#tom macmaster

[jpulidoga]

The Post-Human Navigation of Cyberspace Facilitated by Fictional Identities

Author: Jesus Pulido

Traditionally, people had to navigate the social realm with certain limitations imposed on them. These limitations were, and still are, assigned at birth and based on one's physical attributes, such as race and gender. One is born with a body marked with historically-informed connotations that elicit a multitude of expectations and constraints. In post-modernity, it is possible to transgress one's social categorization and assume a cyber-identity, which opens the door to a world of liberating possibilities. However, to do this is not without consequence.

Bodies are categorized at birth, if not prior to birth, and a great deal of people's attitudes toward others are influenced by these social categorizations. Notions of criminality, sexual promiscuity, and other forms of deviance are conflated with a person's physical presentation. The ways in which people interact with each other are also influenced by these social labels. They inform the types of behaviors that are socially accepted or expected. Notions of competence, strength, and sexual capital are ascribed onto a person depending on her gender (Bartky, 73).

However, in many societies, it is possible to transgress some of these social categories that people are born into. Transgender individuals, for example, are able to subvert the assumption that a person must necessarily live out her life with the gender identity she was assigned at birth. Transgender identities undo “the fixity of nature-based sex.” The surgeries that many transgender folks undergo are “a twentieth-century cyborg technology [that] has already challenged the fixity of nature-based sex” (Pitts, 158). Different examples of plastic surgery and body modification allow a person to alter her body in ways that reflect her desired, real, or imagined cultural affiliation.

To transgress many of these social categories, though, takes a certain level of privilege. A transgender person who wants to live a life in her preferred gender typically must have access to hormonal therapy and often also some form of sexual reassignment surgery in order to successfully pass. To navigate the legal system, which is also often required of transgender people for the sake of record-keeping, also takes a considerable amount of time, effort, and resources.

Cyberspace opens up a world of possibilities to transgress one's gender, age, race, and other socially constructed categories. This is, of course, a possibility that is only available to people with access to the Internet or some other form of cyberspace. For the person who does immerse herself in cyberspace, however, she has the opportunity to take on a new identity limited only by her imagination. “The unmaking of modern identity into multiple postmodern possibilities parallels post-human visions of cyborgian freedom and limitlessness; the postmodern/post-human subject is perceived to be freed from both modern and human constraints” (Pitts, 152). Thus, it is possible for any one individual to (re-)invent herself, or invent another identity entirely.

The recent case of Tom MacMaster is one such case of a person taking on a new, imagined identity in cyberspace. He chose to enter the online realm posing as a Syrian-American woman, emulating the personality and experiences of an othered subject. He drew much of his inspiration from Eurocentric, colonial preconceptions about the “Orient” and from his experiences traveling through the Middle East, as a privileged white, heterosexual, cisgender man.

MacMaster, a resident of Stone Mountain, Georgia, has a long history of participating in social justice organizations and supporting Palestinian self-determination. He has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, and he has an undergraduate degree in Arabic Studies. He is very familiar with Arab culture and people, but that experience is through the perspective of a Western.

For years, MacMaster blogged using the pseudonym Amina Arraf. He used vivid detail and strong, convincing narratives to create this online persona with her own (fictional) experiences. Amina's biography took many forms during these years. Initially, Amina was an American, married to man and with children. When this heterosexually married avatar was kidnapped, MacMaster was less than satisfied with the few number of people who had taken notice.

Later, MacMaster revised—or revived—Amina as an openly homosexual woman living in Damascus through a blog titled “A Gay Girl in Damascus.” His reason for reviving Amina was to raise awareness of the poor human rights record in Syria, held against a western standard. Consequently, Amina's blog gained a sizable following. Eventually, MacMaster “decided to have her suffer new perils,” by having her be kidnapped in the online narrative. He did this with the expectation that the response would again be underwhelming. To his surprise, tens of thousands of followers and later, several media agencies had taken notice. Many of these people were distraught by this unfortunate revelation, which they understood as taking place in reality. Eventually, journalists and others discovered that Amina and “A Gay Girl in Damascus” were both mere fiction. To his chagrin, many bloggers and journalists were outraged that a white man would have the audacity to assume the identity of an Arab lesbian, and a media frenzy ensued (MacMaster, "That Kinda Sucks").

