Again?
Another gay person who is victimized by persecution of some kind, only to be realized as a straw-person, a non-existent fictional character, a humanoid creature with too-"human" feelings and expressions of emotion?
Really, where does all that emotion go? Where do the memories go? If technology becomes that advanced in the far future, will even our sense of touch, skin upon skin, be just as suspect in its provision of false feelings of intimacy as the long series of emails, the pictures, the words?
Where does it all go?
Yesterday’s revelation of Gay Girl in Damascus as the Georgia resident Tom MacMaster dealt quite a bit of a blow to all who took an interest beyond just a "oh, well, hope she gets out" stage.
A girlfriend in Montreal finds out that her long trist with a gay girl in the heady, violent urbanity of Damascus was all just hot air.
A woman in London whose pictures were misappropriated may be looking for a lawyer in the case that MacMaster and his wife, Britta Froelicher, ever return to British soil from their current vacation in Istanbul.
Hundreds of pro-democracy activists are sideswiped and angry after this deception on such an international platform.
All this while Assad’s troops continue to cannibalize his country’s own citizens. All this while LGBT rights activists continue to worry over the status of fellow LGBTers in West Asia.
And the validity of anonymity and pseudonymity continue to be dealt further body blows by the like of MacMaster, Froelicher and, as mentioned previously, Daric Rawr.
It is a sort of modern-day version of Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener.
It’s already doing damage to certain websites, such as LezGetReal, where Tom (as "Amina") had been allowed to publish several items regarding LGBT rights in Syria and West Asia. The editors of the site, Paula Brooks and Linda S. Carbonell, waxed apoplectic by the time that they realized that they had been severely hoaxed, so much so that Carbonell penned both an emphatic rejection of MacMaster’s un-apologetic "apology" and her own apology to the website’s readers.
Furthermore, the website which first announced its own narrowing of the identity of the "Gay Girl", Electronic Intifada, made its own claim that LezGetReal’s Paula Brooks may be just as fake as "Amina Arraf", to which Linda and Paula responded angrily, claiming that they both have to work under pseudonyms in order to not harm their employment statuses as workers in the federal government.
Again, we’re back to square one.
Again, the issues of using pseudonyms in order to protect ourselves from scrutiny of whatever type we may find unwelcome.
Again, pseudonymity and anonymity are dealt further hits in viability because of its abuse.
Sometimes, I’d rather post under my real name in this blog, even though I don’t post much to it anymore. I have another, more business-y blog to which I post sometimes.
This handle which I use was conceived in the early 2000s, although I don’t know exactly how I decided that "rayne" would be a good first name. The origin or meaning still eludes me.
I understand, of course, that if I mix the two up, I may jeopardize my employment prospects, or I may be perceived as a crazy, obsessive person who has a long, lurid, weird history that is recorded in the long memory of the World Wide Web under various pseudonyms and email addresses.
But I know that, at some point, I should be a bit more courageous about facing my own history and earlier immaturities from 2004 onward, and not be afraid of what others may think.
I’m interested in shedding my pseudonymity at some near future point, and maybe share a bit more of myself with others, at least to show that I do have a history of evolution, of adaptation, of increased rationality, of multiple facets and aspects.
I can still keep the pseudonyms, and maybe acquire more, but I want to do a full disclosure of myself, perhaps so that I can create a new personal blog and start afresh.
I don’t want to stay in the mentality of unapologetic deception to the people with whom I communicate, not even to protect myself.
You know what? Fuck it:
My name is Harry C.D. Underwood, I am 23 years old, I am openly gay, I am a senior at Macon State College and I live in Warner Robins, Georgia.
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