Out, But Anonymous

Recently, a friend of mine told me that she had asked a fellow-gaysi (let’s call her ‘J’) if she would like to contribute to the gaysi site. J told my friend that she wouldn’t do it because she didn’t like the people at gaysi! Upon being asked why, she clarified that it was because we were all blogging anonymously & weren’t out and didn’t have our photos published on the site. She believed that because of this we weren’t out or proud.

Here’s the thing: if I was running a mommy blog or a cooking website I would still blog anonymously. Let’s be clear – I am out to everyone that matters. My parents, my friends, my cousins, my colleagues… Pretty much everyone that I know in real life, that I interact with on some basis, knows that I am gay. Why the anonymity? Because I don’t like the idea of someone googling my name & finding out everything about my life. I make the choice of allowing people into my life and allowing them to know as much or as little as I want them to. I don’t want people I work with to know that I run this blog even though everyone at work knows I’m gay. It’s too personal to share with them. I don’t want acquaintances reading about things I write here – again too personal.

As for the other authors that are anonymous, I won’t guess what their reasons are – although I suspect that they’re similar to mine. However, even if nobody in the world knows their identity, let’s not take away from their experience. Let’s not act like the only people in our community that are worth learning from are the ones that wear their rainbows on their sleeve. Let’s not trivialise their process of coming out. Just because you are happy to announce to the world and it’s uncle that you’re out & proud, it does not mean that somehow you’re the only one whose opinion and experience is worth listening to.

Or maybe you can practice by example and post your first article here with your real name & photograph, instead of waiting for one of us to do that?