Blogging under pen name

The last country I started a blog in was a military dictatorship in the developing world. I blogged using my real name and all was peachy keen for a while. Gradually my posts became more political than social and I knew that I was being monitored by the government - I worked in human rights so we knew we were targets anyway.

I was arguing with a US radical feminist on HIV prevention within the sex worker population and she decided that I was a misogynistic man who was raping kids because I pointed out that her imaginings of the situation was far from the truth. Being a rape survivor myself who worked with vulnerable populations it was not particularly easy to shake off these accusations. She used my real name for her j'accuse and that scared me because there are not any other people in that country with my name. Child abuse by foreigners is taken far more seriously there than in Ireland. I was on the alert for the secret service, after a tip off, but then someone shot a journalist and my accuser withdrew her accusation and apologised, so the matter was dropped after a stern lecture from a security consultant.

Now I blog under a pen name not because I fear the Irish government but I have a residual fear of officialdom and sections within the Irish government who have different agendas.

Now, a year and a half later my heart pounds and I feel the fear I felt then when I saw my statcounter this morning.



It's weird cos I expected to see it. I wrote letters to Batt O Keeffe and Brian Cowen and they were not particularly complimentary. Logic doesn't win against PTSD. I hope that the ministers will t least answer but I'm not overly optimistic.