Privacy and visibility: a LGBTQIA+ zine
The idea of making a zine about privacy for LGBTQIA+ people came from conversations that repeated the same story of violence and scrutiny: after being pulled out of the closet, people have their social lives controlled by their families, their online or phone communications monitored or restricted, and their friendships and love relationships closely watched or completely forbidden.
We began to write this zine based on the belief that basic notions of digital security can help us move more freely in our digital environments and avoid exposure and repression in our households, workplaces, schools, and social environments. If, for many people, coming out is a political gesture, being able to pick when and how we share our sexual identities is certainly our right.
Another factor that motivated this zine was the intensification of the online activity by conservative groups and hate speakers. Online threats, attacks and the disabling of pages and profiles are a part of many activists’ daily routine, in a strategy that silences voices, violates freedom of expression and impacts real lives and political struggles.
The process of making this zine comprised a series of interviews that helped us reflect on the complexity of privacy for LGBTQIA+ lives. For many people, the Internet is a platform for learning, dialogue, conviviality, and content. It is a powerful space to imagine possible futures, build bridges, admire all colors of the LGBTQIA+ community, and envision new perspectives for life. For those engaging in activist political practices, it is even more: an essential platform for visibility, a political strategy that is widely adopted and legitimized as a form of resistance and a pathway for accomplishments.
The relationship between privacy and visibility is a complex aspect of the LGBTQIA+ experience: visibility as a political strategy, which happens through exposure of one’s own life, is collectively adopted as a form of resistance but at the same time can make people vulnerable to attacks from conservative groups, family, church, neighbors, school peers and work colleagues. In addition, social networks such as Facebook, Snapchat and Youtube — frequently used by LGBTQIA+ folks for the expression of their sexuality, gender identity and personal aesthetic — are also networks that reinforce a centralizing logic: many of them enforce a single online identity with real name verification policies and other measures that largely impact trans identities.
The choice between public or private profiles in social media is also filled with contradictions. On one hand, having a private profile is perceived by several activists as an obstacle to reaching wider audiences. “If it’s hard enough to reach people with a public profile because of Facebook’s algorithms, imagine with a private one!” says one of the interviewees. Another one says that “[my] decision to keep a public profile is because my posts is made available even for those who are not on Facebook”. On the other hand, the awareness of being observed and even threatened on social media hinders the possibilities of what can be posted for every person we interviewed: “I think a lot before posting and try to be very careful”. In a contradictory outcome, the widening of the repertoire of legitimate narratives and aesthetics — one of the major achievements of the visibility strategy — ends up compromised by the possibility of censorship or retaliation.
In this scenario, the central question is how can we potentialize the use of the Internet and the visibility tactics that LGBTQIA+ activists often employ while also reducing the risks of privacy violations and online harassment? The tools and practices of information security can be useful. But more than prescribing tools, what we propose here is to borrow from information security the idea of identity management and imagine it to be more broad, powerful and close to LGBTQIA+ lives and experiences. We propose therefore that using and experimenting with multiple identities can be not only a form of self defense, but also of creating other forms of existence.
