Karen over at Chookooloonks has an excellent post up today where she begins to explore the idea of a blogger's obligation to represent elements of her core identity. In Karen's case, she's talking about her family's multiraces, her daughter's adoption, her country, etc. Her post made me think, though, about the parts of my identity I represent on my blog and how and why.
I think I'm fairly honest here about who I am. I use my real name, I don't make a secret of where I live, I post pictures of myself. To some people's thinking, and I'm not sure they are wrong, this isn't smart from a safety perspective. However, it became important to me, as I got more into communication and socialization on the Internet, for there not to be a seperate cyber-Grace (see left), and the best way I found to be the same person on and offline was to be honest about myself. That being said, there are a few things I don't talk about here, for reasons of "safety," or at least to keep myself out of trouble. Most specifically, I keep talk about my job to a minimum. The lesson we all learned from Dooce, I guess.
Beyond that, I'm in some ways more honest about myself here than I am in real life. My mothers, were she to read my blog, would learn things about me that she doesn't already know. My friends often learn things I'm thinking and worrying about from my blog. I find this format easy to be candid in, as I almost never write to any imagined audience, but just to get my own thoughts and feelings out.
Candor isn't really the same thing as responsible representation, though, which is, I think, more what Karen was getting at. The truth is, though, that I feel completely unqualified to respresent any larger group. There are certainly groups I fit into, or even that help define me: woman, feminist, Westerner, small-towner, class straddler, etc. But I don't think I'm a very good representation of any of these, and it never occurs to me when writing that my words could be taken as representative of any of these groups.
Does that mean I'm shirking responsibility? I dunno. I mean, maybe if I claimed to be representing those groups, or representing anyone. But I'm not. All I claim is that I'm as honest as I can b about who I am. And I think, for now, that's enough.