I have a much more extensive post on this topic at BlogHer today: Gender diversity at web conferences | BlogHer. Read it there.
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I have a much more extensive post on this topic at BlogHer today: Gender diversity at web conferences | BlogHer. Read it there.
Hi, Virginia. Thanks for your comments and thoughts. I would’ve posted this over at BlogHer but I don’t have an account there, and this probably isn’t the best time for me to obtain one.
So I want to say two things. One, I feel like what I originally said was badly misinterpreted by a number of people. You may be among them. I was saying in my original post that I strive to be and essentially am blind to gender, ethnicity, skin tone, sexual orientation, religion, handedness, and a whole slew of other categories– not just in daily life, but when I pick speakers.
Somehow, that’s been taken as me saying that only white men are qualified to be speakers, that the old boy club is just fine. I said almost the exact opposite. Most commenters have understood that, but not everyone. For that, I apologize, because the way I wrote about the topic allowed that misunderstanding to happen. But it bothers me that a number people I respect– and you are among them– took away a different message, a message almost completely antithetical to what I said and what I believe.
Two, my “thinking again” post may not be the kind of thinking again you think it is. I could not possibly have captured everything I thought and felt in a book, let alone a post. Everything I said in that post is utter (occasionally raw) truth. It’s just ambiguous, and a lot of people are seeing things in it that aren’t so.
There would be irony there, except with the second post, I knew that would be the case. It was a necessary catharsis anyway.
I hope that, among those who have been upset and disappointed by my original post, I will have the chance to continue to converse, and to have us all learn by that conversation.
Thanks for your comments, Eric. I certainly read and respect anything you have to say. That’s why I was quick to point to both your first and second thoughts on this topic. I hope people will read both your posts in full and not form judgments based on the snippets getting quoted here and elsewhere. It’s very hard to be correctly understood in print when emotions get involved, and your comments here help clarify for me what you were trying to say.