It's difficult to know where to start, seeing as I'm putting myself in the group of people you've called 'kneejerk' and 'presumptuous' before I even speak.
But actually, this breaks down, for me, into three jerks of the knee, if you will.
Point one:
without being aware of context which does define everything. I won't criticise your choice to be presumptuous and take the liberty of assuming what context this could exist in but I would like to hear other opinions.
A user name is nothing if not utterly sheered of content. We aren't that friend group, so shared discussions about sex and androphobia are not clustered around you whenever you post here. All we have is two phenomenally offensively combined words. Is this post is an attempt to 'provide context'? Because it's actually an attempt to get people to ignore context – to say that no matter how the hundreds of posters encounter your screenname, your interpretation of it is more important. The 'context' of your username is 'Appearing just to the left of your posts' – it works in communication with your posting histoy on the board, the content of those posts, and nothing else, really. A few of the board may know you in real life, but that's unusual and unreliable. The context of people reading your name is something else again which I'll address a little below.
What you're talking about is not so much 'context' - it's backstory. And you can't expect everyone to know or guess your backstory. Especially, you can't expect someone who has just been confronted with that username to go far, far out of their way to hallucinate a backstory that would make it fine and amusing.
As you have such an awareness of context, you would have done better to pick a name that would survive in any 'context' of the board – alongside posts about a film, or a book, or politics, with no attached explanation of the words of your username.
Which brings me to point two:
Your backstory is terrible. Seriously, it's worse than the Star Wars prequels at providing a sympathetic and humorous explanation of your name.
I've said in another thread that I spend a lot of time thinking 'How could this be true? How could I be wrong and this be right?'. When I did that whole schtick on your username, the explanations I thought up in my head were better than yours. Others have covered this, I think.
And point three:
The main point for me is not where this name came from but where it's going. You've given us a story. But the story doesn't limit the way in which the name goes on having effects. It's going to cause a lot of people to recoil, to be reminded of horrific things that have happened to their friend or themselves. It's going to remind them of the last survey they read with results showing how many college men believe that forced sex is justifiable under certain circumstances; and the prosecution rates, and the conviction rates. It may make people feel sick, and panicky, and like crying, and it may make them avoid Barbelith for the next month to avoid you. Or indeed for longer, as they feel that they don't want to invest in a board which condones or accepts or ignores something like this. It's only going to make you think of a jokey conversation you had with your mates and give you a warm glow. Is it worth that disparity?
This is what the name will do – those reactions are a part of its context. This thread won't change that. |