This entire phenomenon alludes to a historical, Eurocentric mentality that carries with it many assumptions about people in the Middle East. In his apology for the hoax he undertook, MacMaster claims that he simply wanted to give a “voice” to people in the Arab world for the sake of promoting human rights. “Assumptions about people, their innate capacities, and the nature of personhood are inevitably central to the imagination of political power” (Rao & Pierce, 8). It quickly becomes evident that MacMaster used an his avatar with certain assumptions about Middle Easterners in mind. That Middle Eastern women have no “rights,” that gays and lesbians in Syria are objects of socio-political persecution, and that he could write a gay Syrian's narrative better than an actual Syrian lesbian herself are convictions central to his invention of Amina.

The invention of Amina parallels Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's “sentimental” mode of rhetorical representation of disabled people (McRuer, 171). In MacMaster's blog, Amina's experiences are framed by her position in a society constructed as hostile. She navigates an Arab society that MacMaster and many westerners view as homophobic and sexist. MacMaster desired to be a successful writer, and Amina became his experiment to elicit sympathy and pity from the readers of “A Gay Girl in Damascus.” He also intended to raise awareness of the plight—whether imagined or real—of women and sexual minorities in the Arab world. Using his gaze as a westerner, he hoped to promote “equality” and other aspects of liberalism.

Many of the reactions to the discovery of “A Gay Girl in Damascus” as a hoax call for MacMaster to face some form of punishment. However, cyberspace is a world that transgresses much of the reach of the legal system. Especially in the case of Tom MacMaster, he is an American national who is out of the legal reach of the Syrian government. To enter cyberspace, however, does give a person a sense of freedom from the state's panoptic gaze. An individual feels able to act more freely and to obey fewer laws than outside of cyberspace.

To assume a fictitious online identity or to simply enter the digital realm can also transgress the state's ability to discipline its members. MacMaster might have been easily traceable, but given the appropriate technology and cyber expertise, one can evade surveillance and other forms of regulatory mechanisms. Cyberspace offers an opportunity to subvert these long-standing forms of power, and it poses a new challenge to state—how to control a population in which individuals can create fictitious personas with just several keystrokes and how to extract capital from an online population whose members can easily hide (or multiply) their existence (Cohen, 20).

As more of people's identities are dependent on their experiences in the virtual world, many people will want to live out alternate identities. To do this will result in either a uniquely posthuman subversion or reification of traditional binaries. It is my assumption that people will either reproduce or alternatively de-/re-construct those binaries, but one can hope that these will not be our only two choices.

Works Cited

Abbas, Ali, and Assia Boundaoui. "A Gay (Straight) Girl (Man) in Damascus (Edinburgh): The Politics Behind the Roleplay." KabobFest. 13 Jun 2011. Web. 10 Jul 2011. <http://www.kabobfest.com/2011/06/a-gay-girl-in-damascus.html>.

Bartky, Sandra Lee. “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.” In Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance, eds. Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, 61-86. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988.

Bell, Melissa, and Elizabeth Flock. "'A Gay Girl in Damascus' Comes Clean." The Washington Post. The Washington Post Company, 12 Jun 2011. Web. 09 Jul 2011. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/a-gay-girl-in-damascus-comes- clean/2011/06/12/AGkyH0RH_story.html>.

Cohen, Ed. A Body Worth Defending: Immunity, Biopolitics, and the Apotheosis of the Modern Body. Durham: Duke University Press, 2009.

MacMaster, Tom. "That Kinda Sucks: Not That Anyone Cares." A Gay Girl in Damascus. Blogspot, 23 Jun 2011. Web. 09 Jul 2011. <http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com/>.

McRuer, Robert. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. NY; New York University Press, 2006.

Pitts, Victoria. In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. NY: Palgrave Macmillian, 2003.

