I Think I Own This DVD: Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez Is Under Attack By Lesbians
17 February 2009, 2:07 PM. By Alex Alvarez
Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is “under attack by lesbians” following an interview she did with lesbian site AfterEllen.com.
In the interview, Alisa mentioned that she’s somewhat bisexual. Her Wikipedia entry was then updated to include this new information, prompting a wave of hate mail from what Alisa describes as “homophobic, hateful fascist Cuban American exiles.” Alisa asked that details about her supposed sexuality be removed from Wiki, a decision which inspired ire and accusations from AfterEllen editor Sarah Warn of having exploited the GLBT community for publicity.
Alisa took to her blog to explain the situation to her biggest fans, like Cindy, and to issue the following apology:
I’m sorry. I truly am sorry. I have been less than honest, in hopes of controlling a message enough to not be killed by rabid machista anit-communists. Ironically, this has led to my being attacked be lesbians for being a self-serving capitalist intent upon marketing my books the lesbians. Given that lesbians make up about five percent of the population, I think this is a ridiculous conclusion for Sarah to reach, but I do take responsibility for having led her to the point of confusion and conjecture. I tried to protect myself and my family from hate, but, as we all know, that rarely works.
Mostly, I feel like a fool. I feel exposed and attacked from all sides. I feel sad for the people in the GLBT world who now feel like yet one more person has attacked them. It wasn’t my intention. I’m not sure what my intention was, beyond protecting myself from the repercussions of revealing information that I probably wasn’t actually prepared, emotionally, to have made public.
Oh how sic! Currently, Alisa’s Wiki says the following:
In 1998, she married Patrick Jason Rodriguez. Their son, Alexander, was born in 2001.[2]
She has struggled with her sexuality.
In 2009 she was embroiled in a bitter controversy with the LGBT community after claiming that the website Afterellen.com had incorrectly quoted her claim that she was a bisexual.[10] She cited edits to her wikipedia entry as libelous. Only after the website published all the details of their correspondence with her did she admit that her defamatory comments were made up and now claims to be bisexual. [11]
Ouch. Alisa’s blog names New York-based writer, photographer and Wiki editor David Shankbone as one of her cyber-attackers and claims that he is “obsessed with her.” Which… he kind of sort of is? At least to the extent that people who, you know. Report on someone are obsessed with them. (Kind of like how we’re “obsessed” with Jessica Alba.) His blog contains an entry, titled “Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, bipolar disorder, bisexuality and Wikipedia,” devoted to Alisa and her Wikipedia struggles.
Alisa and David’s own personal disagreement stems from a photo he took of her during the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival, which she apparently (It’s difficult to tell from the wording in the blog entry) did not like and asked to have removed from her Wiki page. It’s still there. It is also right here:
Sarah Warn’s AfterEllen.com article “attacking” Alisa makes no mention of threats from fascist Cuban exiles, but it does provide details not offered in Alisa’s account of Fauxmosexualgate:
Fast-forward six months, and it turns out that Valdes-Rodriguez stated on her own website shortly after we published the interview that she was notbisexual, and in December, made multiple statements on Wikipedia, and in emails from her official website to Wikipedia editor David Shankbone, claiming that we misinterpreted and/or made up the quotes about her being bisexual.
In response to Shankbone’s question on Wikipedia as to whether Valdes-Rodriguez was claiming the quotes about her bisexuality in our interview were “made up,” she responded, “Yes. This is Alisa. I’m not bisexual. Stop posting this garbage unless you wish to see me in court.”
Further attempts by Shankbone to clarify the obvious discrepancies on this issue and others resulted in David receiving increasingly inflammatory denials from Valdes-Rodriguez, which he chronicled this week on his blog.
Which sounds a little different than asking for information to be removed because people are threatening you and you feel afraid for your life.
We’re not sure we’ll know exactly why Alisa asked for the information on her sexuality to be pulled from her Wiki entry - whether it was because it was untrue and an unabashed attempt to market her books to the gay community, or because she was being threatened, or because she felt embarrassed - but we do know this:
Free publicity? Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez has it.
Under Attack by Lesbians [Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez]
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You are obsessed with Jessica Alba! Alex, you couldn’t even make it through this article without mentioning her name. You can try the cop out about how you are told to write about her but I know…I know.
Jessica Alba? Jessica Alba! Jessica. Albaaaaaaaa.
I had a dream that I was attacked by Jessica Alba, and that she was a lesbian fascist who wrote for Wikipedia.
Chistosa, you crack me up.
Dyke drama.
I started reading Alisa’s entry until she starts going into details of her gay dalliances, and I stopped because I don’t care, but then again, I’m neither a lesbian nor a fascist Cuban American who sends hate mail from Hialeah.
I found this via Shankbones article and I also found Alisa recent blog post retracting her retracted statements. But I cannot comment on hers (they are turned off) and I need to write somewhere! Hope you don’t mind the bitching. I just don’t see how Sarah Warn attacked her. She was merely trying to get the facts straight (pun intended). And she was trying to protect herself and her website, in which Alisa essentially was calling her (and them) liars, when all they did is write what she said. I understand if she needed to protect herself, but why didn’t she take it up with AE (and get it changed) if she was trying to protect herself.. or do fascist Cuban not check out these sites (just as does Focus on Family and those types don’t read The Advocate and then boycott whomever advertises in there)… Grr Arg
Dear Alex,
It may seem like my focus is on Alisa, and I understand why it seems that way, but really my focus in this instance, and generally in a few other posts on my blog, is that the problem of lack of accountability and lying is widespread. I only came across this issue with Alisa because I was trying to resolve why she was removing so many sourced statements from her Wikipedia article; otherwise, I knew nothing about her until recently. AVR happens to just be the latest, and was an example I hoped would be seen in a larger context in our society. To take a comment on on a response I made about the AVR issue:
I read Graydon Carter’s editor’s letter in Vanity Fair, and in it this stuck out to me:
That really sums it up for me. Carter was talking about far greater problems from this issue than AVR that have plagued us these last eight years:
I see all of this, including AVR, connected into the bigger issue that was mentioned in Graydon Carter’s first quote.
David Shankbone
Thanks for responding, David. I’ll keep an eye on your blog.