346 Mediated Publics
desires, their body and their femininity. However, even if this position is
accepted as a new social trend in cyberspace, it can become very disturb-
ing on a personal level:
For me the weblog was a place to search for my “inner
woman.” In Iran you should have many layers, just like an
onion. I needed to rediscover what is inside me. I began my
blog under my real name. At that time I had few readers
and I could say what I wanted to say. Then when my read-
ers increased and my blog became famous, it became difficult
to talk about everything, especially because everybody at the
office and in my family knew my weblog and read it regu-
larly. Thus I had to stop talking about my personal life, and to
eliminate an important part of “me” from my weblog. Since
then my weblog has become more social and less personal.
My “inner woman” became silenced again, a little bit like my
“outer woman,” prisoner of rules and gossip in society. Now
I have to choose between a pseudonym and rebellion. My
choice would be the second one. I don’t want to censor myself
anymore. (http://farnaaz.org/, Focus Group 2005)or Farnaz, her family and colleagues represent an intrusion into F
her virtual life, because she considers this a unilateral relationship: they
learn information about her and use it in their relationships with her.
She does not harbor these feelings toward other bloggers with whom
she shares her secrets or toward other online readers who she does not
know or see in everyday life. In Iran, the absence of body and identity
are not sufficient to completely avoid self-censorship. In fact, the spirit
of gossip (what “others” can say) has a very powerful impact on the lives
of Iranians. Many bloggers (male and female) who participated in this
study recognized this as one of the most disturbing issues in cyberspace.
For women, the permanent worry about what others can think or say, of
how their public image as decent women could be destroyed in physi-
cal space because of their writing, appearances or behaviors online, keep
women from freely expressing themselves. For Sayeh, this was a cause of
self-censorship in her blog: