Being Amber Rhea

There’s been some discussion going on about sex bloggers within the larger social media community. See Graydancer’s post about his experience at the BlogWorld Expo, and Melissa Gira’s Sexerati post from today. (Why yes, they are both session leaders at Sex 2.0, why do you ask?)

In a perfect world, none of it would make a damn bit of difference. This would all be a non-issue. We wouldn’t even be able to conceive of it as an issue.

On one hand I feel stupid writing about this at all… like I shouldn’t be writing about it because what do I know, and it’ll just look like I’m co-opting other people’s experiences. I’m not a current or former sex worker, I’m not a sexuality educator, I’m not a “big name” in social media or sex… so what am I even talking about? But, I do have my experiences to draw from, so that is what I’m talking about. And I need to push through these feelings about not being good enough, because otherwise I’d be contradicting one of my fundamental beliefs about blogging: that we’ve all got a story to tell, and yes, it’s important.

In comments on her post, Melissa says:

[T]he way sex is being changed by the internet, and how it effects people outside the sexblogosphere, is so much bigger and more important than how any of us is treated at a conference. Yes, it’s a drag to be looked down on, but look who’s doing the looking-down-on. Compare that treatment with the stigma we face outside the web scene. How does it, as a million guys in striped shirts have said before me, scale?

Bigger and more important?

I don’t think so, because I don’t think the two realms - sexblogosphere and offline “everything else” world - can be so easily separated. As any of us who are at all involved in social media can attest, social media is contributing in a major way to the breaking down arbitrary barriers. And on a more fundamental level, I don’t think sexuality and the rest of one’s life can or should be easily separated.

I do understand that, in the offline world, being unashamed about your sexuality can have more immediate consequences, and the world in general can be much more cruel. It depends on where you live, too; I bet offline sex culture in San Francisco is different from in Atlanta. But little by little, we’ve got to keep chipping away at this stuff, otherwise no changes will ever be realized offline.

Okay, I feel like I got off on a Theory Tangent there. Ugh, sorry about that. Here’s what I originally meant to say about Melissa’s comment/question…

The purpose of my blog is for me to write about what I want, simple as that. Of course, I’d be lying if I said I don’t impose any filters on it; I’m writing in public about real people, after all, and the intersection of my life with the lives of everyone else I know is always something I’m trying to negotiate properly. But the main thing is, I don’t have a blog so that I can get a message out, or serve some “greater purpose,” or fill the gaps left by old media, or anything like that. Some people do have blogs for those reasons and more, and that’s great; that’s their choice. It’s just not my reason for blogging.

As such, to me, it doesn’t make sense to pose the question of “how does this compare to how other people are treated in other settings?” It’s a non-sequitur. Yes, lots of people are treated poorly in lots of situations. And that sucks. But, what are you* going to do about it? You can’t fix all of it. You can’t even focus on all of it. So why not focus on where you can have a real impact and make a difference? I know it might sound trite, but I really do believe that you start changing the world by making small changes in your own life and in the lives of those around you.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable of me to be offended if someone blows me off the instant they find out I write about sex. That’s not okay, and I certainly should call them out on their bullshit. Look what happened with that BlogNetNews guy. He wanted to build a nice ghetto I mean “special aggregator” for me and mine, ’cause we weren’t fit to mingle with all the serious bloggers. (But even the serious bloggers could get away with writing about sex, as long as the blogger in question was a man.)

-I just realized this post has gotten long, and I haven’t said much. I feel jumbled. I don’t know where I’m going with this. In my head, it was all nice and coherent. Melissa said I “always nail issues of community & sex blogging so well” - guess I didn’t live up to that expectation this time! But, just… I’ve experienced what Graydancer talks about, and at this point I’m starting to lose count of how many times it’s happened. And it’s part of why I’m wondering if I’ll lead the PodCamp Atlanta effort again next year (although that warrants a separate post). I’m just not willing to do the compartmentalization thing, and I’m not okay with being typecast and/or labeled as less relevant because of it.

Sorry for this hodge-podge of a post.

* generic “you”