Speaking up at BlogHer.

At the last session of the conference, I finally spoke up.  It had been an awful lot of listening for me.  I'm not a great networker.  I'm good with strangers--say once we are at dinner--but not when there are 700 people around a pool.  Aack!  Quick, where are my co-workers and where are the people they know?  Ooh, is that Dooce?

So at the final panel, Next Level Naked, towards the end, I finally spoke up.  You can follow the conversation the preceded it on a couple different blogs.  Both Liz Henry at Huffington Post and Lynn d Johnson blogged it in detail, actually they made transcripts more than just blogging it.  (I actually hung out with Lynn on the first night of BlogHer, so maybe I'm not as socially inept as I think.)

I was responding to an Arab Muslim blogger who said she gets drive by flamed on her blog just for being Muslim.  A bit later, Jory gave me the mike and I talked about being a Jewish blogger and being forced into blogging about politics.  It is a realm I don't know enough about, but there is an expectation that I blog about politics.  I talked about how my personal blogging and trying to stay true to that bumps up against my new job at Edelman.  It was blogging that opened the door, but I always have in the back of my head, "Oh, you have that new job." 

Later, I actually overheard people talking about my comment--talking positively about my comments.  Overall, people seemed to think it was brave to stand up in a room of liberal bloggers and say, "I love Israel, I love the land, I don't understand the politics fully, I'm not afriad to say I don't know, but it hurts when my readers flame me about Israel." 

And one of the final comments was from a Saudi Arabian blogger who can't win for trying--she said she knew exactly how I felt.  She gets flamed by the Saudi's for expressing any negative emotions and flamed by non-Saudi's if she is positive about something.  Positive = tool of the Saudi government and frustrated = telling them too much.

I started to cry a little and was shaking after I spoke.  I never let those emotions come out before--because getting upset over blogging sometimes seem silly to me.  But after being surrounded by so many bloggers who are also tied up with their blogs, I guess the blogging feelings that get hurt are real feelings.

And naked blogging means it is probably okay to cry.

P.S.  The panelists were great.  Mecca Ibrahim, Lauren Bruce (who is now blogging anonymously,) and the always funny Maryam Scoble. 

tags: ibrahim  scoble  blogher06  blogher  naked  

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