What? pt4 contd..

The "Manufacturing Online Identity" is going the way we want it to go. I confess, I have been obsessed with the particular structure I had in mind for the project and I might have been a lil pain for the rest of the group but I admire our handiwork and everyone is doing a great job. So many miles, so many detours, so many choices, so many aspects.. As we walk along the road of "working in a team", I learned that we sometimes have to stop running and take a minute at the crossroads of "where to go next?" So yes, the project needs one more fix or two and its good to go.

I simultaneously was influenced by the story in my previous post again. And I went digging around the net a bit more to get more perspective on the subject. Turns out that Insp Dreyfus has been given a written warning about his online identity during his career at The BTP. The question to be raised is whether one has the freedom to publish personal information if he chooses to or not? The story around Dreyfus appears to touch on discrimination, only in this paradigm, it is discrimination in the online dimension. What a lot of people fail to realise is, that an online identity is part of someone´s real identity, regardless if it is a true one or not. The opportunity to look into Dreyfus´ identity is the very key issue in this debate. People easily can go scooping online, as much as they wish to get behind the closed doors of others in real life. Dreyfus´ example is a rather interesting one in portraying what kind of a trouble an "online identity" can be when it makes private matters visible.

Be that as it may, I do not believe Insp Dreyfus acted rational, given the content of this Daily Mail article. His refusal to alter his online identity might have been his very own gay revolution, especially after being issued with a warning. He should have kept what is private, private. That can be illuminated if we take a look at the parallel of real life; it is almost as if the BTP would tell someone not to be gay in order to proceed with their career, which is and should be in fact not acceptable nowadays. And Dreyfus establishes that by saying, "As long as I do not do anything to disgrace the force then what I do privately is acceptable." Only he does not realise that his sexual identity was arbitrary accessible at the same time. His judgment was blurred when coincidentally, a spokesman for BTP confirmed that they had issued Mr Dreyfus with a warning and explained that staff must not post anything on websites that may bring the force into disrepute.

What does this event indicate at the end? Could there be sexual discrimination within the British Transport Police? Regardless of Dreyfus´ online or real identity, his sexual preferences truly seemed to be the issue there. And his online identity, which he might have thought is as private to him as his real one, made his sexuality visible.

Surely Mr Dreyfus made a mistake, I would not say that the BTP would ever deny him his promotion, if they accidentally found out he was gay, because he might have been spotted with his boyfriend in a bar or else. But him being gay online was the deal breaker for the BTP, and Insp Dreyfus failed to handle the obvious hypocrisy to his benefit, because apparently the balance between online and real identity is still commuting and judgment (or discrimination) can be applied onto them to rather variable extends.