White Guy Feels the Need to Blog as a Homosexual Female in Order to get heard

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In recent days, the world has followed closely the saga of Amina Araff, the blogger who presented herself online as “A Gay Girl in Damascus” and who drew attention with her passionate writings about the Syrian government’s crackdown on Arab Spring protesters. Those writings stopped last Tuesday, and a posting to the blog, ostensibly written by a cousin, said she had been hauled away by government security agents.

News of her disappearance became an Internet and media sensation. The U.S. State Department started an investigation. But almost immediately skeptics began asking: Has anyone ever actually met Amina? Two days after her disappearance, images presented on her blog as being of Amina were revealed to have been taken from the Facebook page of a London woman.

And on Sunday, the truth spilled out: The gay girl in Damascus confessed to being a 40-year-old American man from Georgia.

The persona he built and cultivated for years — a lesbian who was half Syrian and half American — was a tantalizing Internet-era fiction, one that Tom MacMaster used to bring attention to the human rights record of a country with severe media restrictions that make traditional reporting almost impossible.

On Sunday, MacMaster wrote an apology on his blog, “While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone -- I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-gay-girl-in-damascus-comes-clean/2011/06/12/AGkyH0RH_story.html?hpid=z1

WOW, this pretty well sums up where us white guys stand these days....

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Type: Discussion • Score: 8 • Views: 6,598 • Replies: 51

@hawkeye10,

i can generally see at least some angle of the stuff you bring to the forum, but this one has me stumped

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@djjd62,

I think it has something to do with pornographic videos, but don't quote me
on that.

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@djjd62,

The writing on that blog is actually pretty good, but I don't think that's what Hawk is talking about.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

WOW, this pretty well sums up where us white guys stand these days....

and they stand where?

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@Mame,

Mame wrote:

. . . and they stand where?

Are we still discussing pornography?

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@Mame,

Angry white men are the real victims here ?

1 Reply

@LionTamerX,

LionTamerX wrote:

Angry white men are the real victims here ?

It is the voices of men who are not heard these days, it is the needs of men which are not being addressed,.....women have swapped places with men , it is now we who are the ones oppressed and ignored.

If you are a 40 year old white guy and you want your voice to be heard then pretending that you are a homosexual female is the way to get that voice heard.

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@hawkeye10,

You are so delusional Hawkeye. Mind boggling. A 40 year old conservative still has plenty of media outlets including your favorite Fox News network.

You're delusions make dirrtydozen22's anger issues and actions sound reasonable in comparison.

This is coming from a 39 year old white male.

1 Reply

@tsarstepan,

tsarstepan wrote:

You are so delusional Hawkeye. Mind boggling. A 40 year old conservative still has plenty of media outlets including your favorite Fox News network.

You're delusions make dirrtydozen22's anger issues and actions sound reasonable in comparison.

This is coming from a 39 year old white male.

If you dont buy my explanation that this deceit was a calculated effort to get more reach for his voice then what is your explanation for why all of the work? Even now in his so called "apology" he holds to the opinion that he was only doing what he thought that he had to do for his cause, so good luck coming up with an alternative explanation.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

LionTamerX wrote:

Angry white men are the real victims here ?

It is the voices of men who are not heard these days, it is the needs of men which are not being addressed,.....women have swapped places with men , it is now we who are the ones oppressed and ignored.

If you are a 40 year old white guy and you want your voice to be heard then pretending that you are a homosexual female is the way to get that voice heard.

Your voice not being heard may have something to do with the fact that you're boring and not with the fact that you are white.

Please list the privileges you've been denied as a consequence of your skin color.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Even now in his so called "apology" he holds to the opinion that he was only doing what he thought that he had to do for his cause, so good luck coming up with an alternative explanation.

Well, here's one alternative explanation:

Quote:

He had started the blog, he said, because he believed online posts about the Syrian and Israel-Palestinian situations would earn "some deference from obnoxious men" if written under an Arab woman's name rather than under his own, where "someone would immediately ask: why do you hate America? why do you hate freedom? This sort of thing."

He had made her a lesbian, he said, in an attempt "to develop my writing conversation skills ... It's a challenge. I liked the challenge.

"I also had the thing that I like to write, and my own vanity is ... if you want to compliment me, tell you like my writing ... That's how to make me happy."

In short, he didn't need to be a lesbian in order to have his voice heard. On the other hand, he needed to claim that he was in Syria in order for people to take him seriously when he talked about the Syrian revolt. Having people learn that he was an American doofus writing about the revolt from Scotland would have definitely affected his credibility.

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@joefromchicago,

Quote:

Mr MacMaster, who is on holiday in Istanbul, told BBC Scotland: "I really felt a number of years ago, in discussions on Middle East issues in the US, often when I presented real facts and opinions, the immediate reaction to someone with my name was: 'Why are you anti-American? Why are you anti-Jewish?'

"So I invented a name to talk under that would keep the focus on the actual issue."

Source: BBC Scotland

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@joefromchicago,

Quote:

Having people learn that he was an American doofus writing about the revolt from Scotland would have definitely affected his credibility.

He could have been a Syrian male and accomplished the same goal, he choose not to be.

Quote:

In short, he didn't need to be a lesbian in order to have his voice heard

He says now, not that this guy has any credibility mind you. I think that the lesbian part is obvious, it was a cover for the masculine traits that would inevitably leak into his writing as he pretended to be a woman. Pretending to be a lesbian is easier to carry off than is pretending to be a hetro woman.

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An important aspect to this case is that genuine political activists in Syria are angry that this hoax has ruined their credibility.

1 Reply

@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

An important aspect to this case is that genuine political activists in Syria are angry that this hoax has ruined their credibility.

I am sure they are not too thrilled either that yet another know it all American do-gooder is speaking for them and deciding for them what they need....

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

I think that the lesbian part is obvious, it was a cover for the masculine traits that would inevitably leak into his writing as he pretended to be a woman.

sounds like you're describing rachel maddow

Wink

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@hawkeye10,

There is to my mind a reason for him to pick to be a homosexual woman that does not fit in with my males are oppressed thesis, and that is that had he not been pretending to be a lesbian there would have been much more effort to find out who was doing the writing, and earlier. In this case the Syrians would have been thinking " well sure she is not coming to meetings, first because she is female and second because she admits to being gay, which is nearly a invitation to get harrased...this is why we dont know her".

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

He lied. He predmeditated it. He planned it.....................but you are going to make excuses for it? Why should anyone listen to someone that so deliberately lies? Why should anyone trust him? This isn't like saying there is no more ice cream when someone asks and you lie and say it is all gone because you want to eat the last of it. This is talking about very serious issues that truly do affect the lives of many people.

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I think the lesson is if you want to stand out, you need to be very unusual. In this case, the blogger went for a lesbian Arab combining two oppressed groups that recieve Western sympathy. If you were commenting on Arizonia politics, maybe you go for a Mexican illegal immigrant who came to the US when he was six and is now in college hiding from Immigration. If you want to get attention during a Democratic presidency, be a fat white guy who buys into conspiracy theories and has bad hair. I think you are right that an everyday white guy commenting on Syria might not get a big following, but it's not because no one listens to white guys, it is because white guys with opinions are a dime a dozen.

2 Replies

White Guy Feels the Need to Blog as a Homosexual Female in Order to get heard

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