gayspeak.com is a small corner of the world. Who would come here unless they are gay and search through the profiles. Yes a little security goes a long ways; unique user id and email but really most of us are dont care in most eyes. If someone wants to know everything they will get a court order from your internet provider.
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still a primarily gay issues site, not dating, in the UK is a distant target for most when compared to fb.
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Facebook is open to the public, your Avatar and name and a limited amount of details is open to the public in order for your so called friends to find you (or stalk you, or hunt you down - whatever, you gotta like it - can't hate it, can't dislike it - but you can, once you like it, unlike it.... but you got to like it first).
These social programing sites have done a great deal to break down the barriers between our social circles. Before the internet and the freeflow of personal data, we humans wore our masks depending on which circle of people we were dealing with. We were able to keep family and work pretty much separate.
Today, with the advent of social programing, were we are being conditioned to share our personal details openly with everyone, and where we are being programed to either like or not like (can't hate it, can't dislike it - you can only like or not like) and various other things (such as being programed to allow our personal data to be used by anyone - privacy being stripped away one layer at a time). Its no longer easy to keep our circles of social groups separate, to wear specifically one mask for one group and a different mask for another group.
Friends. Everyone is your friend. the world Friend is so over used today people have no idea what a real friend is. Used to be we all understood that we had a few real friends and everyone else in the world was an acquaintance. Today no one utters or uses the world 'acquaintance' and take it personally when their so called friends act and behave like acquaintances. It is all part of the social reprogramming.
I think you are discovering the hard way just how bad Facebook is when it comes to keeping your separate lives separate. Mind its not your fault for publishing that funny avatar, after all the social reprogramming websites are working real hard to make you feel comfortable with giving away all your secrets and to open yourself up as much as possible. The only way you can opt out is not to play their game.
As for those nondiscrimination and anti-harassment laws. They don't do anything but push the harassment and discrimination into the closet. Sure your boss won't fire you for being a 'sicko-perv-homo' s/he will come up with other reasons to fire you - your still fired. And you are fired because you are gay. Your pink slip won't say that, they won't admit to it because they get into legal trouble. But it is their homophobia that fired you.
But you know this. Sure you didn't read the hundred or so papers done by researches who dressed and handed out the exact resume to dozens of different people who's only difference was gender/race/sexual orientation but still kept tabs on which company hired who (White, straight males gets hired more often than blacks, women, gays, Jews, Latinos, the list is long on minorities). when confronted its amazing how creative the mind of the bigot can be, they can look at the same resume and see differences after they see skin color (or gender, or religion or whatever) and find faults where they didn't see faults with the person that meets their personal standards (white, male, straight, christian, whatever).
No you most likely never read one of these, but you know it happens. You know on a gut instinct level and that block of ice that slid down into your belly was your gut screaming at you that you were coming face to face with that reality.
So what can you do? Well for one reexamine how you use those social reprogramming sites. I for one never post anything personal, not even my own photograph. Two, look at the public stuff - I mean really look at it, and evaluate how open and telling that stuff is. Yes, some of the data you can hide - today, but will Facebook allow you to hide that tomorrow? Privacy policies change all the time. Ask Google.
Another thing you can do is reexamine how open you really want to be. If you want to keep it a secret, then you need to pull back. After all word of mouth still spreads news faster and more efficiently than any other media out there.
Let us hope you don't have a so called friend who gets bent out of shape easily with a huge need for revenge when they are slighted. After all I bet they are collecting data, saving images and screen shots of your posts in their little file on you preparing for the day when they can use it to 'pay you back' for whatever. They are armed and dangerous, unfortunately by the time you figure out that they have been keeping data on you its the time that they are sending that data to your email list, employers, spouse, whatever.
You want a secret - really want to keep something secret? Then tell no one. Once you tell just one person its not longer a secret.
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I'll go another detail into this, to provide some scope. I'm aware that there are companies that exist that would immediately look for any reason to get rid of their gay employees. This company is not one of them. They are too proud of their reputation and product to try and generate such a negative image. The concern for me is how my coworkers, many of whom could care less where I get my jollies from, and have become friends, will respond to me afterwards. I want these people to see that I'm still an able and willing worker, and that I'm not a creep. I've done my best to present that to them. I'm not reckless, but I'm not paranoid and inaccessible, either, but the abruptness of having someone seeing a part of me previously not on display was a bit shocking. I'm not positive, but the way conversations with my Team Leader have been getting oddly derailed makes me think he may have looked at the rest of my profile. I'm over the shock now, but I really was taken by surprise.
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Ambivalence