[lasterfox]

(h/t T)

[straightguyinedinburgh-blog]

Another Apology

This one actually includes the word sorry, so it's a step up from the previous one. I am, however, a little unimpressed with MacMaster's continual harping on about his good intentions -- especially in the light of his attempt to get Amina's memoir published. 

For some reason I can't access the site directly, but the apology is still viewable in Google Cache. I've put the text under a read more tag here as it's rather long.

Before I say anything else, I want to apologize to anyone I may have hurt or harmed in any way. I never meant to hurt anyone. I am really truly sorry and I feel awful about this. Words alone do not suffice to express how badly I feel about all this. I betrayed the trust of a great many people, the friendship that was honestly and openly offered to me, and played with the emotions of others unfairly. I have distracted the world’s attention from important issues of real people in real places. I have potentially compromised the safety of real people. I have helped lend credence to the lies of the regimes. I am sorry. I have hurt people with whom I share a side and a struggle. That matters. I have hurt causes I believe in sincerely. That is wrong. It started innocently enough without any intention whatsoever of creating a massive hoax or duping the world. Ever since I was a child, I’ve wanted to write fiction but, when my first attempts met with universal rejection, I took a more serious look at my own work and I realized that I could not write conversation in a natural way nor could I convincingly write characters who weren’t me. I tried to get better and did various exercises (such as simply copying overheard conversations). Eventually, I would set up a number of profiles on dating sites with identities that were not my own as ways of interacting with real people in conversation but with a different personality than my own.  I was also very involved in issues surrounding the Palestine and Iraq struggles. Ever since my childhood I had felt very connected to the cultures and peoples of the Middle East. It’s something that I came by naturally. My mother had taught English in Turkey before I was born and my father had been involved with Middle East refugee issues when they met. They are both people whom I admire immensely and have continued to do many wonderful works that I can only aspire to. I’m also an argumentative sort and a bit of a nerd. I was involved with numerous online science-fiction/alternate-history discussion lists and, as a part of that process, I saw lots of incredibly ignorant and stupid positions repeated on the Middle East. I noticed that when I, a person with a distinctly Anglo name, made comments on the Middle East, the facts I might present were ignored and I found myself accused of hating America, Jews, etc. I wondered idly whether the same ideas presented by someone with a distinctly Arab and female identity would have the same reaction.  So, I invented her. First, she was just a name. Amina Arraf. She commented on blogs and talkbacks on news-sites. Eventually, I set up an email for her. She joined the same lists I was already on and posted responses in her name. And, almost immediately, friendly and solicitous comments on mine appeared. It was intriguing. That likely would have been the end of it; I’d just keep her as a nearly anonymous handle for commenting on issues that mattered to me but … Amina came alive. I could hear her ‘voice’ and that voice and personality were clear and strong. Amina was funny and smart and equal parts infuriating and flirtatious. She struggled with her religious beliefs and sexuality, wondered about living in America as an Arab; she wanted to find a way to balance her religion and her sexuality, her desire to be both a patriotic American and a patriotic Arab. Amina was clever and fun and had a story and a voice and I started writing it, almost as though she were dictating to me. Some of her details were mine, some were those of a dozen other friends borrowed liberally, others were purely ‘her’ from the get go. And I did something really, really stupid at that point. I should have left the original ‘brief experiment in nerd psychology’ go and, if I continued to ‘hear’ the Amina voice, I should just use it in a novel. I didn’t. Instead, I enjoyed ‘puppeting’ this woman who never was. I knew what she looked like in my head and I grabbed photos of a woman whom I have never met who looked exactly like what Amina should look like. That was stupid and possibly evil of me and I’m really, really sorry about that. I gave Amina a facebook page; she soon had friends and admirers. Amina kept growing. And I kept trying to ‘kill’ her. Her story was great; I can easily write in Amina’s voice because I know her like she was a real person. I know what she likes and what she dislikes, how she feels and what makes her angry or elates her. It was a terrible time suck but it was fun. And, regularly, I tried to stop. Amina moved overseas, she dropped out of sight repeatedly and so on and so forth. I meant to stop her … but is was hard. I’d read news stories and I’d find myself fighting the urge to respond as Amina … and occasionally giving in.  I wasn’t trying to pick fights or stir up controversy … I was instead trying to enlighten people. I posted comments on a blog; the owner asked me to contribute columns. I did so. I set up a blog to publish some of the things I’d written as Amina and, maybe, get a few comments. I did not expect anyone to read it or to care if they did. And in the first month and more it was up, it received only a few visits. That was more than I had expected. Then, I wrote a perfect little story about the situation in Syria and the mutual affection between father and daughter … and to my shock, it went viral …. And everything spiraled out of control. I couldn’t think of how to shut Amina down but …. It just kept on growing … And now, I have ended it. She is me. She never really existed. I feel like I am in some ways the worst person in the world. I’ve hurt a lot of people, including people who thought of ‘me’, when I was her, as a good friend. I want to apologize clearly and explicitly and personally to Jelena Lecic, Paula Brooks, Sandra Bagaria and Scott Palter. Each of them, in very different ways, was hurt deeply by me and each of them will get a personal apology from me. Each of them is more than entitled to hit me. I didn’t mean to hurt them. I didn’t mean to harm anyone who is upset. I didn’t mean to hurt the causes which I myself believe in. I didn’t mean to malign anyone. My intentions were good; I got carried away. I owe apologies to those I hurt and will do all in my power to make things right. I only wanted to set forth real information through the use of artfully crafted fiction. I was too successful and I was too caught up in what I was doing. I ignored the consequences of my action. I am sorry.  I want to turn the focus away from me and urge everyone to concentrate on the real issues, the real heroes, the real people struggling to bring freedom to the Arab world. I have only distracted from real people and real problems. Those continue; please focus on them.

