In the old days (let's say, ooh, five years ago), one's private life was, well, private. If you were gay, and worked in a conservative environment, you might keep the fact to yourself. And if you liked your wife to attach electrodes to your nipples during sex, you'd keep it under wraps. Whatever your particular kink, you kept it locked up and usually didn't chat about it.
But suppose one day you thought, sod this for a game of soldiers, why should I be ashamed of who I am? and then you decided to start a blog. I'll use an anonymous name, you tell yourself, and I'll be totally free to talk about how I hate my mother in law and how I like to wear my wife's stockings, how I hate my boss's guts and how I shagged his wife at the office party. And soon you're on a roll, so liberated, so free.
When I started blogging, my friend Daisy said, "Oh no, soon you'll be posting nude photos of yourself on the Internet." Well, I laughed, of course I did, I had not so much as used a digital camera in those days. And actually I have not posted any nude pictures on the Internet, as yet, but it is certainly a slippery slope, because as soon as you start blogging you start letting down your guard. And it really is liberating. And here's the thing, blogging is sad, of course it is. Here I am trying to make my fuck boring life look interesting. Here I am pretending I have something to say. But on the flip side it is the ultimate form of self-expression, because it is totally free of censorship and you can express yourself in a way that no job will let you do.
And therein lies the rub. There you are, all free, and maybe now there are some dodgy photos of you up on some site in your birthday suit, or you're wrapped in cling film or wearing a harness or whatever the hell your kink is. But suppose your boss is checking up on you. Googling your name and not liking what they find?
Because there have been quite a few incidents where people have been fired for doing such things outside of work, such as an Ohio teacher who was fired last month after his private nude photos were posted online without his knowledge and then discovered by administrators. Not to mention Michelle Manhart, who was demoted from Air Force staff sergeant to senior airman and then reassigned to the Iowa National Guard, for posing in Playboy without first obtaining the Air Force's permission.
One's initial reaction to these sort of incidents is outrage! Invasion of privacy! More than anything else, the Internet has made the private public. But I would say, and maybe this is harsh, if you are going to make your private life public on the net, there will be consequences.
To what extent do you think employers have the right to police their employees? If they read on someone's blog that Employee X is taking coke or indulging in kinky sex, at what point does it become the company's business? Catawumpus, who started this discussion on her blog, believes that if these activities do not affect the employee's ability to do their job, then the employer should back off. But I would say it is a bit of a gray area. What if clients see unsavory images of the employee or kids see their teachers in unsuitable poses on the net? How much say should an employer have in telling you how to conduct your private life?
And I suppose that is the irony of it all. The Internet has made it so much easier for employers to police employees. I do say that when you work for a corporation, often you do sell your soul to the company, and yes, they own you and tell you how to behave until such time as you are no longer useful to the company and they hit the eject button. In Japan, in exchange for being a corporate slave and emotional robot, they do keep you on at the company your whole life (or they did until recently), so that is a fair exchange. But in Western society, I have always seen working for a corporation as being a bit of a contract with the devil. But it is not just in large corporations, most jobs require you to act in some way that is contrary to one's nature. It just seems sad that now bosses are trying to blot out the one part of our individuality we have left: our right to express ourselves when we are off the clock. What do you think?
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16 comments:
Great topic, Emma.
It would be great to think that what we do with our private lives is our business, not our employer's, even if we choose to talk about it in a public forum like the Internet. However, reality is that we live in this world, and if we want to fly beneath the radar, then we have to take whatever precautions we deem appropriate to do that. Those precautions need to vary depending on individual cirumstances.
Hmmm. All I know is that my husband's boss reads my blog so I have to remember not to mention anything unsavoury that he might have done in case it comes back and bites him in the bum.
As for photos, if someone were to type my real name into Google images, the only shot of me that comes up is of me posing with our Prime Minister. That can't be bad now, can it?
Bosses can eat monkey shit. When are you going to post those nude photos of yourself?
It's a topic we all face up to, and C. and I have discussed on many occasions the simultaneously liberating and constraining atmosphere of living our lives "naked" in public (and she has posted semi-nude photos on our site, so we're one better than you right now, though hopefully you'll catch up).
you are so right, it is a slippery slope. The first time I started sex blogging I was so careful to not include identifying details, I would even change things, like say I had a dog instead of two cats or lie about my age. Now I'm more and more free with the details of my private life, though I would not like to be "outed".
As for employers, I have heard of people being fired for what they say/do on their blogs. It is something to be concerned about. I guess I think it depends on the circumstances, for instance, perhaps a teacher SHOULD be held to a higher standard (tho that case seems so unfair, he didn't even know they were posted) and an employee blogging about snorting coke, well, that could effect job performance. Still, I would hope against hope I couldn't/wouldn't be fired for enjoying my husband's cock or another blogger for liking to be tied up.
It's a relatively new thing, this blogging, so I guess we have to figure the rules out as we go along.
Something else I've been thinking a lot about lately. I've never trusted the line "If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear", as we all have something to hide. If you don't believe this, just ask someone to put on a t-shirt saying "My Salary is ...". We especially have much to fear from those in authority over us - governments, employers, whoever. It's naive to pretend otherwise.
