BUSTED! Plagiarists, Fakers & Literary Hoaxes

[kateln]

The funniest part of that story? Paula Brooks, the deaf blogger who claims that she feels that blogging has given her a voice--and that this may have taken it away?

Real name is Bill Graber, and he's a retired military man from Ohio.

[Auroranorth]

Why are straight guys wanting to pretend they're lesbians? IDGI.

[wilbert]

Straight white guy oppression, it's a terrible thing I tell ya.

[Deleted]

This is CRAZY. WTF? I have to say though, I laughed at the PLURAL in the title to this article:
Outrage in US as 'lesbian" bloggerS revealed to be men.

Once is weird. But twice? It's so... crazy and weird.

[NappingAthena]

Jun 15, 2011 14:40:17 GMT -4 @tversky said:

This is CRAZY. WTF? I have to say though, I laughed at the PLURAL in the title to this article:
Outrage in US as 'lesbian" bloggerS revealed to be men.

Once is weird. But twice? It's so... crazy and weird.

The whole thing is very insane, and I say that as someone who got her first modem 14 years go, and saw her first webscam about a year later. (in the Hanson fandom, of all places)

[Smilla]

Here's one thing I don't understand about liars like this--why (and how) do they think they're going to get away with it? As was sort of mentioned upthread, it's not 1910. Not even 1930. It's the information age, and very few things regarding identity will remain private forever. P.S., dipshits, you're not in the goddamned CIA. No one has any incentive to help you keep up your "cover" and you definitely don't have the skills to do it on your own.

Idiots.

[Mutagen]

Aaaaand the 'Gay Girl in Damascus' hoax doesn't stop here.

Tom MacMaster, the heterosexual white man pretending to be Syrian lesbian Amina, tried to get a BOOK DEAL.

Today the New York Times reported that MacMaster sent a manuscript he wrote as Amina to Minal Hajratwala, winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction for her memoir Leaving India. He asked her to forward the book, titled A Thousand Sighs, and a Sigh: An Arab American Education, to a literary agent. Hajratwala writes on her blog:

I skimmed it, found it rambling and in need of a lot of work, and did not forward it to the agent - probably the best decision I made in this whole process. Instead I offered some editorial feedback via my friend's friend, and did not hear back.

But it gets better. After MacMaster's hoax was revealed, Hajratwala posted the manuscript of the "Amina" book on her blog, and frankly used a lot less profanity in expressing her disgust than I would have.

Amina was an idealized projection, the white man’s fantasy of an oppressed yet courageous Arab women. Bright, reckless, courageous, American, fighting patriarchy and Islamic repression at once: She was the perfect superhero, the perfect wet dream.

It is ironic that the hoaxster, in his mea culpa, says he wanted to contest “the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism.”

For that is the very genre in which he chose to express his literary pretensions. By inventing this persona, creating an elaborate blog, and — apparently — intending to pursue book publication, Tom MacMaster was well on his way to pioneering “new forms of liberal Orientalism.”

Today I have read the autobiography much more carefully than I did the first time. The faked lesbian sex scenes turn my stomach. The narcissistic writing, the sprinkling of quotations from the Qu’ran and tidbits from Syrian history, the stock stories compiled from a thousand news clippings — it all seems painfully obvious.

So I find myself among the countless people — among them journalists for many (though not all) of the world’s most respected news organizations — who today are kicking themselves for believing, and trying to help.

Now MacMaster is butthurt because publishing the manuscript is a copyright violation. Maybe he has a legal case, but you know what? This is a guy who pulled some random woman's picture off the Internet and identified her as "Amina." He stole a REAL woman's identity, and now he's whining that someone isn't making fair use of his FAKE identity? Fuck him.

And, just to cap it all off: when Gawker re-published some of the New York Times' information about MacMaster, he got all whiny and sent the following e-mail to Gawker, which of course they promptly published:

1. Hajarwala wrote first to Amina, not the other way around. She gushed over the quality of Amina's writings when she believed Amina was a lesbian. Now she finds them distasteful.

2. I am not upset about criticism or a bad review. My issue is the piracy and violation of my copyright. Hajarwala has viol;ated fair use policies (as have all those mirroring her piracy). Copyright law doesn't exist simply to protect nice people or only people of certain sexual orientations, skin pigmentation or social class but also to protect straight, white working class jerks like me.

3. Hajarwala's friends have tweeted calls for physical violence against me. The only thing I have done is request that she comply with professional standards.

4. I have sent a personal letter of apology for any hurt feelings to Hajratwala, which she has ignored.

Beyond this, I have no further statements until I have spoken with my legal counsel.

"Bawwwwww, I just wanted to HELP those poor brown lesbians, they're not supposed have big meanyhead OPINIONS about it..."

[thingee]

Ugh, what a self-righteous loser. Barf.

[Smilla]

Awful. Really, really awful.

[Deleted]

Jun 25, 2011 10:53:19 GMT -4 Mutagen said:

2. I am not upset about criticism or a bad review. My issue is the piracy and violation of my copyright. Hajarwala has viol;ated fair use policies (as have all those mirroring her piracy). Copyright law doesn't exist simply to protect nice people or only people of certain sexual orientations, skin pigmentation or social class but also to protect straight, white working class jerks like me.

And there is the real reason he wrote this blog. Poor working class white man gets all the rough breaks in life! He just wants the same awesome perks that a gay minority female gets. Well that and this

And he sketched Amina's first-person account of coming out: "And next thing, I know, I kiss her on the mouth, and she kisses me back and we're kissing, kissing like we've both been hungering for a long time. I feel her hands on my bare back squeezing me closer to her, and then I feel her touching my breasts; my nipples tingle."

Yeah it is all about honing your creative writing skills.

And I wouldn't exactly consider a PhD candidate a working stiff.