[nelliesabin]

Fake Blogger: What’s the Harm? I’ll Tell You

                       This week we have the headline: “Syrian Lesbian Blogger Was a Male American Hoaxer.” Forty-year-old Tom MacMaster, a male graduate student from Georgia who has been living in Scotland, decided to create a fake blog called “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” using the persona Amina Abdallah Arraf, a 35 year-old Syrian/American lesbian with dual citizenship.

Amina wrote dramatic blog entries with very specific details. She blogged with what appeared to be intimate knowledge about the violent crackdown by President Assad and the Syrian government against dissenters. She discussed the dangers of her life in Syria, and was candid about her dislike of the Syrian government’s response to the protest movement, as well as her pro-Palestinian leanings.

Within Syria, reading the blog of a dissenter and a lesbian would be illegal. Having any connection to Amina probably could get you tortured or killed. Any Syrians who tried to follow Amina's blog placed their lives in jeopardy.

Outside Syria, people are eager for information about what is happening because it is so difficult to find out. The government prohibits independent reporting. Foreign journalists are banned from reporting inside Syria. Any news reports that contradict what Syrian state television says are attributed to a foreign plot. When disturbing images of dead bodies are leaked, the state-run media – a mouthpiece for Assad – will simply say they were staged in order to “undermine the army and tarnish its reputation.” Activists and bloggers try to get the news out, but the government will say exactly the opposite of eyewitness accounts.  The Syrian media has claimed all along that the protest movement is actually a cover for violent attacks by mysterious “armed terrorist groups” that are massacring civilians, policemen, and army personnel. Who is really killing whom? Amina's blog seemed to help shed some light on an otherwise shadowy situation.

Over four months, the blog drew a lot of attention. Then, sadly, Amina was snatched off the street, taken away by security guards. Amina’s cousin, Rania, blogged in her place that Amina and a friend were on their way to meet a member of a Syrian opposition group in Damascus at 6:00 PM when a witness saw Amina

“…seized by three men in their early 20s. According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed. Amina hit one of them and told the friend to go find her father.

“One of the men then put his hand over Amina’s mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad. The witness did not get the tag number. She promptly went and found Amina’s father.”

