employment liability. I'm a pretty standard liberal. I haven't written anything racist or offensive. No, the only reason I'm worried about these writings is that they acknowledge, frankly and openly, that I'm a sexual being. But it's not like I'm writing a sex blog filled with the details of my exploits. I'm simply exploring the ramifications of sex and sexuality in the life of a young woman, a politically-minded feminist. And that, to my mind, is dangerous.

In my case: replace "writing" above with the swathes of web work and ICT I've done in fandom over the past 7 years. Sigh.

Comments

[shehasathree]

Hey, thanks for posting this!

I'm very nervous about the idea of even posting/publishing some of my academic work in Gender Studies because i work for a Catholic school. i also feel much less confident about the kinds of things i post/share/mention on facebook (under my real name) than i do on lj. i don't know what kinds of things i would feel comfortable posting under my real name for all the world to see, but i suspect it would be a very small and restricted subset of all the things i would post pseudonymously.

[mynxii.livejournal.com]

Hi there... this is really awesome! Thank you for sharing. I have similar worries. No idea what to do about it yet - not really necessary to worry right now as I'm also not publishing anything elsewhere, or planning to in the near future. We shall see, however.

[ink-gypsy.livejournal.com]

You can write under a pseudonym and still be published. All my gay porn was published under a male pen name, but it was my name on the check. Publishers/editors are used to doing that, especially in the porn genre.

[hope]

Yup. Obviously, the pros and cons of pseudonymity are many and varied.

Personally, my problem is that I don't feel comfortable providing examples of my webdesign/development/ICT work to potential employers, as they lead back to my gay incest porn. Which *I* don't have a problem with, but I worry that they will.

[kaiz.livejournal.com]

Thanks for linking to this article, t'is very interesting!

I definitely understand what you mean re. the clash of high quality professional work (e.g. web sites, wikis, etc.) and content that might be of concern to specific clients/employers.

I'm not even certain that "shame" is really the word that fits best, at least for me. I'm not ashamed of any of my work, I just don't necessarily want to open up the inevitable can of worms by mixing my rl with my online life (and not just my online fannish life).

Other people have encountered similar problems with their political writings online. What do you do when you live in a very conservative area, but have numerous well-researched blog articles that have a liberal or perhaps atheistic slant?