I Shared My Sex Life with the Entire Internet
Living with my online ghosts, archived and searchable
You may look at my byline and know me as the Jessica Wakeman who wrote all over the internet about how much she loves being spanked. Or about my challenges as a twentysomething feminist trying to find a noncreepy dude who shared my fetishes.
That’s because for nearly six years, I wrote online in extreme detail about the most intimate aspects of my life. And now I’m trying to figure out how to be a journalist who explores topics on sex and feminism, but who also wants to maintain some semblance of privacy — when so much information about my sexual experiences is already out there.
Writing for The Frisky, one of the earliest female-focused blogs, was a dream job. At that time, feminist blogs — of which The Frisky was one, albeit on the fluffier side — talked back to print magazines geared toward women, which were slower to embrace change. I could write about anything that interested me, whether it was about books, reproductive rights, or the best mascara. And although this wasn’t what I had intended to do with my journalism degree from NYU, I frequently wrote personal essays.
Many of the essays explored the usual topics about dating you might find in media geared toward twentysomething women. But I did…