Later, the cousin wrote:

“I have been on the phone with both her parents and all they care about right now is that she is missing. Her father is desperately trying to find out where she is and who has taken her.”

Reads like a novel, doesn’t it?

News of Amina’s disappearance spread like wildfire. Readers were horrified that she had been detained. Officials in the US State Department initiated an investigation in both Washington and Damascus. A note on the blog from an American consular official said, “We have been trying to locate records for Amina but have had no luck so far. We will continue to look and once we have that information and have verified her American citizenship, we can begin discussing the case with the Syrians.” Journalists and bloggers and officials went into high gear.

Then things started to unravel. Despite repeated inquiries, no one came forward who had ever actually seen or met the real Amina - even Americans, who would not get killed for acknowledging it. Palestinian activists questioned why Amina would boast online about studying Hebrew and wanting to work someday in Tel Aviv. No birth records or public records for Amina could be located in Virginia, where she claimed she was born, and attempts to notify her family were unsuccessful.

Then parts of the blog turned out to have been previously posted back in 2007 as an “autobiographical novel.” A blogger named Liz Henry reminded her readers that blogs are often used for experimental fiction, citing several examples with remarkably similar circumstances. A “Free Amina” Facebook page that had been created changed its message, noting that, whatever the mystery was about Amina, over 10,000 people have been detained by Syrian authorities in the last few months.

When reporters from The Washington Post  and The Electronic Intifada (a pro-Palestinian web site) confronted MacMaster with evidence that mail for Ms. Arraf had been delivered to his home, he did something he clearly does very well: he lied. He told them, “Look, if I was the genius who had pulled this off, I would say, ‘Yeah,’ and write a book.”

NPR discovered that MacMaster’s wife, Britta Froelicher, who is pursuing a degree in Syrian Studies, had contributed her own photos of Syria to Amina’s blog – photos she had previously posted on Facebook in 2008. When NPR contacted his wife, she said the couple was on vacation in Turkey “and just really want to have a nice time and not deal with all this craziness at the moment.”

Well isn’t that special.

MacMaster says he created Amina because he wanted to present an unusual perspective on the Middle East, and because it was a “challenge” for him as an aspiring novelist. He explained lamely, “When I tried to shut it down it just kept getting bigger.”

In a recent post on Amina’s blog, called “Apology to Readers,” MacMaster wrote: “While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on this blog are true.”  (I’m not clear how he manages to find any “facts” in a fictional narrative about someone who does not exist.) He said: “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.”

He has not harmed anyone? Really? 

1.    To put a face on the character of Amina, MacMaster swiped Facebook photos of Jelena Lecic, an exotically beautiful woman who is from Croatia but lives in London. When pictures of Amina were needed to help track her down, MacMaster provided photos of Lecic directly to the press. Ms. Lecic’s ex-husband contacted the press when he saw pictures of his ex-wife circulating in the news. She ultimately had to go on BBC television to disclaim any relationship with the fake blog.

2.    In addition to Amina’s fake blog, MacMaster also carried on a Facebook relationship as Amina with a woman in Canada named Sandra Bagaria. She identified herself as Amina’s friend, but was forced to admit she had never seen Amina face-to-face, even on Skype. The two “women” had exchanged approximately 500 emails before Bagaria learned of the deception last week. She sent out a brief message on Twitter saying she was deeply hurt, but wanted to keep the focus on the people within Syria who are fighting for freedom.

3.    Amina also carried on another friendship with an Israeli blogger, Elizabeth Tsurkov, who said, “I feel betrayed and shocked but mostly angry, especially because Tom seems to think that he hurt no one with this hoax…. It never occurred to me that someone would be cruel enough to subject people who care about the fictional persona he created to emotional agony as part of a hoax.”

4.    LGBT activists in Syria are furious. One website notes:

'Because of you, Mr. MacMaster, a lot of the real activists in the LGBT community became under the spotlight of the authorities in Syria. These activists, among them myself, had to change so much in their attitude and their lives to protect themselves from the positional harm your little stunt created. You have, sir, put a lot of lives, mine and some friends included, in harm’s way so you can play your little game of fictional writing.”

