I understand Gayle Newland’s impulse to catfish – I posed as a man online for sex
Without going as far as Newland did, many aspects of her testimony match my own experience. Can you ever stop people pretending not to be themselves?
Gayle Newland, who tricked a friend into sex by using a fake male identity and a prosthetic penis, has been sentenced to six years and six months in prison following a re-trial. Coverage of the fascinating trial has been compelling, but I will offer a precis. Uploading to Facebook images of an American-Filipino man, Newland invented “Kye Fortune”. Kye would go on to befriend a woman whom the courts have called Chloe, for legal reasons, who would not only become friends with Newland but consent to sex with Kye.
Newland provided Kye with a complex backstory to get Chloe to wear a blindfold during their meetings, and during sex, and after at least 100 hours of wearing the blindfold in Kye’s presence, Chloe removed it. She discovered Kye was, in fact, Newland, with whom she hadn’t consented to sex.
Newland was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault by penetration.
I feel sympathy for the victim. Newland has also shown no remorse for her crimes or their impact on her victim, and her commitment to deceit is a common theme: while on bail pending the first trial, Newland defrauded her employer by £9,000.
However, so many aspects of Newland’s testimony matches with my own experiences that I find it difficult not to relate. The defence’s argument hinged on the assertion that Newland and Chloe agreed to use the role-play of Kye in order to conduct a supposedly heterosexual relationship. This isn’t ridiculous to me: I’ve had several secret relationships with women who called themselves straight in order to maintain a sense of normality. And though young people are increasingly happy to identify as sexually fluid or as having nuances to their gender identity, society still bombards us all with images of heterosexuality as the natural norm.
And for lesbians, there’s another layer here: the myth that sex is only sex if a penis is involved. Indeed, if UK legislation recognised a dildo as equivalent to a penis, Newland could have faced rape charges. I’ve had many secret relationships with women who called themselves straight in order to avoid all the bigotry that comes with being out.
As for “catfishing”, a term which refers to adopting a fake persona online, Newland created Kye when she was 13. I was around the same age, too, when I visited American chatrooms pretending I was a boy with piercing blue eyes and shaggy black hair. I was a very nice boy, nicer than the ones I knew in real life, and spoke to several girls around my age. These girls, I knew, would never be sexually interested in the dumpy ginger girl speaking to them, but they would tell me they’d never “met” a boy as kind as me before.
We would eventually describe prospective imaginary sexual scenarios to one another. The distance provided both yearning to our conversations, and cover for me in case they ever suggested meeting.
Newland’s hubris to think she could bring Kye into the real world, in her 20s, eludes me, and indeed she has been diagnosed with mental health issues including gender dysphoria. But still, I can see why she invented Kye.
My catfishing went both ways, and I’ve since discovered that, as a teenager, when I’d been my truest self online, much older men had been posing as younger lesbians to have explicit conversations with me. That’s why it’s commendable that Ann Coffey, Labour MP for Stockport, has called for a ban on stealing others’ identities. Unfortunately, it’s unworkable – catfishing Britons will smuggle images across borders with just a click and drag. And while Coffey is reasonably realistic in suggesting that we could legislate against people pretending to be someone else, could we ever stop people pretending to not be themselves?
The jury believed that Chloe’s consent hinged on the gender of her perceived partner, but what other values do we hold that are just as, if not more , flexible than gender? Could lying about experiences, values or beliefs in order to sleep with someone land others in jail for six years and six months?
Playing around with online identity isn’t always harmful. Anonymous identity online has given rise to individuals feeling comfortable speaking about their experiences regarding everything from sexual violence to mental health issues. And for me, it was far easier to try out maleness online than in the real world, where excruciating chest-binding and life-changing hormonal treatment would be required for me to “pass”.
But catfishing is too regularly used to gain power over already vulnerable people. Like those adult men pretending to be lesbians in order to speak to an underage user, and the con men who send older women template love letters in order to fleece them of their savings.
source:https://www.theguardian.com