Our urban infrastructure is crumbling around us, and nobody wants to pay for it. I’m also wondering why folks like SixApart don’t have some sort of backup plan for their colocation. What if the Goddess of Plate Tectonics decides to have a major hissy fit? You know She will, one day.

My response to trolls in the past was honed in the Usenet days; it was best to fail to provide the responses they craved by refusing to engage them. However, things seem to have devolved to new lows. Amanda of Pandagon and Melissa of Shakespeare’s Sister came in for a whole dogpile of vitriol from so-called Christians and they ended up severing their connections with the John Edwards campaign. Bill also gave some more examples of women bloggers who are constantly dodging the dung flung at them; I find the attacks on Ginmar (here’s a recent example) especially disturbing because she’s a combat veteran, and I’d bet that most of her trolls are part of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders safe at home. Now, we’ve got a highly visible woman techblogger having to curtail her activities and call in law enforcement.

This cannot stand. I note that some male bloggers are speaking up about harassment they’ve experienced, but the really virulent attacks reeking of violent misogyny are saved for women who dare to be visible. Refusal to engage these harassers is not enough. They need to be identified and made to own these attacks; anonymity is not our friend. In addition, we need to be mindful of the words we send out; there’s a gradient that leads from snark to this kind of evil dreck.

I just sent this message to the Edwards folks:

Keep Amanda and Melissa working on your web presence. The people most enraged by them working on your campaign will never be your supporters, and if you cave in due to their pressure, then you send a message to all Democrats and progressives that the right wing are the only people in this country who have the ability to define the terms of political campaigns. We are the ones who have the right to tell our stories to the rest of the country and the planet; if we let the right wing get away with this, our stories would never get heard. What would our beloved Molly Ivins say about this?

Stay strong.

If you like, go make your voice heard over there.

Bill Donohue does not speak for this particular technopagan Buddhist Catholic, but then according to him, I’m already consigned to various forms of eternal torment. Pthpppt.

Second day sessions that worked well

the sex panel with Susie Bright et. al.: the usefulness of this discussion for me was hearing how other women bloggers differentiate between what they’re willing to put out in public and what they will keep private.

women geeks in technology: The facilitators ended up with a large interconnected web of thoughts and bullet points about how women interact with and in technological fields. I spoke briefly about the recent story about the transgendered scientist Dr. Ben Barres at Stanford who spoke out about the pervasive sexism in science and engineering, both what he experienced as a woman in undergraduate and graduate schools and the increased privilege and credibility he’s perceived since he made his transition. I think he’s a hero, and I’m also angered that women in the sciences and engineering still have to put up with the same shit even now. Some fabulous young people from a program for high school students up in SF were there, and the young women say that they still get flack for being geeks (thankfully not from their male colleagues in their program). It was wrong when Barres was an undergraduate, it was wrong when one of my women friends was explicitly told that girls don’t belong in physics when I was in college, and it’s wrong for these kids to hear the same crap yet again. Barres’ story made me wonder about how trans men could make the transition without becoming part of the patriarchal system, but I was having some difficulty formulating my questions. Piny at Feministe has posted
a very interesting entry that has given me lots of food for thought.

This also feeds into an ongoing frustration I have with dealing with men in women-focused spaces like BlogHer, WisCon, and WoolfCamp. Some men just cannot figuratively sit on their hands and let women have this space and time to speak honestly. One man at one of the first day’s technical panels managed to monopolize the discussion for a fair amount of time, and I’ve seen this happen at WisCon and at WoolfCamp. Is this a case of male geek answer syndrome or fannish modes of socialization or what? It’s definitely frustrating as all hell.

Liz at Composite pointed me to an essay by Charles Johnson of radgeek where he says men need to respect women’s only spaces, avoid co-opting, and be willing to step aside. Any man who considers himself a feminist ought to take these suggestions to heart; having the ability to allow women to lead and speak freely is one of the strongest ways they can support the struggle.

Then there’s been the ongoing discussions of mommyblogging that I’ve tried to follow. I’m not a mother, and will probably not be one in this lifetime, but I have found a lot of humor and wisdom in reading what some truly gifted women are writing about their experiences of motherhood, and if I avoided them because they’re mommyblogging and I’m not, I’d be missing out on some really good stuff. These mothers are getting something on the internet what I imagine my mother and her friends wanted when they were surrounded by a brood of children and feeling isolated from other adults. We all do some identity blogging, I was walking around with my current scarf in progress draped around me as I went to the Birds of a Feather session with the other knit and craftbloggers as a way to scope out my comrades.

In a previous entry, I wrote about the pervasive presence of commercial sponsorship at BlogHer06. I’ve got this uneasy feeling that the mommybloggers have been tagged as a very desirable demographic for advertising. Will they self-censor so as to not alienate their sponsors? Why do women need to “monetize” our self-expression? Is this the only way we can assign value to our efforts?

I now need to go fill out the post-conference survey to let the planners know what I think. I do not plan to be at next year’s conference in Chicago, but I do want to continue to take part in smaller events like WoolfCamp.

I was able to learn a lot of stuff, and best of all, meet a bunch of fabulous women whose blogs I hope to visit, comment about, and learn from, but there were some things I do hope the Blogher planners can work on before next year’s event.

I haven’t been to that many professional conferences; most of the time, I’m going to science fiction and fantasy conventions that are put on by volunteers from the fannish community, so I was a bit taken aback by the overwhelming presence of corporate sponsors when I walked into the facility.

Before I launch into my critique, let me acknowledge that the corporate sponsorships did help in several ways. We were able to have meal breaks that did not involve us having to leave the hotel and lose out on a whole lot of chances to meet fellow bloghers. The cost of internet access was discounted for the attendees and was built into our registration fees. An aside for any fannish folks who are whinging about not having ubiquitous wireless at next month’s World Science Fiction convention in Anaheim: I’m sure that if the concom had decided to pay the ~$30K that the Anaheim facility wanted to charge for wi-fi, the memberships would have either gotten pricier, or the concom would have had to pinch pennies in ways that would have really impacted the quality of programming and events, or not be able to pass along funds that really help future Worldcons.

Note for Blogher…if we go back to this hotel, I hope the infrastructure does allow for ~800+ highly wired people to have more reliable connectivity.

My second biggest beef about the sponsorships was having to sit through commercial pitches before the plenary sessions. The pitches varied from “ignorable with minimal added annoyance on my part” to “incredibly artificial insults to our collective intelligence” (this one was due to the two young women who attempted to be the next generation of Tool Time girls for Windows Live Spaces).

Debbie and Laurie from Body Impolitic nailed most skillfully my biggest beef when they blogged about the sponsorships that perpetuate negative body images for women (e.g. Weight Watchers, vile tasting mineral water that purported to help women lose weight).

In future posts, I will shift to the many positive aspects of the conference, but I wanted to get this off my chest.

And, here’s a shout-out to Minnie, whose picture graced the first page of the business section in yesterday’s SJ Mercury News.

At Blogher, I found out which tools I needed to get this going and also had some fodder for initial posts which will follow once I get some sleep.