5.    Many, many people worried about Amina and vast resources were devoted to trying to locate her, trying to notify her parents, and so on. Syrians probably placed their lives at risk trying to locate her.  So much time and attention and goodwill were squandered on a vain author-wannabe's fantasy.

6.    Last but certainly not least, Syria’s state-run media argues that media reports about the violence used by Syrian security forces are all fabricated by foreign journalists, or based on Internet hoaxes.  Syrian state TV addressed the blog directly, saying, "MacMaster's hoax [was] aimed at enhancing [the] continuous fabrications and lies against Syria in [terms] of kidnapping bloggers and activists.”  In other words, Amina is a big fake, other Internet reports are equally fake, and the only news to believe must come from the government. Thank you, Mr. MacMaster, for giving Assad exactly the ammunition he needs to make an otherwise reprehensible claim.

So far at least 1300 protestors in Syria have been killed, and the human rights violations are deplorable.  MacMaster’s little game created increased scrutiny on anyone trying to report, blog, or protest against what is occurring.  In all likelihood someone will be detained or killed as a result of his arrogant interference. 

To quote the blog Den Mother: MacMaster is “a selfish attention whore who didn’t care who he hurt until the one getting hurt was himself. Good riddance to him.”

                  UPDATE: Human toad Tom MacMaster tried to sell a very bad manuscript based on his ""white man's fantsy of... the perfect wet dream."

http://gawker.com/5814664/fake-syrian-lesbian-tried-to-get-book-deal

Sources:

• http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/siftingsyrianfactfromsyrianfiction/scp=4&sq=Amina%20Arraf&st=cse 

 • http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/gaygirlindamascusbloggeradmitstowritinfictiondisguisedasfact/#more111629  

• http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/world/middleeast/13blogger.htmlscp=3&sq=Amina%20Arraf&st=cse 

• http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/syrianamericanbloggerdetained/scp=1&sq=Amina%20Arraf&st=cse  

• http://www.euronews.net/2011/06/13/syrian-acivists-anger-at-fake-gay-blog/ 

• http://articles.cnn.com/20110613/world/syria.blogger_1_bloggersyrianamericandepartment-spokesman-mark-toner_s=PM:WORLD  

• http://denmotherblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/fakesyrianlesbiandoesmoreharm-than-good/

[naijanyc]

Question Of The Day: Can You Really Trust Someone You Met, Follow, Or Read About Online???

By Monica Hesse, 

This is Tom MacMaster, for years he wrote a very popular blog as Amina Arraf, a lesbian woman living in Syria.

The Internet taught us that we could be anyone; it’s a lesson that was comforting for middle school geeks and convenient for fabulists who were not content with their “real” lives. Thousands of people take advantage of it every day — fudge the truth, fake the numbers, fuss with the age and weight. The entire online dating business is powered by people whose online selves are a little taller and wealthier than their offline ones. People create throwaway personas for message boards that are used, then abandoned.

This week it was revealed that Amina Arraf, the wildly popular gay Syrian female blogger, wasn’t. Who she was: a straight man from Georgia, living in Scotland. On Monday, another twist: Paula Brooks, the deaf lesbian editor of Lez Get Real — who had criticized Tom MacMaster for creating the identity of Amina — wasn’t either. She was Bill Graber, a straight man living in Ohio.

We could not make this up.

Where do MacMaster’s and Graber’s actions belong on the continuum of authenticity? Just to the left of “a little taller, a littler richer”?

Or on another spectrum entirely?

How neatly they fit into a long line of people who aren’t who they seem — people who aren’t people at all — online.

Kaycee Nicole was a high school basketball star whose brave battle with leukemia enthralled her thousands of blog readers back in the early 2000s, up until the day she died, when followers learned that she had never existed at all. Kaycee was the alter ego of a suburban mom.

A few months ago, the Web was alight with sympathy for Paula Bonhomme, a Colorado woman who learned that her firefighter fiance hadn’t died unexpectedly of liver cancer. He wasn’t real — just a creation of another woman who got carried away.

