Last week, i stated my disgust at the image Marc Canter used to advertise his party at Etech. Since then, there’s been plenty of blogging conversation, speculation about my views, and dismissal by strangers who don’t know me. It’s a clear reminder of how reading my blog is not indicative of knowing me, my views or my philosophy on life. So, let me clarify a few things.

First, just because i spend a bulk of my life fighting to end violence against women does not mean that i abhor BDSM. In fact, anyone who knows me knows that i’m one of the most ardent supportors of consensual BDSM out there. I don’t believe that it’s violence and i have always supported the BDSM community both inside of and outside of V-Day. I am completely supportive of others’ sexual preferences; that’s not the point here.

Second, i believe in social mores and social decorum. It is outright inappropriate to advertise a professional party in the way that one would advertise a play party. Different social contexts require different social norms. Images set expectations, intentions. Certainly, people have the right to offend, just as i have the right to be offended and state that offense. The point of my frustration is that offensive adverts are not the way to build community or encourage proper decorum that is inclusive.

I view Etech as a professional activity. Of course i enjoy parties. Duh; i’m a trancer! But the roles that i play in my personal life are different than those that i play in my professional life. At a professional activity, i want to go to a professional event, not one that is advertising itself as a sex party, offering up images of the expected roles of men and women. As professionals, we’re working towards gender equality; sexualizing a professional event does not continue that commitment. Parties can be fun without sexualized imagery.

It is certainly a woman’s right to do whatever she wants in front of a camera. I’m not arguing against that. That doesn’t contradict the significance of social norms. If you want a party to be welcoming, you advertise it as inclusive. For example, there were children there. Thus, explicit sexual behavior or drug use is just outright unacceptable. This is common sense when it comes to social norms.

Perhaps i should take a Californian stand and clearly state my boundaries with regard to my professional/personal life. Note, these are *my* boundaries. As a professional colleague of mine:

1) It is unacceptable to ask me to participate in threesomes with your wife via email or any social network software. In fact, it is inappropriate to ask me for any sexual favors period.

2) It is unacceptable to corner me and try to get me to kiss you or go home with you, regardless of whether or not we were drinking.

3) It is unacceptable to treat me as a sexual object or token.

4) It is uncool for professional events to be held in environments that blur the lines between sexual and professional boundaries.

This isn’t about me being a prude; this is about me wanting a professional life that is not sexualized. I spent many years of my life trying to be just one of the boys. I’m finally accepting my femininity, enjoying playing with fashion and willing to be a female. This is not an invitation for sexual advances; it’s about me being me.

The fact is that i have friends who are also colleagues. Yes, i’m far more likely to be affectionate with them, even in a professional domain. That’s not about sex; that’s about friendship. The friends that i’m most flirtatious and goofy with are the ones who i am certain understand that there is no sexual innuendo involved; i don’t cuddle with people who don’t get me. Cuddling for me comes from the raver world where cuddle piles are about friends not sexual advances.

My friend group is not about cliquishness, but there are a lot of underlying social commonalities between us that bind us together both on and offline. For example, when it comes to the discussion about the image, the fact of the matter is that most of my close friends are feminists, as were their parents. They get it; of course, they understand why i’m upset and they have their own reasons beyond mine.

I do have a hang-up in this community that is tangentially related to that image. My hang-up is that i want to be accepted not because i’m a potential sex toy but because i have intellectually stimulating ideas to offer.

In my world, V-Day stands for Valentine’s Day, Vagina Day, Victory over Violence Day. To celebrate, i am in Juarez with V-Day to demand that the government investigate why over 300 women have disappeared, are still missing or have turned up murdered and violated.

Tonite, we gathered at the consulate’s home with 2 US Representatives, Jane Fonda, Eve Ensler, the newly appointed Mexican investigator into the Juarez murders, Amnesty International representatives, Carole Black (head of Lifetime). Everyone made speeches, spoke of what is to be done and prepared to spend V-Day marching on the streets of Juarez.

It’s an eerie environment… you can feel the fear. But i do have faith that what we do can work to stop the violence. I look forward to tomorrow’s efforts.

If i were to ask anything of my readers today, it would be that you support V-Day in any way that you can. If it is in your means, please donate to V-Day as we work to end violence against women and girls worldwide. Every bit helps.

Also, for those who cannot be in Juarez, turn on your TVs to Lifetime on February 17th at 10PM as Lifetime airs the new V-Day documentary of the work we’ve been doing worldwide.

Have a fantastic V-Day and work with us to envision a world without violence.

I think our talk went really well. Hopefully, others have feedback….

