How to be Heard?

To all my avid followers and readers, what if I told you I’m not a fifty-one-year-old, gay male, who’s been with his same-sex partner for nineteen years?  What if I told you I’m really a thirty-two-year-old, straight woman, who’s single and looking?  Imagine how betrayed you might feel when you’ve bought into what I’ve written here over the past twenty-six months, when you’ve become invested in me, my story, and my message.

That’s what readers around the world are feeling since finding out Amina Arraf, the popular lesbian, Syrian blogger of A Gay Girl in Damascus, is actually Tom MacMaster, a straight, white, American male, currently living in Scotland.  It’s also what readers are feeling after discovering Paula Brooks, the deaf, lesbian, mother-of-two, and editor of Lez Get Real, is actually Bill Graber, a straight man from Ohio.  

As a blogger, I was understandably fascinated with a story titled “Followers upset by fake bloggers’ tall tales,” written by Monica Hesse of the Washington Post, which appeared in today’s Vancouver Sun.  I shook my head as I read this opinion piece, unable to imagine the enormous imagination, moxie, and work that must go into creating full-blown personalities and lives--so different from the writers themselves--convincing enough for readers to invest themselves and their emotions into.        

But that’s hardly my point.  Hesse explains what puts all of this into perspective.  She writes:

The fake existence of Amina Arraf was offensive to bloggers--and to Syrians, and to women,

and to lesbians and gays, and to anyone else who has ever been truly marginalized.  How

irritating that so much attention was given to something ultimately written by a straight

American man.

And how poignant that a member of one of the most privileged classes in the world felt that

the only way he could have a voice was to pretend to be a member of a class that has been

disenfranchised in every possible way [p. B4].

Ironic, too, I might add.  

As Hesse suggests, traditionally, straight, white men, collectively, have been the dominant voice heard over the centuries around the world, telling us what’s right, what’s wrong, what to do, what not to do, how to live our lives, and how not to live our lives.  And, whenever their voices were diminished, their insecurity came out full-force and they made their voices even louder, until we couldn’t ignore them any longer.  Until we had no choice but to pay attention to what they said.    

Yet here we have MacMaster and Graber, two everyday schlubs--neither one I wish to criticize with this post because, after all, they managed to garner a lot of empathy and support for our lesbian sisters, although fraudulently--who, for some reason, opted to impersonate someone of the opposite gender, and the opposite sexual orientation, landing on voices that were finally heard above the din of everyday craziness.


You have to give them a lot of credit.  I do.  For most of us, the struggle to find our voices, and to know what to say once we've found them, is constant and daunting.  Is it any wonder many of us never find them?       

Which begs the question, Is it better to have the balls to use voices that are not ours and be heard, than to use our own voices and never be heard?  I guess that all depends on the message.  Or does it?  Perhaps MacMaster and Graber's perspectives on that would be worth listening to.         

At any rate, in case there's any doubt, I really am a fifty-one-year-old gay male, who’s been with his partner, Chris, for nearly two decades.  And I really am committed to help gay and lesbian people to build their self-esteem, so they can be all they were meant to be.


But do you think what these two white, straight, American men did might work in the reverse?  Do you think my blog, and its message of hope for gay and lesbian people, could get more followers, readers, and attention--for all the right reasons, of course--if I revealed myself to be a straight, married, twenty-something woman from Boise, Idaho?  

Imagine the fiction skills I'd need to make that happen.  What a test of my writing ability. Perhaps I should give it a try.