Some of us, of course, have even more to hide. I'm certain that someone could find out who I am from my blog and the various electronic footprints it's left over the months. The only thing that protects me is that doing so is currently more trouble than it's worth. However, if we allow the building of large databases, and give people the ability to mine them, then that protection goes. The damage from that could be immense.
BTW Emma - I never thanked you for your kind comments on my blog recently, when I was having difficulties. They were appreciated at the time. I hope you find the time to drop by again sometime - I'm back up and running again!
If we had someone working for us who was fit enough to get into Playboy, I can assure you she wouldn't have got demoted. She'd be the boss.
We all sign on the dotted line and know what the small print requires. It's then a straight choice between compliance or breaking the rules.
If you are in a position which requires that you are squeaky clean and you blog about things that would jeopardise your position then you should accept the consequences?
When you sign up to work for a corporation you are by definition working for an organization that will wring as much work out of you for as little money as possible. There is no reason to reward them further by letting them own your private life. However,since they control politics, I'm sure they'll manage to encroach on our lives more and more.
I've been looking all over for your nude shots and cling film shots! Where are they?
I don't agree with employers monitoring their employee's private usage of email, however I do agree with the maintenance of a productive environment. If I owned a business, I'd expect my employees to use their Internet (to blog, post nude pictures, etc) in their time away from work, but it appears that many employees or people have the right to effectively defraud their employer in this way, at the same time aggravating their fellow workers, which decreases worker output and motivation. There have been many times I've felt like throwing stapelers and monitors at people who sit there, not working, and perusing the Internet, while expecting others to do the work. So in that context, I don't agree with Internet usage (non work related) in the workplace and unfortunately, an employer has to maintain a certain productivity output, and to do that they monitor net usage (pages visited, and work email content is the property of an employer, not the individual, as they pay for this right).
The idea of privacy in the workplace amuses me, because there is none. The 'individual' ceases to exist in the workplace, because that individual has to work for a common cause or objective/collective, and that's determined by an employer, who pays that individual a salary based on their productivity. The employer has a right -now, with employees taking outright advantage - to police an employee's Internet usage. I'm not into corporations, even though I work for one, but I've noted that the few 'priviledged' senior line managers have Internet access, and they abuse it, and I don't think they have that right, and I don't think I have that right either (if I had access). I wouldn't want to be a small business owner and have to tolerate usage. If an employee of mine thought it more important to publish nude pictures, or anything, during their work time,then they don't belong in the workplace (because they're disrespecting the opportunity given to them, to work).
An employer ultimately pays for Internet usage, and that employer has the right to dictate the terms of that usage (in relation to the job or task at hand), and anything deviating from that is unfair. I don't think people or bloggers in general realize the shit that employers have to deal with, everything from ISP's receiving complaints for copyright abuse on a daily basis, to usage disputes, and the only reason I know that is because I work in telecommunications. The cost of corporate internet usage, for an employer, plus all the licenses they have to pay: a corporation sometimes has to pay a radio license to enable workers to listen to radio stations at work due to things like copyright (many people are unaware of this), add to that, internet usage (in the millions), and then to find that a percentage of employees use it leisurely activities is a joke if a company is paying millions: those millions of dollars don't come from thin air, and then people wonder why some corporations or companies downsize or have employement freezes.
When I started on the internet in 1999 I was very dismissive of others' concerns about privacy: it seemed a form of preening self-importance. Now, I wish I'd taken more care.
The trouble is that everything is so final: that one embarrassing picture is there for ever.
I feel quite worried about how much of me there is on the internet. Anyone with a bit of nous can find out all about my drug usage, excessive drinking and a few slightly odd photos; I just keep my fingers crossed that no-one's interested enough.
But people do Google you: I started doing some language lessons with a private teacher and she Googled me first!
My blog is common knowlege both in my village and at work. I make a point of not saying anything controversial.
I think it should matter poo what I do to my boss or my company as long as I'm doing the kick ass job that I tend to do.
Actually quiet salient post considering I used to have another blog that I believed to be entirely anonymous, but a coworker (stalker) 'chanced upon' (sleuthed). No real consequences to me, but shaked the fuck out of me.
Yes, it is important to avoid any controversy.
A private life is just that. Private.
I really don't think that any employer (not even a church) should dictate what a private individual does behind closed doors. If a job performance is affected, then let the job performance be the critical point, not whether it was caused by an all-night orgy, or alcoholism, or drug addiction or staying up all night with a sick baby. It's the performance at work that affects the employer, not the lifestyle.
And if one feels the need to blog about peccadilloes (or major indulgences) then do it either anonymously or publicly. It's your life, not your work. An employer has NO right to interfere in what is your own private life, no matter how publicly you may wish to live it.
The internet is public, I think, and anything we put out there is no longer 'private'.
Here, it's not an issue, with employers checking up on employees on the net...I don't even know if it would matter...unless the employee is bad-mouthing his/her boss.
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