I was psyched because the panel twisted into a conversation about what happens when tech hacking meets social hacking. Key points:

– Mobile folks know something; social software folks know something. But users have a whole different view of the world.

– Social software is what happens when technologists try to hack the social; mobile culture is what happens when the public socially hacks the technology.

– Social hacking is meeting techno-hacking. We are seeing this collision now and we need to pay attention to both sides. Similar issues are arising on both sides. For example, the technology is bringing out concerns about privacy; the social is bringing out issues of vulnerability. These needs need to be addressed simultaneously.

– Technologists tend to argue for an open technology, but they try to constrain the social behavior that is permitted; we need to open up the possibilities for the technology as well as the social, even when we don’t like all possibilities. We’re being hypocritical here.

It should be fascinating to see what ends up happening in this collision.

[Btw: if you were at the talk and have a better idea of what i/we said, let me know… it quickly turns into a bit of a daze.]

How exciting – Marc Canter is organizing a party at Etech. Of course, in announcing it, he sweetly through up a picture that offends me at my core. “It appears that Jenn is quite a partier herself.” refers to an image where a grinning man is holding on to a bent over woman with a face that’s either in ecstasy or agony. But she’s down on all fours, submissive to a man in a Santa suit. C’mon now. How welcoming is this party to the women???

People often ask me why i hate the telephone. I know that i pay attention to faces; i know that i read lips. I prefer IM over phone because at least then i can read over things to see my own misperceptions; i don’t read voices that well. Usually, the articles i read on faces tend to bore me. But i finally got around to reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Naked Face. OMG. If you’ve never read this article, do. It’s an amazing ethnographic piece on how important the face is in reading what is really going on beneath the words.

I learned about fan fiction when i was working with Henry Jenkins. Henry and i both shared a love of subcultures, but he knew a side of it that was totally unknown to me. Fan fiction brings out the creativity in kids, letting them insert ideas into the popular culture that they know. It is storytelling; it is writing; it is community. (And of course, sometimes, it is sexual exploration.) It is a subculture that truly helps kids find themselves.

Of course, not all adults understand the value of fan fiction. (And then there’s the ridiculous copyright problem.) Thankfully, Henry is telling their story and the tension that emerges between the kids and the adults.

I love paper books. That’s an understatement. Anyone who has helped me move will attest to how much they hate my love of books. So, of course, when i wanted to read Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe, i grabbed a paper copy of it. Digital is nice and all, but i’d rather have the nicely bound version available to flip through.

Then, today, i’m writing an email about the value of Rolodexes over Palm Pilot displays. I’m referencing the power of the visceral display – the ability to see the older entries, to fully grasp the size of the connections. In writing this, i remembered a passage from EST:

Art signalled the counterman for their bill. The counterman waved distractedly in the manner of a harried restaurateur dealing with his regulars, and said something in Korean to the busgirl, who along with the Vietnamese chef and the Congolese sous chef, lent the joint a transworld sensibility that made it a favorite among the painfully global darlings of O’Malley House. The bus-girl found a pad and started totting up numbers, then keyed them into a Point-of-Sale terminal, which juiced Art’s comm with an accounting for their lunch. This business with hand-noting everything before entering it into the PoS had driven Art to distraction when he’d first encountered it. He’d assumed that the terminal’s UI was such that a computer-illiterate busgirl couldn’t reliably key in the data without having it in front of her, and for months he’d cited it in net-bullshit sessions as more evidence of the pervasive user-hostility that characterized the whole damned GMT.

He’d finally tried out his rant on the counterman, one foreigner to another, just a little Briton-bashing session between two refugees from the Colonial Jackboot. To his everlasting surprise, the counterman had vigorously defended the system, saying that he liked the PoS data-entry system just fine, but that the stack of torn-off paper stubs from the busgirl’s receipt book was a good visualization tool, letting him eyeball the customer volume from hour to hour by checking the spike beside the till, and the rubberbanded stacks of yellowing paper lining his cellar’s shelves gave him a wonderfully physical evidence of the growing success of his little eatery. There was a lesson there, Art knew, though he’d yet to codify it. User mythology was tricky that way.

The digital copy let me grep, copy, paste, and reference that passage. If it weren’t that easily accessible, i wouldn’t have bothered referencing it because i know that the reader of my email will not have read (?or even heard of?) the book. But i could actually put the relevant bits into the conversation, make a reference and a recommendation all at once. With ease.

I’m not going to give up my paper copy. But oh is it nice to have both the digital and the physical. How i long for the authors of all of my other books to wake up and give me that option.