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Anonymous sex blogger discovered by boss, then fired

The internet: the solution, and cause, of all of life's problems! Recently, an American sex blogger - of the anonymous, but personally explicit variety - who had managed to keep her blog anonymous and secret to her employer, was fired when her employer discovered the blog. Apparently concerned about 'bad press', the non-profit fired the blogger and let her know that the blog was the reason. The firing isn't unusual in the world - people have been fired or denied employment for actions in their personal lives since employment was invented - but it is particularly interesting that the blogger was explicitly fired for keeping an anonymous sex blog.

The folks at Jezebel have covered this nicely, mostly focusing on whether the firing was actually a judgment of the worker's lifestyle. I'm not sure if the employer was actually concerned with PR or was just freaked out by the worker's sex life, and I'm not sure it matters that much.

I don't want to freak folks out, but it almost goes without saying that anything posted online or sent in an email has the potential to be made public. Between Facebook's ever changing privacy policies, occasional accidental public revelations of users' private data, the proliferation of hackers, and people's terrible password choices, it doesn't seem that anything online can ever been absolutely secure or private.

Our current moment in time may one day be recalled by history ebooks (or even nano-mind-books) as 'the age of the internet' but perhaps it will be recalled as 'the great coming out'. Queer folks are coming out voluntarily more than ever, and the sex secrets of mostly straight politician are also been pulled (less voluntarily) into the open, and if the secrets of everyday folks are at risk of exposure too, well, they can't fire all of us for having a sex life, can they?

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