Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Rob's True Name (and Sex)
I joined The WELL in 1990. A number of my friends in Silicon Valley told me “You
should join—there are lots of smart and cool people, and there's this fun monthly
get together up in Marin County.” So I looked into it, using my 2400 baud modem
and my Mac Plus, and observed that it did indeed look worthy—and decided to get
an account.
This was during the height of my dress-in-black fl irtation with post-modernism,
body criticism, and neo-feminism, and was also when I was the father of a girl in pre-
school. I noticed that it might be possible to do some exploration with my personal
voice, stripped of common signifi ers that always lead to projective gender construc-
tion, and see what people thought of me from merely semantic communication,
sans beard, blue eyes, or affect.
The WELL stated that its policy was always the “you own your own words,” and
required people to stand behind them in the online threaded discussion groups.
A new account required one's name, and also an “M” or “F” denoting sex. As it
turned out, I knew the sysadmin (Calliope Curious) through a mutual friend, and
I persuaded her to make me an account with the name “Tau Zero,” and to leave
the sexual identity blank. Subsequently I was careful to avoid emitting anything that
identifi ed myself as either male or female in any discussions, which ranged from sci-
ence and technology to business, the Grateful Dead, relationships, sexuality, and par-
enting. I merely expressed my opinions, backed up with the best evidence I knew.
After about a year a curious thing happened. Two people (one from Kansas,
and one from the Bay Area) who were active posters in both the sexuality groups
and the parenting groups started sending me private messages. These were friendly,
and then started to become positively fl irtatious—and even
suggestive. Both of the correspondents were “out” lesbians,
and had assumed, purely from the semantic content of my
own postings, that I
must
also be a lesbian.
There was only one thing to do, as a responsible
member of the community. I went to Calliope, and had her
change the single ASCII character of my sexual identity from
a blank to an “M.”
The private messages stopped, rather abruptly.
—Rob Tow
