Quebec blogger surprises by revealing he's a she

Interesting:

A well-known Quebec blogger has revealed she's actually a woman who took a male name because she suspected it would be better for her web-development and copywriting business.

Her decision proved correct.

James Chartrand, who operates the website Men with Pens, said that when she wrote as a woman, she struggled to get freelance jobs and found herself making less than minimum wage.

In 2006, the single-mother of two decided she needed a new start, and that included a new name — a male name. She chose the nom de plume James Chartrand, because it had a nice corporate ring to it, she said. The result was surprising, even for her.

From the CBC. Suggests that our culture hasn't advanced as much as we might like to think...

A cautionary tale for bloggers (and politicians!)

Nathalie Lubbe Bakker probably regrets posting under her own name; hopefully Mr. De Crem is feeling a bit chastened as well:

Current Belgian Minister of Defense Pieter De Crem apparently stumbled into a Belgian bar in New York City on Monday evening with his entourage. Following his visit, bartender Nathalie Lubbe Bakker blogged about their visit (in Dutch), talking about how disgusted she was of how drunk De Crem was and how embarrassed she was about his behavior. Worst part, she wrote, was the fact that one of the politician’s advisors admitted to her that the meetings they were there for on taxpayer’s money were in fact canceled because the UN was meeting in Geneva (which is about 330 miles from Brussels). He reportedly told her they had decided to come to NY anyway despite being aware of the cancellation because the policital situation here was ‘calm’ and that he’d ‘never visited the city anyway’.

A couple of days later, someone from De Crem’s office had a telephone call with Nathalie’s boss, after which she was promptly fired. This was initially denied by the politician, and it remains unclear if her termination was a direct result of the call or the blog post in question.

From TechCrunch. I've been a bit nervous of this myself; I started to get paranoid about employers finding this blog at some point, which is why I've been periodically going through bursts of moving posts about my own life to my LJ.