The following questions are aimed at gender identity, gender expression, romantic orientation, and/or sexual orientation. To cut down on wordiness, all the questions below will just say "identity", but know that I'm asking about any and all of the different parts that make up our gendered, romantic, and sexual selves.

You don't necessarily need to answer regarding all axes or focuses: choose the ones most salient or meaningful to you and your experiences. Furthermore, these questions are open to all, including people who don't identify as LGBT.

• How would you describe the rigidity/fluidity of your identity or its different parts?
• Do you experience short-term changes in your identity?
• Have you experienced long-term changes in your identity?
• Does your identity have any elements that are unchanging long-term?
• How does the fluidity/rigidity of your identity affect you? Are there advantages? Disadvantages?
• Are you certain in your identity right now, or is it unclear to you at the moment?
• If you are certain, do you think that certainty will persist, or might things change in the future?
• If you are uncertain, do you think a more definite identity will coalesce for you at some point?

As always, the questions are just jumping off points and don't need to be treated like a quiz. Also, just to be clear, I am asking this purely out of curiosity and am in no way trying to assert that a more rigid/fluid identity is better/worse. Likewise, I'm not trying to cast judgment on anyone still questioning or engaging in self-discovery. Your process and your identity are valid wherever you're at and however you feel. I'm simply interested to hear what your experiences are, whoever you are.

I've recently been trying to confront the fact that a lot of the things I want to do online work best if they've got some connection to my real life identity (or will eventually, almost by necessity, become connected). Things like working on open source software, writing, etc. almost always seem to lead back to other people knowing at the very least your real name and probably your email address.

I know that my threat model for people going after my identity is a lot different from someone with nation-state level adversaries like Ed Snowden or various activists, but I still find it hard to decide what gets to be connected to what. Do I put my real name on my GitHub account? Do I post things on my GitHub blog to here? Should I have my real name on my Twitter account? What about the fact that some of my usernames resemble each other?

I'm not necessarily looking for advice about my particular situation, but I would really like to hear how other people have dealt with such situations and what you generally think about things like identity compartmentalization.

This recent topic has me thinking.

On one hand, you have the whole "Death of the Author" idea that divorces the writer from their work. This makes a lot of sense, and allows for creative works of fiction to exist entirely as fictions.

On the other hand, you have the #OwnVoices movement which specifically prioritizes the identity of the author as a method of affirming their work. This makes a lot of sense too, befitting the longstanding principle of "nothing about us without us." Who better to write a fictionalized experience than someone who has gone through a real-life parallel?

Then you have authors whose personal beliefs and experiences may or may not texture their work for readers. Orson Scott Card is commonly brought up in discussions like these on account of his views and public comments on homosexuality. William S. Burroughs famously shot his own wife. I can certainly see how those would be hard things to look past.

With all this in mind, does the author matter to you when you read (particularly works of fiction)? Does knowing about them enhance/detract from your reading experience?