Gayprof Exposed!

“Gayprof” blogs at Center of Gravitas, and yesterday he noted:

Over the past few days, the inevitable occurred. Two colleagues from my university found my little bloggy and deduced the true identity of GayProf. Perhaps I should not have worn that gold and red bra with matching Old-Glory short-shorts to faculty functions.

Still, it came as more of a shock than I expected to be exposed to local colleagues. Diana Prince found it so much easier to keep her secret identity. All she had to do was put her hair in a bun and toss on some glasses and nobody ever asked questions. In my case, though, people kept noticing that GayProf and I were never in the same room at the same time. They also found the invisible jet in my parking space.

My detectors are friends, so it’s not such a big deal. Still, the lack of local anonymity prompted some probing questions for me about the blog.”What?”I hear,”GayProf having a moment of existential crisis? That’s so unusual.”Hush-up, sarcastic voice in my head.

It’s not that I have been particularly zealous about preserving my anonymity. There has been the occasional picture. Anyone who e-mails me will know my actual name (btw, it’s not really”GayProf.”That’s my middle name. My parents were very forward thinking). Plus, there just aren’t that many gay, Latino history professors in Texas. No, it’s true.

Two observations about this: First, if you found that as entertaining as I did, you should regularly read Center of Gravitas. Second, this is yet another reminder that anonymity is hard to retain for anyone who blogs in a meaningful way. So I should just come out and admit that I am really a 17 year old teenaged boy living in New Hampshire, posing as a feminist law professor at the University of South Carolina.

–Ann Bartow