((look for accessible archies and early american newspapers through your library for online versions of these paper)

Revise first sentence to say:

Last summer, 2004, a few of my friends and I drove up from LA to go to a blogging party and we had a blast on the road trip, meeting new people, and wandering around SF.

I am now trying to round up the gang for a road trip this summer to BlogHer. Get out of LA, take a drive, listen to new cds, meet new people, stay at a hotel, have an adventure, talk about technology, drive back again.

What could be wrong with that? Sounds like fun to me. This time we will leave Greg at home, but Tom is welcome to join us again…

smiles, jen ;o)

I indicated what I would do, by telling what I have done. I don’t have the green power to attend conferences, and little interest, so I’m of no help on that score.

As far as agendas, I indicated on my blog.

A little about me, Barb..

My older Sister’s kids have hypenated names and my younger Sisters have a middle name of one and last name of another (so the two have different last names). The younger said she’d probably do things differently because of the confusion, but it seemed important at the time.

No..

..I can’t be my Sisters’ Sister, but can only be their Brother. Why don’t you visit parts of Pakistan or Africa to get a better feel what sexism is like? And how’s your attempt to walk in the shoes of 21st Century male coming, btw?

One thing about the comments in blogs is, depending on how the moderator wields the power, it can be a place where the power of the talking stick is shared. Don’t see where you had trouble finding the space here to lambast me, in error, btw.

Me being a man, guess that’s no problemo to you… …

@ JJT – Since I won’t have time to attend the conf, and since I’m not in possession of the ability to speak for all women who might attend it, I couldn’t very well say — though I highly doubt it. Speaking for myself, I can safely say those words were not directed at someone identifying as male who might possibly attend the conference, rather they were directed at someone, regardless of gender identification, taking issue with the conference’s very right to exist. As Melissa rightly points out, it’s ultimately about power, and about female-identified persons feeling the need to have some space and time to sit down together and discuss why we more often than not have to forcibly grab the talking stick rather than having it freely passed to us. I’d wager a guess that any male-identified person who is interested in furthering that agenda is more than welcome at the conf.

This is the source of the frustration I spoke of above – I’m so tired of having to have this same damn conversation every time women struggle to establish space. Seems that a lot of folks very suddenly concerned with gender inequality come out of the woodwork who are conspicuously absent when things like etech with 3% female representation (or whatever abysmal figure it is) are going on. If you’re really so concerned with gender inequality, you’re going to have to actually do something about it other than griping about how women want to have a conference, and you’re also going to have to realize that BlogHerCon will come and go without society having suddenly shifting to a matriarchy overnight. It’s difficult enough to actually establish the space, much less have to justify the desire to have the space in the first place every single time.

Just wondering…

Bloghercon isn’t calling for some sort of biological, blogger-based essentialism: ie, the cunts are disempowered and must rally together to fight that. (Essentialism, one can argue, is a product of patriarchy, and just another tool to divide and conquer.) It’s not about women; it’s about power.

I.e., this is not about calling out those with dicks, but about imbalances of power. (And not all with dicks are men, but that’s another story…) Not about choosing The Pants Door vs. Skirts Door when taking a piss, but about imbalances of power. Not about a buck to our 82 cents, but imbalances of power. The dicks, the Pants Door, and the dollar are not the problem. Power is why dicks, the Pants Door, and the dollar signify anything, and often, why what they signify is trouble to the female-bodied and female-gendered.

(In school words: This is about systematic, structural oppression and disenfranchisement, that puts all but the manliest, whitest, and wealthiest at increasingly distant margins. Why some men are “worth” more than others in this culture, as well.)

It’s a sexist world, a sexist USA, a sexist media, a sexist blogosphere — no surprises there. What’s surprising to me is that even though this medium grew up from such “anyone can say anything, aren’t we all equal now!” values, that anyone still, five, seven years now on out, still believes that.