anonymous blogging, trolls, misogyny and ethics

[rm]

http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/is-it-ok-to-blog-about-this-woman-anonymously/

Chat amongst yourselves. I'm off to save the world (er, so not really, but let's pretend, okay?)

Comments

[sushis.livejournal.com]

I think that article is so ridiculously wrong, it's stunning. Maybe it's partly that my some of my favorite topics of internet conversation are things I wouldn't expect anyone to reveal "publicly," without a pseudonym. Even in a completely enlightened society (and I don't believe one actually exists at this time, in any event) there are things that are interesting to discuss in general *cough* secks *cough*, but which I don't necessarily want to discuss with my boss, or for that matter, possible future employers. There are things I don't need to know about casual associates, but which fascinate me to discuss with people I meet online.

I don't see why, if I want to talk about, say, my thoughts about transsexual porn stars (the subject of an extremely interesting discussion recently on a friend's journal) I should have to provide the world with a permanent record linking those thoughts to my legal name. And, obviously, that's small potatoes compared to the worries of, say, actual transsexuals who enterred the discussion, and were free to provide their views largely because they knew that there was little chance of people connecting the words to the "real world" person.

Of course, in any such discussion, one might get a truly obnoxious troll (I'm using the word in the strong sense, here, of a person who isn't merely unpleasant or pointlessly argumentative, but who attempts to cause genuine harm with their words.) Thus, the lovely ability we have on LJ, and, I would think, most blogging platforms with non-gargantuan readerships, to ban people judged to be genuinely destructive. The judicious operation of such an option seems to me infinitely preferable to the silencing of discussion altogether that would be caused by the insistence upon everyone using legal names.