Amir-Ebrahimi 347When you know that other bloggers are reading your weblog,
that’s fine, but when other people, for instance your colleagues
or even your boss, read your weblog this is different. Because
then the whole company knows everything about you and
they comment on that. That’s an unfair situation and it is really
unfortunate. I have learned also that my aunts are reading my
weblog, just to know more about me and what I am doing.
Then they started to comment to others about my private life.
So after a while I chose to exclude important parts of my per-
sonal life from my weblog and to write mostly about social
and public issues. (Sayeh—http://sayeh.nevesht.org/, Focus
Group 2005)anah Boyd argues that physical reality always affects the digital D
environment, even in democratic countries: “Cyberspace is not our uto-
pian fantasy; many of the social constraints that frame physical reality
are quickly seeping into the digital realm.”^41 In Iran, ultimately, cultural,
conventional and political repression produces almost the same type of
limitations in virtual space. People are forced to respect political and con-
ventional rules in cyberspace, especially when they are writing with their
real names. In fact, there is an important cultural and gender bias in terms
of what individuals can write in their blog that duplicates more or less
the conventional redlines and the political ones. For instance, male blog-
gers tend to practice self-censorship in political matters, while women
apply self-censorship in the areas of sex and sexuality (and even some
social conventions) as well as in political matters. Since women are under
more pressure to fulfill their social roles in physical public spaces, in vir-
tual space they are also more self-conscious about their roles as women
than as citizens. Thus, they tend to remain anonymous in order to freely
express themselves. The ones who use their real names must accept some
risks or contend with almost the same type of limitations and restrictions
that they face in everyday real life. This situation is somewhat different in
the Iranian diaspora, where female bloggers feel more freedom to express
themselves without censorship and conventional limitations.
or many female bloggers, the possibility of free expression is F
invaluable, and they are unwilling to abandon it easily. Honesty with one-
self is an irreversible experience, even if there is a heavy price to pay. For