Me%20with%20glasses.jpgPart 1: Imagine for a moment that you are a student and aspiring writer; and, one day you are sitting in your neighborhood coffee shop enjoying a large coffee and free WiFi. You are diligently working, editing your midterm thesis titled, “The Impact of New Media on Traditional Journalistic Outlets;” or, you are writing a poem about cat poop and beer intended to make your loving, supportive, awesome roommate (who is also an over worked, under paid student) laugh until the latter of those substances comes out her nose. Or, perhaps you are crafting your weekly column for the kick-ass feminist blog you write for. Then all of the sudden an IM window pops open on your screen and online friend sends you the following message:

“I just Googled the pseudonym you use to write geek erotica under and one of your stories came up re-titled as ‘12 year old girls get [expletive deleted]: Geek Girls Need Love, Too.’”

Read about what happened next to DollyMix's Kate Kotler after the jump...

Kill%20Spam.JPGImagine the your disbelief, the deep shock you’d feel to hear that a coy, sexy, funny and primarily fictional story of a geek girl coming of age you wrote a few weeks previous was being associated with child pornography.

Imagine shaking your head back and forth, trying to grasp what you had just been told. How the bitter taste of bile in the back of your throat would slowly rise as you Googled your own pseudonym and saw for yourself the un-contextual, graphic and illegal title that had been
applied to your work by a RSS splogger from India.

Would your hands begin to shake when you realize that the very friend who informed you of this was one who found you by tracing that very pseudonym back to the blog that you write daily under your own name?

Would you audibly gasp, causing the barista at the counter to ask you if you are okay, when you realized that if your online friend could trace the pseudonym backwards that your employers, your professors and your family could potentially stumble across your work, too?

And, now that work – of which you are proud – was unwillingly being associated with something abhorrent, offensive and illegal.

Think of the fear and dread you would feel thinking about the impact that such an association could have upon your professional and private life… what would you do?

I can tell you what I did: I cried.

I cried big, sobbing, disbelieving gasps of tears. For at least five minutes I was in shock that my attempt at “geek erotica,” which I’d published on the pay-per-post blog Thisisby.us a mere two weeks prior, had been stolen, aggregated onto a splog (spam blog) and categorized as something containing child pornography.

While I am in no way, shape of form ashamed of any of my writing – erotic or any other – I had chosen to publish my story “Geek Girls Need Love, Too” under a pseudonym because, I felt that perhaps there were those in my immediate life who might not be quite so quick to embrace the healthy expression of sexuality and fantasy that this story represented for me.

The story, while sexually explicit, could in no way have been legitimately misconstrued as “child pornography.” And, given that even the appearance of impropriety is enough to damn a person in some circles: my initial disgust and shock that my story had been purposefully misconstrued turned quickly to fear of what the impact of such an association would have upon my personal and private life.

I felt as if I’d been raped in cyberspace. The most horrifying part was that with the theft of one URL I had been made not only a victim; but, unwillingly complicit in the victimization of countless children by proxy that a site which carried such content existed.

After the shock wore off and I was able to open my mouth without feeling that vomit would spew forth I set about mobilizing myself to unravel how and what had just happened to me; and how I was going to fix it. Being the geek girl that I am, of course, I had heard of RSS feed ganks, sploggers and the like… I just had never had it happen to me and I didn’t really have the first clue how to get the situation sorted.

Instinct directed me to click through the links to find out where my story had been republished, once I discovered this information I looked up their information using WhoIs. After finding the name and email of the offending site owner, I shot off the most juvenile, emotional cease and desist letter ever. Full of “how could you do this to me,” and “I’m a struggling, starving student who works with kids while putting herself through school to be a journalist, this is going to [expletive deleted] up my life, do you even care?”

Once I clicked the send key I felt the dreadful realization in my heart and gut that if this splogger site was unscrupulous enough to aggregate my content and bastardize it for their own purposes that perhaps they wouldn’t respond to one email.

I knew then I had to call in bigger guns for advice.

I immediately reached into the stunned recesses of my brain and started sending up the blogger distress signal to everyone and anyone I thought could help me. Among which were: Violet Blue, Amber Rhea, my attorney friends Brittany Novotny and Tyler Hollingsworth.

Within an hour I had received responses with concrete steps to how to begin rectifying my predicament. Tyler (my ex-boyfriend who I'd not spoken to in six months) and Brittany began firing out emails on my behalf. Violet and Amber responded with advice on how to handle myself and get the offensive linkbait removed. I posted an open blog post about what happened and support started pouring in from all directions.

I had been reassured that the blogger community which I have come to feel as close to in some respects as I do my own “meatspace” friends had my back.

Said Violet Blue via an email, “…don't worry. We will send out the ninjas as a last resort.”

At this time, I was growing increasingly angry about what had happened to me: one of the things which I love the most about the Internet is that it is an open, ongoing conversation which people add to every minute of every day. To me these here innerwebs are like being at a big party with all your friends and bopping from conversational group to conversational group while enjoying a nice glass of wine. I had realized prior to now – of course – just as one should be careful what topics they discuss loudly in a crowded room, that the individual should be cautious about what they post on the Internet. Especially considering the ease with which people can find information online these days.

2007 is not like 1997 when having a pseudonym or ‘Net handle was a fairly secure way to protect your actual identity; these days people can steal that very thing from you with one swipe of a credit card or one carelessly disposed piece of a bank statement in your trash.

Though, I never thought that the Internet had turned into the kind of party where I could – or, would – get shoved into a closet by a drunk asshole and have my story forcibly taken from me. And then to make it really painful, I would have to watch the offender trumpet that violation out in the living room to all it's buddies, while I cried silently in a corner and tried to re-button my blouse so no one else could see my “content.”

For the first time since a computer came into my life at age fifteen, I thought very seriously about deleting every trace of my online self and stepping back into the world un-connected. I felt violated, ashamed that my work could be construed with something so wrong; and, my first instinct was to draw in and protect myself at whatever cost… because, as an artist I am (though I protest to the contrary) vulnerable, delicate and easily hurt.

Then I realized: I had done nothing wrong and should not be feeling this way.

There is nothing wrong with anything that I did in this situation which justified what had been done to me in return. The fact that I had the desire to write an erotic story was not wrong; it was a healthy expression of my own sexuality. I have been reading Anais Nin, Diane diPrima and countless other sassy-ass feminist erotica writers since I was a teenager. I believe – as do many other people – that erotica is artful. There was nothing contained within my story which – given an impartial, non-judgmental eye such as that possessed by the intended audience of adults – could be construed any more negatively than a steamy love scene in a movie or TV show would be.

My own mother, who is classically “Midwest reserved,” had read one of my similar erotic stories recently. After that, concerned that she would disapprove of me publishing it, I asked her what she thought about me expressing my sexuality in such a way. I asked her if she thought it was “gross;” and, she replied, “Oh, I was young once, too. It’s a good, funny story Katie.”

The fact that I decided – as an impoverished student – to attempt to make a little bit of cash by publishing the story on a pay-per-post website was not wrong, either… I’m poor and I write and I want to be paid for what I write either in the present or the future. Why shouldn’t see if I could get paid for my story?

True, I had not chosen well in the venue (given that the story was so easily ganked by someone with nefarious purposes and I only made $2.00 in entirety from the post to begin with;) but, one could hardly fault me for that. As I’ve learned since, this could have easily happened if I’d published openly on my own blog or or Flickr or MySpace or any other social Internet platform.

The fact that I wrote under a pseudonym so that my employers and family would have a hard time finding it wasn’t wrong, either. I was merely trying to take protective steps to bar those I felt wouldn’t contextually appreciate or understand my writing from seeing it. I actually view that as an act of responsibility.

Nothing I had done was wrong. I did not deserve to be in a place where I felt ashamed and dirty. Further, I knew I did not deserve to suffer one moment of a punitive response – such as losing my scholarship or job(s) – due to my choice to write or publish my erotic story.

I did not deserve what happened to me.

It was at that point that I decided that I needed to talk – publicly, in any forum where someone would listen – about what had happened to me. I needed to talk about the issues surrounding the theft of my story. To add to the already ongoing discussion my perspective about what I wrote, why I’d initially hidden my identity in association with what I wrote; and, how I feel about the types of people behind the companies that have exploited my and other’s content in such a manner.

I realized that I have a responsibility to the greater online community of which I am a part to talk about these many subjects: to share what happened to me so that others know they are not alone when it happens to them. To talk about the difference between healthy, consensual sexual expression; such as that found in most modern pornography/erotica; and, that which is damaging, exploitive and clearly illegal… both to produce and partake in it. To help others protect themselves against those who would take their work from them; and, to help those who have the need to reclaim their good names via the processes which were shared with me.

As Amber Rhea said to me via email the evening this happened, “Put it out there, make it known that someone is using your work without permission. This is a much more proactive route than trying to scour the internet for all traces of it... which honestly, is probably impossible. But people have much more of a reason to believe you than to believe some weirdo who's trying to turn your erotic story into child porn."

This is true: people do know me by my words. And, if they don’t, the very first lesson they should learn right now – in this moment – about me is that I am angry about happened to me. Just as bloggers such as Violet Blue, Audacia Ray and Amber Rhea have empowered me to feel comfortable in expressing my own sexuality in the written form: My anger over what happened when I took my first baby steps in doing this has empowered me to become one of the advocates, activists and NINJAS (such Violet, Audacia and Amber are) which will be unleashed on those who choose to victimize people in this manner.

Sploggers and exploiters of honest, artistic, open people: You have been warned.

Part 2, 19 October: the difference between sexual expression as art and sexual exploitation

Part 3, 26 October: what to do if your creative content is stolen online

Author's Note: Without the assistance/support of Violet Blue, Amber Rhea and my attorney friends in getting the situation resolved; and, without all the kind comments/support I received from various people via IM, email, PM and blog comments I doubt I could have survived the last week without having a nervous breakdown. Thank you to all; and, know that it is because of you that I am here.

Violet Blue has documented my situation and the advice she gave me in her weekly Open Source Sex column for the San Francisco Chronicle. Please check it out: My erotica is not your child porn

[Image via Google Images]