The personal is political

[kitchen_kink]

Many of you have brought this up in recent months, but I am currently wrestling with privacy/discretion issues with regard to this medium. Thus, I will prosthelytize on the topic for a bit.

I have a desire, as quinnclub has also expressed, to have my life be an open book. To me, one of the most damaging things people do to themselves is to hide themselves away, to repress their emotions and desires, in the name of prudence, or propriety, or tradition, or fear.

This behavior not only closes people off from one another, but perpetuates the keeping-in-the-shadows of what mainstream society deems "deviant" or "self-destructive" behaviors. I've always believed that the best work a single person can do to further visibility and acceptance is to be visible him or herself. Whether this means showing same-sex affection in public without fear, going to a romantic dinner with two other people, writing your life in an online journal or fiction that reflects the deep-seated truths of the author, it is fearless honesty that makes movements work. How else, after all, did homosexuality finally get removed from the DSM as a mental disorder? (It didn't happen all that long ago, folks.) Visibility forces acknowledgment; acknoledgment eventually forces tolerance.

How much air would have been let out of the tires of the impeachsarios of the Clinton administration, if Clinton had just said, "Yup. Me 'n' Monica were doin' the nasty. Sorry y'all had to find out this way"? Was not that entire witch-hunt built around the legal technicality that he had lied? It completely took the focus off the fact that what was happening was a bunch of fundamentalists moralizing over points of adultery, that Clinton was being character-assassinated, not for being a liar, but for getting a BJ under a desk. Many have theorized that Bill and Hillary had an open relationship, a marriage of convenience. All of his affairs would seem to bear this out: they were so obvious, and public, yet Hillary never divorced him, not even after they left the White House. What if this were true, and they had shared that fact with the world?

That point aside, what would happen if most people were open about the things they desire and do? If I present myself always as I am, and don't hide aspects that some might consider shameful, wrong, or even insane, then how can I be persecuted? If someone says to me, "You're too aggressive / queer / slutty / confused" or whatever, I say, "Yes. Yes. Yes, though I have a different definition of that word. And no, I think you are." Tolerance, and, later, acceptance, can only be built if people present themselves as they are.

And yes, I wrote an essay in my Northeastern application about this very issue, and got in in a flash.

There are caveats to this, of course. To bring it back to this medium: many have asked, "How do you decide to post something friends-only? Or keep it private? What do you reveal publicly, for anyone to read?"

I was looking through my public entries last night, for a particular reason I won't go into, except to say that I was looking for things certain people might find shocking or objectionable. Ordinarily I keep the nitty-gritty details friends-only, and try to keep the public entries less personal, more conversational and political.

But as someone said long ago, the personal is political, and if I'm not speaking my politics as the person I am, then what the hell am I talking about?

I noticed a pattern, though: my public entries tended to tell the general truth about my life. The fact that I'm bisexual and polyamorous; the fact that I'm sleeping with someone, what I do, what I plan to do, and how things are going with all that.

Friends-only is reserved when other people's privacy is being protected, or when I'm protecting my emotional privacy: the details, the characters, and the feelings that I may not want to reveal to the world just yet.

But the basic fundamentals of who I am and what I believe in are right out front, and that's the way I like it.

I know that I am blessed to live in one of the most liberal cities in this country, and that the love and acceptance I enjoy here is a great priviledge. But that doesn't mean I don't know the evil of the world, and the line of fire I place myself in by declaring myself, as myself.

But the other option is hiding, and that, I won't do.

Comments

the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - & that's manageable

[sanghasong.livejournal.com]

WOW. COOLASFUCK!

i soooo hear that. my journal is one year old and i think i've used friends only buttons less than ten times so far.

amazement for me is finding such a lack of debate to my entries, which i am glad for as well as sad for. i say some contentious stuff from time to time. i s'pose i'm lucky that the folks who added me have been blessed/cursed with an open mind.

[veek.livejournal.com]

Just today, in my (otherwise beyond redemption) digital media theory class, we discussed 'net identity, and how it affects one's real-life identity and/or psyche. Various forms of expression on the internet, such as blogs, MUDs, newsgroups, instant messengers allow us to construct identities which may or may not have anything at all to do with our real-life selves. This may be comforting, and may indeed turn into an escape. Even blogs: there are many which are explicitly fictional.

It's always been a fascinating question, to me: if a given 'net identity I choose to construct is a representation of me (to the best of my knowledge, anyway), how much do I reveal? I too have private moments which, as you said, I'm not quite ready to share with the world. I have sometimes used lock-limits on my posts. But most of the time, when I've had something private that I haven't felt like sharing with the whole world, I haven't felt compelled to blog it in the first place. I guess, this stems from my view of the weblog as an entity different from a journal, and have always been terrible at keeping journals of everything important to me. Intensely private moments are much more likely to find their way into e-mail -- another, epistolary form of the electronic medium in which an identity may be constructed -- than into a blog entry.

But then there are personal moments I do share. It's difficult to separate those completely out of the rest of what *I* perceive as me; and so, I'm not really sure that I have an image of my 'net-self that is quite accurate. This doesn't worry me so much as make me all ponderous and wordy.

[zenchow.livejournal.com]

im normally just a lurker, but this post has struck a cord with me...so with your indulgence...i shall reply
it is important for both your mental stability and those you come into contact with, to be as open about who you are as you can be
being politically correct at all times is a mamouth injustice...for example...if i were to call you a fag or a spic or nigger or whatever...you would
very quickly know the type of person that i was and could then make an informed judgement as to how to deal with me...if on the other hand if
i act p.c. towards you at all times, you might begin to develope an unjustified trust, which would only leave you vulnerable to much more harm than
mere words could ever inflict...we all have predijuces...hateing the haters is still hate...be yourself in all that you do and allow others to do likewise

i hope this make sense... my writing and spelling are not too good...but now you know that...so you can read it with that in mind
the Truth, though elusive and completely reletive, still possesses great power and allows tremendous freedom.