Why this site is anonymous

Nobody's name is on this site, and if that makes you cautious, you are right to be. Here is the reasoning, so that you can weigh it yourself.

The condition is the reason

Paruresis is hard to say out loud. That is part of what makes it hard to live with. It is hard to tell a partner, a friend, or a doctor.

This site is written for women and men, not for men by default.

The person who writes this site has it too, and a name on the site would be a name on the condition — in public, in search results, and for good. This site exists to make the condition easier to talk about, so it would be odd to demand that of the writer while telling you that you do not have to.

Anonymous is not the same as unaccountable

The answer to "why should I believe you" is not "trust me". It is that you do not have to.

Every claim this site makes about the condition — what it is, how common it is, what helps — is tied to a named source: a study, a regulator, or a national health service. The source is the study itself, not a page that mentions a study. Each one is listed on the sources page, with a link and with the exact words that back the claim, so you can open the original and judge for yourself whether it supports what this site says. This page makes no claim about the condition, which is why it cites nothing.

The sources are named even though the writer is not. That is the trade. Here, the citation carries the weight, and the author never does. If a claim has nothing behind it, that is a fault you can point at, and there is a way to report it.

What being anonymous costs

It is not free, and some of the cost lands on you.

• No university, hospital or charity stands behind this site, so there is nothing to look up.
• There is no qualification to weigh, because you cannot check a writer who has no name.
• If the site gets something wrong, there is no professional body to answer for it.
• You can check every source named here. You cannot check the ones that were left out, and choosing what to cite is a judgement with no name on it.

Those are real losses, and the sources are what is offered in their place.

What this site is for

It is here to get you to a person who can help. The Doctor Brief is a one-page sheet you can hand to a doctor when you cannot get the words out. That is the point of the whole site: it should end in a consulting room, not on a web page.

One person's account of living with this is on the story page. This page is about the method, not about the person.

No money changes hands

This site sells nothing and earns nothing. There are no adverts, no sponsors, no shop, and no paid links. Where a product is described, it is described so that you can recognise it, never so that you buy one. Nothing here links to a place that would pay the site. If that ever changes, it will be written on the page where it changes.