Have you ever read the blog “Lez Get Real”? Yeah, me neither. Good thing, too, because it turns out that the “lesbian” behind it is a man, baby. Cue the Austin Powers.
Just one day after the author behind a popular Syrian lesbian blog admitted to being a married, American man named Tom MacMaster, the editor of the lesbian news site Lez Get Real, with the tagline “A Gay Girl’s View on the World,” acknowledged that he is also a man.
“Paula Brooks,” editor of Lez Get Real since its founding in 2008, is actually Bill Graber, 58, a retired Ohio military man and construction worker who said he had adopted his wife’s identity online. Graber said she was unaware he had been using her name on his site.
Dude’s got a little ‘splainin’ to do.
Brooks had told reporters at The Washington Post that she could only speak on the phone through her father because she was deaf. She provided a photograph of her license as proof of her identity, which showed a woman named Paula Brooks.
On Monday, we continued to question her identity. We spoke to the man who identified himself as her father, who finally admitted after numerous telephone conversations: “I am Paula Brooks.” That man turned out to be Bill Graber.
Graber said he started the site to write about gay issues after seeing the mistreatment of close friends who were a lesbian couple. He said the site was “done with the best of intentions.” As a former Air Force pilot, he also said he used the site to argue in favor of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal.
“I didn’t start this with my name because… I thought people wouldn’t take it seriously, me being a straight man,” he said.
And it gets better. Yes, the two fake lesbian bloggers who have been outed today (as fakes, and men) corresponded with each other. And flirted.
In the guise of Paula Brooks, Graber corresponded online with Tom MacMaster, thinking he was writing to Amina Arraf. Amina often flirted with Brooks, neither of the men realizing the other was pretending to be a lesbian.
Already reeling from the news of MacMaster’s hoax, one of Graber’s contributors at Lez Get Real Linda LaVictoire, said, “I was completely taken in; I have been completely taken in for three years.” The 62 year old lives in Vermont and writes on the site under her maiden name of Linda Carbonell.
Two straight men find out they have been flirting with each other as fake lesbians. That will whack both of their self-images. There’s a kind of justice in that, wouldn’t you say?
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