Calling "Fraud"

OK.

I have a history for this particular move.


Once, a very long time ago, when I was still a very new blogger, I called out the "queen bee" of the blogging universe because there was simply no earthly way that my rational mind could accept that what she wrote on her blog day after day, and presented as reality, could be possibly happening in any kind of real world relationship. It was a ball-sy sort of stand for someone who had barely dipped toes into the universe of writing in this forum, but it was what I believed at the time, and I was driven to say what seemed true.

It didn't earn me any points, and she came after me with a vengeance, but my call turned out to be accurate in the end. For me it was an important lesson. It was critical for me, as I began to reach out into this cyber community, to understand that not everyone tells the whole truth all the time, and not everyone is what they claim to be. If a blogger develops a devoted following, it is pretty easy for the ego to expand beyond what is actually reasonable. The distance and relative anonymity that gives many of us license to write here can encourage some to fabricate and exaggerate. Arrogance can masquerade as expertise and there is not a darn thing we can do about it. I've seen it happen and written about it on other occasions, too: here and here. But we do not have to endorse it when people mislead others by intention or otherwise, and we do not have to stand silent while it happens.

Fraud. That is (in my view) what is being perpetrated by a writer in our circle. Because, in the last couple of weeks, Vivian, who writes at The Disciplined Feminist has published an e-book entitled "How to Get the Spanking You Want." She has been touting this new endeavor, of course, as have some others around the circle, and that is fine. People can surely support her in this effort as seems appropriate to them.

However, I've been following Vivian since she first appeared on the scene (brand new to the very limited practice of Domestic Discipline) in December of 2006. She is, undoubtedly, a bright and talented writer. The pieces that she puts up every so often are well written and thought provoking, but they have been few and far between. In fact, in the just about 30 months that Vivian has been sharing her thoughts on her blog, she's written 37 posts. Much of what she writes concerns the paradox that she perceives between her feminist philosophies and her orientation to spanking. Woven in between is the painful accounting of the largely unsuccessful attempts of she and her partner to establish what she calls a "traditional DD relationship." Comments to "The Disciplined Feminist" are strictly moderated, so Vivian has little need to engage in dialog with most of the rest of our community.

Now, she is pushing a book which is almost certainly based solely on her imaginings of how things must be. There is, if one can believe what she's written on her blog, little or no solid experience to back the words. Master attempted to engage her in discussion of this through her comments, but there is that matter of "comment moderation..."

I imagine she'll draw from a certain following, and some without much knowledge will be taken in by the sham of this new publication. There is a real hunger for information about our lifestyle and orientation from those who are new and seeking, and that is an easy market for a book titled as hers is. How is someone newly exploring their own spanking orientation supposed to know who can be trusted to provide credible information and guidance? Vivian is not the first, and she surely won't be the last to seek to cash in on those who are desperate for guidance and information about our kind of erotic orientation. It still isn't right. If you don't know beyond a few fancy sounding theories: if you don't have the expertise and actual experience; then playing yourself off as some sort of guru is a cheat and a fraud.

I doubt that my opinion will make any difference at all to Vivian or to those who are backing her book venture, but I won't endorse this endeavor by my silence.

swan