Subscribe by EmailLawyer’s Bosses Don’t Like Her Porn
January 18, 2009 by Casey | 7 commentsBy Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]
Deidre Dare is an international finance lawyer at one of London’s top law firms, Allen & Overy, the same firm where Prince Harry’s girlfriend recently had an internship. She works in their Moscow office and makes about a hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year (that’s about $220,000). She also writes erotic stories and poetry and posts them (along with a few photographs of herself in her underwear) on the Internet.
Dare’s bosses apparently stumbled across her website (which probably wasn’t too difficult, given that it’s deidredare.com) and ordered her to stop publishing chapters of her pornographic novel. Though there is no indication that her job is in any danger, and the website is still up, the page containing Expat: A Weekly Serialized Novel About Living in Moscow now says at the top: “The Author has been forbidden from publishing further chapters of Expat for the time being. She will resume if and when she is permitted to.”
According to The Daily Mail, the novel is about the “sordid lifestyle” of the staff of a British professional firm in Moscow (hmmm, no wonder she has that “The events and persons depicted herein are fictional and any resemblance to events or persons live or dead is purely coincidental” disclaimer at the bottom of the page). The promiscuous protagonist (who describes herself as part drug addict and part alcoholic) and her colleagues “are constantly seeking new sexual conquests, attend obscene sex shows involving donkeys and dwarves, blow fortunes at expensive restaurants and gossip about where they are planning to get drunk next.”
I have to quote this from the article because I just couldn’t force myself to read more than the first few pages. Though I pretty much got the gist from the first sentence: “There is something thrilling about being in bed with a Frenchman, even if he does have a small cock which he can’t get up, I thought, as Pierre gently kissed my eyelids and stroked my face.”
On the one hand, I respect Ms. Dare’s right to write her porn. In fact, any quality issues aside, I applaud the creative endeavor, and given how many people out there like to read erotica, why not put it up on the net where other people can enjoy it? However, I cannot possibly imagine what possessed her to not only publish it under her real name, but to put it on a website with her full name in the URL.
One of the first things they tell first year law students is to check your Facebook page and make sure that you don’t have any pictures posted of yourself doing keg stands during Spring Break or have your favorite movie listed as The Cannabis Grow Bible. It might not be fair, but the truth is, if you’re going to work in a certain job, especially if it’s high-profile, then you’ve got to keep your public face clean. It may seem like the guys at Allen & Ovary are being prudish, but I can understand why they wouldn’t want a new client who is googling his lawyer’s name because he’s misplaced her email address to find, instead of her official firm profile, a website where she’s writing about poorly-endowed Frenchmen. Especially considering that, given the subject matter of the book (and even the character’s name, Dasha, which she says is just a Russian-sounding name she picked that was close to her own), one could easily infer that it’s at least partially autobiographical. And whereas knowing that your lawyer writes erotica in her free time might not be so bad, suspecting that she does drugs and comes to work hungover most days might be a bit troubling.
Still, it looks like the firm’s intentions may have backfired, since now googling “Deidre Dare” leads to pages of news articles about this very scandal.
What do you you guys think? Are her bosses being fair? Should Ms. Dare have been more discreet? Or does the firm have no business telling her what she can or cannot put on the Internet?
- Activision Fails At Lawyer Hero
- Porn at Work? Hacking!
- Google’s Semantic Search Doesn’t Like Porn
- Wikipedia Censored Over Supposed Child Pornography
She absolutely should have been more discreet however, I am firmly opposed to employers being able to dictate what someone can/can’t do in their personal life (also why I set all of my public profiles to be seen by friends only).
That would be “Overy” (rather than “Ovary”) – an odd slip on your part.
Since there are mainstream novels just as racy as Dasha’s stories, I don’t think they really fit as “porn”. (Unless you are from some remarkably conservative corner of this country – or the like.)
More likely the what embarrasses her employer’s is not the sexual content of the stories.
Well by publishing them under her real name, she is basically flaunting the porn under the noses of everyone so in that respect she is being unprofessional in her business life and she is totally screwing up her future career prospects.
I am all for doing whatever you want in your private life but for God’s sake keep it in your private life! Invent an alias and keep your private life and your work life separate. Don’t put it on your personal website and then dare your bosses to find it. Don’t wave it under the noses of your clients either. She needs to grow up and act her age. She has a responsibility towards the company that she works for and by publishing this stuff under her real name, she has brought bad publicity upon the company she works for.
Now you might argue that the company did it to themselves but I would say that it doesn’t matter. Even if the company hadn’t done anything, it would have only been a matter of time before it all came out anyway. You can’t be a “top lawyer” and…OK, I’ll say it…a bit of a slut at the same time and expect to get away with it.
I don’t understand why you cannot be a top lawyer and a bit of a slut… i thought that is what lawyers ARE they provide service for money. And i TOTALLY disagree with your comments. If she is wanting to be a professional lawyer and a professional erotica writer, would there not be room for it. I don’t understand peoples sexual kink on telling other people that there kinks are incorrect, and i do include religion in on that certain persuasion. I for one would think that a lawyer that is open about sexuality and experimentation could mean that he/she could be able to think “outside the box” (and yes there is a pun in there), and as long as he/she does not let it harm their other job, i.e. being a lawyer, which it does not seem to be, then i see no harm and no foul. But that is just someone that thinks that a lot of this suing and litigation that is happening in the world would be reduced if everyone just quit working if sex was “moral” and “ok”, and just started fucking everyone else.
-t
@LB they aren’t telling her what she can or can’t do with her personal life. They’re just letting her know which parts are incompatible with her career at that firm.
Lesser companies might have just fired her.
So, its all about what you hide. Not what you do. Public face and all. I think we have too much of that already, look at all the bailouts. If its ok for her to write it and put it out there then it should be ok for her to own it and not hide it. quote ” On the one hand, I respect Ms. Dare’s right to write her porn. In fact, any quality issues aside, I applaud the creative endeavor, and given how many people out there like to read erotica, why not put it up on the net where other people can enjoy it? However, I cannot possibly imagine what possessed her to not only publish it under her real name, but to put it on a website with her full name in the URL.”end quote. So is it then ok, as long as you can hide it and get away with it?
Are you asking if I think that it’s okay for someone to write erotica? Sure. I also think that whatever kinky thing you like to do in your free time, your boss probably doesn’t want you telling your clients all about it. I think it would be fantastic if people could write what they want and not be judged for it, but that’s just not how the world works. It just happens that some of the people who might hire an expensive lawyer from a prestigious law firm are the sort of people who might be scandalized to find out that she posts naughty things on the internet and go find another lawyer. If she were a full time writer, or even if she had some job where people probably wouldn’t care, then there wouldn’t be a problem.