The biggest news in the blogosphere at present is the outing of the Girl With A One Track Mind. The Girl has just had her book published and had expressed concern about losing her anonymity.
The Times has tracked her down and published her name. This has meant that The Girl has had to out herself to her family and friends.
The whole situation reminds me of Nikki Gemmell and her outing as the author of The Bride Stripped Bare. She wrote her book anonymously and her husband and family weren’t really aware of what was in the novel. She told Andrew Denton:
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Well, the horrible thing was when I was unmasked very brutally by the British press — kind of really terrier-like, “We are going to find out who you are, we are going to publish, even if you deny it” — I suddenly had to make all these phone calls to Australia in the early hours of the morning and say, “Mum, Dad, I’ve written this book, I’ve done this thing.” They had no idea.
It seems The Girl is in the same situation.
Anonymity in sex blogging has long been an interesting issue. It’s one of the reasons I don’t write about my personal life. The internet may not be ink and paper but it is publishing all the same. People will read what you write and everything you write reflects who you are and what you think. And it’s very, very easy for a journalist to get hold of someone’s name, if they’re determined to do so. I’ve been there, on both sides. No-one is ever as anonymous as they think.
Nonetheless, people who want to write honestly should be allowed the grace of anonymity. Some say it’s cowardly to do so, but I think remaining anonymous is a legitimate literary standpoint and people should respect the author’s right to their privacy if that is their wish.
MonMouth suggests The Girl’s outing may be a publicity stunt organised by her publisher and no doubt it will work. I can see this book becoming a bestseller very quickly indeed. If nothing else, The Girl’s privacy is about to be exchanged for a large amount of money. That may not be preferable, but there is some comfort in that, I suspect.
I found it rather vexing that The Times chose to drag Ariel Levy into its article. Seems The Girl’s uninhibited sexuality can now be tagged as yet another example of “raunch culture”.
The book will reignite the debate over female “raunch cultureâ€, sparked by Female Chauvinist Pigs, Ariel Levy’s book about the eagerness of young women to indulge in sexually overt behaviour. Levy argued “raunch†was corrupting women rather than empowering them.
Her character Abby asks: “Does thinking about sex all the time mean there’s something wrong with me? It’s a question I ask myself on an hourly basis . . . Is it common to look at men’s crotches as they walk down the street?†With such a shameless (my italics) interest in sex it is no surprise Margolis has gone to great lengths to try to conceal her identity.
If I were The Girl, I’d be pretty fucking insulted at the suggestion that her sexuality is “overt” “corrupting” and “shameless”, as if she is doing something wrong. The belief in women as pure and non-sexual still prevails in the mainstream press.
Update 14 August 2006
The Girl has now made a couple of responses via mainstream newspapers – details are on her blog. The Guardian’s piece makes for a great read, making some good points about the sensationalist and judgemental treatment by The Times of a woman who is promiscuous.