On Anonymity in Blogging

I expect all anonymous sex bloggers ask themselves the same question when they first decide to blog. Is it worth the risk?

Because the fact is, we do risk quite a bit when we engage in sex that's outside the norm, and even more so when we share parts of our lives that are way-beyond-TMI for a lot of the people in our lives. Take Jefferson, who risks losing his kids to his ex-wife simply by having more sex (and more kinds of sex) than most people think is "normal."

But it's worse than just risking that some of the people we know might finger us. We even risk becoming the target of the press, so that the community at large has a chance to victimize us. Take the New York Post's treatment of Richard Benjamin, which shows that journalists are not above ridiculing a man's injuries if they're incurred during BDSM, or even above outing him to his wife and children so as to get the scoop with their unscripted reactions. Then there's Abby Lee, whose outing by an unscrupulous journalist shows that many people seem to think that undertaking a sex blog disentitles us to privacy.

The First Amendment states that:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Note that there is no restriction on the anonymity of free speech--no requirement that those who would speak freely must own their words with their legal names. And I would go farther: I believe that speech cannot be free without the ability to speak in inviolable anonymity. After all, how can speech be free if speaking truths--no matter how taboo--costs us our jobs, our children, our privacy?

So what can we do when the freedom of the press infringes on our freedom of speech? I don't have a good answer to that, I'm afraid. Will our oh-so-free-press effectively become a gag to silence people like me? How many people will they intimidate into conformity, and into never speaking out? I don't have answers to those, either. But I think I can answer one question at least.

Yes. It's worth it.