Posts by Emma Hart
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*peeks in*
I feel like that guy who swings the big hammer at the side show
*slopes out again*
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to recordari,
It's my bar of chocolate
Give it to me
Now!Don't take this personally, recordari... but I hate you.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Megan Wegan,
DUDE!
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lilith __,
I’m pretty sure Max is actually Willy Wonka.
*dies*
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Now I think about it, I do recall the nice Fulbright people handing out instructions about our web presence, including the request that we not be obscene on the internet while we were Fulbright recipients.
I got to the word "internet" in the above, and snort-laughed REALLY loudly.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Megan Wegan,
I had no idea that wasn't your real name.
Yeah, ditto. Geez. Which I guess shows how little it matters.
If you google either my real name or my pseudonym, you'll find the other. They're strongly connected and I don't have a problem with that, but it means that I can't say anything under my pseud that I wouldn't say under my real name. Also, I don't have to worry about things like working in a sensitive industry or offending a potential employer.
Not to mention the fact I doubt Russell will let me continue under two logins.
There is a difference between having two logins (not really a problem) and pretending to be two different people. Pseudonymity doesn't stop people dealing with each other honestly, but sock-puppetry does.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to James Butler,
Hell, when even Google fails to understand (or rather, doesn't give a shit about) Internet culture, we're doomed.
This makes me so angry. Surely, a good test when you're designing a social networking platform would be something like: "I am a woman who has an abusive ex. I wish to interact openly with my friends. Can I make myself safe?" Google's answer is apparently "We don't give a shit."
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Russell Brown,
Inevitable. I'd quite enjoy the challenge of disguising my prose style, tbh
You write yours, I write mine, then we send them to each other and append style markers. You don't mind going "srsly" and "anyway" every couple of sentences, right?
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Bart Janssen,
While I can see the value, I'd also say that there is a value in the honesty and openness that comes from people speaking with their usual pseudonym.
To balance that, there are things that I would say on such a thread that I wouldn't say anywhere else. Because it's not so much about protecting myself, but protecting my family and my partner and my exes.
Though, thinking about it...I'd like to think that everyone would be generous of the concept and reading kindly. I do wonder about the potential for people playing 'detect the writer behind the pseudonym using distinctive writing-style clues'.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Megan Wegan,
This is rapidly approaching my favourite thread _ever_.
It was in my top ten or so when I had to go back and re-read the column because I had no idea what I'd written.
Okay. This could be a massive pre-coffee meander, but I think it's important that I say this before my better judgement sets in.
I've been writing about sex on the internet for some years now. One of the things this means is that people talk to me about sex. Quite a lot. (This might be a bit chicken and egg now I think about it: people always talked to me about sex, just not quite this much.)
And that slightly bewildered look on someone's face when they catch themselves and say, "I don't know why I'm telling you this," is one of my favourite things in the whole world. Because, for all we like to pretend we live in a sex-obsessed culture, there are precious few people you can talk to about these things and feel safe. That column that the chocolate manifesto comment is on? Is about the joy of being able to talk about sex and feel safe doing it.
Now, in the last year or so, since I started being more overt and doing those porn and BDSM posts at The Lady Garden, I've had three people tell me that I've improved their sex lives. And inherent and inextricably tangled with that, their relationship with themselves and their self-esteem and their peace of mind has improved. "That thing you wrote made me feel so much better about myself," that's why I'm in this game. That's why I do this, not the infamy and not even the lulz.
It's not easy, though. It's very, very draining. I said on Twitter the other day that if I wrote a column about cats, I wouldn't get people complaining that I was erasing people who don't own cats. Our cat-love discussion wouldn't be squashed by people complaining that I was being insensitive to people who are allergic to cats, or who can take or leave cats, or who are really into dogs*. Imagine if you really loved cats, and every conversation you tried to have about cat-love was like that.
And yeah, I'm quite attached to Max's writing because it does the same thing for me that I do for other people. For all the confidence the two of us might seem to project, we've made each other feel better this year. The dominant note in the chocolate manifesto is not nagging, when I read it, it's joy. It's hope. Yes, there's a lot of talking about chocolate in the chocolate manifesto. Odd that.
And I know that some people feel left out of those conversations. But our conversations, sex-positive, kink-celebrating, devoid of any concept of "unacceptable sex", are not the dominant narrative. Far from it. We're still hiding away in corners and having them under pseudonyms. Please accept that when we speak, for all the air of carelessness and joy, we are speaking from long, painful, hard-won experience. We still operate under fear of being judged and condemned. I have to live with the knowledge that my decision to be open about my sexuality certainly leads people to come to conclusions about my partner, and that makes me really uncomfortable.
But I'm not going to stop doing what I do, and I'm not going to apologise for how I do it. Because I wouldn't give up those "thank you" moments for the world.
*I really want this to be true. But being the Internet, I'm not entirely sure that it is.