Syndicate and Hague

I had a brief conversation with a friend today over his identity divisions between various social networking sites. He said that since he was going to be known professionally in X way, that was his professional persona, whereas his Facebook persona is different.

This got me thinking–and took me far beyond what he was talking about/our particular conversation. But as someone who truly believes in the feminist mantra that the personal is political (and vice versa), and as someone who has been in the business of writing opinions pieces, essays, and poetry, my public and private personae are pretty blended.

This is a potential problem. One that I don’t think is one that has a solution, but I recognize the difficulties that could emerge as I go into a profession that is more “researchy” and less “creative.” The masks we put on for professionalism don’t fit everyone - and this comes up with any marginalized group - sometimes wearing the mask of a profession means betraying yourself and your community.

For example, I’ve been writing on GLBT issues since 1997. In public. In papers. Back then, I didn’t entirely understand how big the risk I was undertaking was, nor how brave (or naive) it was to do that. I’m bull-headed and charge forward without thinking at times. But now that I’m older and supposedly wiser, I still do it. I put forth personal stories and critiques of culture at large to drive home messages I think are intensely important. This means sometimes being brutally honest, sometimes being foolishly honest, and sometimes writing something that is raw and wonderful (that is the rarest).

These things are too important for me to stop doing, and so living in private - completely masking myself professionally - just isn’t an option. Taking on the veneer of professionalism, if it means erasing contentious/controversial parts of my personae (and I do mean that in the plural), is too destructive to what I hope to construct in the world.

To be fair, I have a savvy enough understanding of the Internet that I can influence which searches on my name lead you to which affiliations I have - but you can still find the more personal stuff (like this blog) pretty easily…