And, in a story that reeled in everyone from Keith Olbermann to Mr. Rogers back in the 1990s, Anthony Godby Johnson was a young boy with AIDS who was really a very disturbed woman in New Jersey, spinning a telephone and online lie that got increasingly out of control.

The psychiatric community has even come up with a term to describe this sort of behavior: Munchausen by Internet.

In each of these instances, the lie got too big. The fake personality became too interesting to the real readers. In the case of Paula Bonhomme, she wanted to meet the man she had agreed to marry. In the case of Anthony Godby Johnson, his fans wanted to meet the boy they had counseled and championed.

In the case of Amina, her fans cared more deeply than MacMaster probably thought they would when he told them that she had disappeared — the plot twist that prompted legions to investigate.

He had been looking for an out. He told The Washington Post, “I had been struggling for a way to let things up.” He said that he’d seen the Amina persona as a way to stretch his creative-writing muscles.

Where does creativity begin to bleed into conning? Is it the moment when strangers become emotionally invested? Is it the moment when famous journalist strangers become emotionally invested? (Andrew Sullivan and Peter Beinart, both well-known writers, were vocal supporters of “A Gay Girl in Damascus.”)

What are your thoughts?

[pantslessprogressive]

So he thought that he, Tom MacMaster, had an identity interesting enough to prove to be a distraction, to the extent that it needed to be hidden behind one that was suitably abstract and invisible, and that “Amina” fit the bill? There are insults wrapped in insults in this story. After all, MacMaster is not claiming that he invented Amina because she was compelling enough to get the attention he couldn’t—which she was, and that is bad enough—but that she could be enough of a cipher to allow his fascinating insights to shine through. Amina was, by his account, designed not as a muse or an idol but as an amanuensis. Given his methods, he couldn’t accomplish even what he said that he wanted. And he may have endangered people who let down their guard trying to help Amina, as well as those who actually try to be heard. In one of his posts, Amina is saved from the secret police when her father yells at them. Who was MacMaster instructing or reproaching with that one? His confession, and partial apology, posted on his blog yesterday, was gapingly inadequate, culminating in these lines: This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism. However, I have been deeply touched by the reactions of readers. It is not charming to hear someone who has emotionally manipulated any number of people—not just readers of the blog, but correspondents he deceived and allowed to confide in him over the course of years—to go on about the shallowness of others. Should we feel better because we have moved him? In a followup, posted today, he begins by making some of the proper apologetic gestures, but then veers into a self-indulgent stream of discussions about his literary ambitions, how great his mother is, his fake Internet dating profiles, and how, while he “enjoyed ‘puppeting’ this woman who never was,” fake blogging “was a terrible time suck.” Girls are such trouble.

Amy Davidson, with a damning analysis of 40-year-old Tom MacMaster's attempts to defend his Gay Girl in Damascus persona.

[randomberlinchick]

Amina often "flirted" with Brooks, the paper said – with neither man apparently realising that the other was also a man pretending to be a lesbian.

Second lesbian blogger exposed as a man | Media | The Guardian

There are a host of reasons to play with identity on the Internet . . . well, at least one good one: the exploration of sexual fantasies.

Among the most misguided (read: dumbass) reasons for playing with identity on the Internet is attempting to speak for people who are completely capable of speaking for themselves.

And for the record, I really am a black chick from the US who has settled happily in Berlin and has trouble speaking for her own random ass, much less anybody else's.

[shortformblog]

Weirdest story of the day: Paula Brooks, the woman who ran the site that broke the Amina Arraf story, later proven to be false, is also a man by the name of Bill Graber. A fact he admits on his Twitter account. How screwed up is this story? Well, the key line from the Post story goes like this: "In the guise of Paula Brooks, Graber corresponded online with Tom MacMaster, thinking he was writing to Amina Arraf. Amina often flirted with Brooks, neither of the men realizing the other was pretending to be a lesbian." (partial hat tip to notnadia)