Claiming My Name
Claiming My Name
December 21, 2018, 12:59 am
Filed under: art, feminism, music, writing | Tags: anonymity, Emily Davis, Emily Rainbow Davis, middle name, misogyny, name, Target
Do you know my name? It doesn’t appear on the blog in a lot of places so maybe you don’t. My name is Emily Rainbow Davis. It’s time to claim my name.
When I started the blog, I needed to be anonymous. I wrote a lot about arts organizations and institutions — some of which I worked for and some of which I wanted to work for. Despite a lot of lip service about being receptive to feedback, arts organizations are notoriously prickly about criticism and hard truths. I needed to tell those hard truths but I did not want to jeopardize my meager wages by linking them to my name. As a freelancer, I couldn’t even risk telling the truth on end-of-the-year surveys if my name or any identifying info was on them. By the time I had a lot of experience, I was already seen as difficult by some of the people in authority who had the power to simply not call me the next time work was on offer. I didn’t want to give those folks more ammunition — so I did my best to obscure my identity.
Also, I was well aware of what happened to women on the internet — especially feminist women. As Laurie Penny put it at PatreCon this year, “Having an opinion is like wearing a short skirt on the internet.” That is — being a woman with an opinion puts a target on your back. You’re “asking for it.” And I was definitely not interested in being on the receiving end of misogynistic abuse. I wouldn’t/couldn’t be silenced but I had to be obscured. It helped, I think. I have never been the target that I expected to be when I started talking about feminism but then I’ve also never really had the platform either. I suspect, that in the name of safety, I have sacrificed some potential for visibility as well. Is the risk gone? I doubt it. But — my interest in integrating my whole self and living it publicly is now larger than my fear. I’m so furious at how the world has devolved, I no longer think I would cower in fear at an attack. I might, instead, bare my teeth and growl.
Even in my artistic life, I’ve been only using a portion of my name. In part, this has been because my middle name can be seen as a little too feminine and in this patriarchal world, feminine things are seen as less than. There are those who don’t take me seriously because my middle name is Rainbow. It’s why I stopped using it. But…screw those people. If you can’t take a Rainbow seriously, I don’t know how to help you. It’s a kick-ass natural element that combines disparate weather elements. My parents gifted me with it. I’m going to use it. I will stop traffic with my ephemeral beauty. That’s my plan.
To be honest — there wasn’t really a plan. It just sort of evolved this way. I think it kicked off when I decided to put my music up on Spotify. There’s a singer songwriter in Australia who shares my first and last name and has had some success over the years. We’ve run into one another’s websites through time. I didn’t want our identities to be conflated or confused — so I figured I needed to do something to distinguish us. I thought about using my middle initial but in the end, I figured my actual middle name was the most memorable bit and might help people find me. Once I had a music identity on-line with my full name, it became clear that I needed a website with my full name and before too long, I was using it for almost everything.
My friends have called me by my full name for years. So has my family. So I’m just catching the public up with everyone else.
I may become a target. There may be some who take me less seriously. But I may also become more visible. I may be able to integrate the many different things I do into one coherent self. I am Emily Rainbow Davis. Welcome to my world.
This blog is also a podcast. You can find it on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you’d like to listen to me read a previous one on Anchor, click here.
Every podcast features a song at the end. Some of those songs are now an album of Resistance Songs, an album of Love Songs, an album of Gen X Songs and More. You can find them on Spotify, my website, ReverbNation, Deezer and iTunes
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Originally published at artiststruggle.wordpress.com on December 21, 2018.
