How to measure the utility function of the Internet; OR why we flock here, my fellow birds

After my husband completed his architecture degree, he conceded what the rest of us had known for a while: his interests were broader. When he decided to pursue another degree, this time in economics, a lot of people were surprised. What's economics got to do with architecture? Everything.

Architecture considers what the people demand, how to supply and fulfill that demand, and how to balance the environmental and space needs with the human demand. Architects use natural and created elements to manipulate space, light, dark, and shadow. What they create is not simply a structure, but is also a reflection of who we are as a culture:

Architectural works are perceived as cultural and political symbols and works of art. Historical civilizations are often known primarily through their architectural achievements. Such buildings as the pyramids of Egypt and the Roman Colosseum are cultural symbols, and are an important link in public consciousness, even when scholars have discovered much about a past civilization through other means. Cities, regions and cultures continue to identify themselves with and are known by their architectural monuments.

According to Lionel Robbins, economics is, "the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses."

Economics---resources, ends, supply, demand, means which have alternative uses---is the foundation in many ways for the types of architecture a culture and society produce. To my mind, there is a natural marriage among architecture, economics and sociology.

(Consider what our main architecture in the US reflects about our society, and its economics.)

Considering how these fields work together corporeally, I am not at all surprised that the same titles and principles have been employed in the technological---or cyber---world.

System architects perceive the three dimensional overall structure. They consider space and demand much as building architects consider it. When architects designed and engineers built the Internet, they did so because of an economic problem called scarcity.

"Scarcity means that available resources are insufficient to satisfy all wants and needs. Absent scarcity and alternative uses of available resources, there is no economic problem." (Source: Wikipedia)

These forward-thinking designers perceived the scarcity of a needed means of sharing and collecting information, noted the increasing demand for this, and observed that available resources had been maxed out.

Therefore, they incredibly thought of and created...the Internet.

Is the Internet as lasting and concrete as the Pyramids?

Only time will tell, but for now, it fulfills as culturally important a role as the Pyramids did.

At this point the Internet---as with a building---is in the hands of the users. You and I are now the architects of this space. We are maximizing its utility function, generating a high util measurement.

A utility function, as per Stephen Carter, is "a measure of a consumer's preferences expressed by the amount of satisfaction he or she receives from consumption of a set of desired goods or services."

I believe we receive a high degree of satisfaction from our use of the Internet, thus it is our preference, and the demand and supply curves would show dramatic rises---particularly in the social sector.

Carter goes on to say, "Economic theory assumes that people make rational efforts to maximize their utility. Sometimes one person's utility is dependent on another's."

And there we hit just past the how to the why: why are we so satisfied by the Internet, why are we so driven to it instead of to our corporeal society, and why does our demand continue to increase?

The reason we turn to the Internet is because of scarcity; we lack in our corporeal life the resources to fulfill our needs.

Why is that scarcity there, and why do we apply our own personal resources to developing goods and services that fulfill demand on the Internet instead of in corporeal life?

I say simply it is because of preference and satisfaction.

As the architects of our space, with a broader group of resources to draw upon, more market choice and 24/7 availability, it's easy to see the appeal.

It's also easy to apply the science. It's harder to apply the human element, which is the base of all of this.

So let me apply my human element, and you tell me if this is your why, too.

I don't live where I'm from. I'm surrounded by a lot of people who live here but also are not from here. Within our personal similarities are cultural differences, and vice versa. These can lead to misunderstandings, and because we do not know one another so well (through a lifetime), agendas and motives might also be misunderstood or hard to grasp, at least. Our relationships---which range from barely know to nodding acquaintances to social buddy to friend to close friend---don't go back very far or very deep. Out of need, we form quick intimacies, which occasionally lead to sharer's regret. We dance an awkward country line, coming together and drifting back apart as our lives, schedules, personal demands, and emotional issues and needs come into play.

I'm used to this. I attended four elementary schools (in six years), two junior highs (in three years), and one high school (in three years). By the time I hit high school, I wasn't at all enamored of our location, and after repeated pleas for boarding school somewhere northeast fell on deaf ears, I made the best of it, knowing it would all be behind me in a few years. When I ran into people I knew from high school in college, it surprised me that (a) they still got together with one another and (b) they wondered why I never did.

I saw no point; they were simply people I knew. It was easy to meet people and get to know them. It's easy to create a long list of people you know. Making friends...now that's the real challenge.

If after, for example, the three years of high school you and I were still not friends, the likelihood that we would be so was slim, therefore I had little motivation to seek you out when I could easily fill my life with other people I knew but who were not friends...and who I didn't need to go out of my way to see because they were already there, crossing my path regularly. Does this sound cold and cruel? It was a lesson my life brought to me.

Longevity was not in my vocabulary. In my mind, I had moved on. I had learned by seventh grade that long-distance friendships when you are young are nearly impossible to maintain (despite a few attempts) and it's better to just bucket sections of life and let the past remain in the past and move on to the future.

Although I think this cheats me (and some people I know) in some ways, I also think it better equips me to deal with the modern life I think most of us lead.

Our lives are completely portable now.

Jobs transfer us, opportunity far away beckons, even if we stay where we are, our friends and neighbors often move. People simply don't settle as they once did.

We also don't live out of homes in any sort of consistent fashion, as we once did.

I recall one halcyon neighborhood where we lived from about 1974 to 1978, or so. My father was, at the time, a Captain in the Army, and he had transferred from the active service to the reserves. He had an MBA and loads of skills from his military service, including how to deal with traumatized people. This all goes far in the corporate world. Therefore, he easily got a great job that came with stability as a benefit. So for these years, in this neighborhood, all the moms were stay at home moms and all the dads were home by 5 p.m. During the summer, the kids rotated through the houses and yards on the cul-de-sac with occasional forays to the convenience store for PopRocks and baseball card gum. During the school year, we walked (without parents) to the local elementary school in a big pack. In the afternoons the moms sat out front and the kids rode bikes and played and screamed like banshees. On Fridays we gathered at one neighbor's house and made homemade pizza. Adults ate in the dining room and the kids ate in the kitchen, then we resumed the outdoor playing. On the weekends someone hosted a barbecue. Once a week my mother took me and my sister to ballet. Now and again, I went home with a school friend. On the whole, though, our life revolved around and within our little neighborhood.

Somehow, for some reason, all of us hit this one space at this one time and were in sync. But this didn't surprise any of us. At the time, we expected it. That's typically how life was.

Now, finding that is unusual.

The world seems so much more dynamic. And I say that coming from a very dynamic childhood! But, I was the unusual one, you should understand. Everywhere I moved I was an anomaly, The New Kid. When I tried to go back to my last place, I found that while my departure had initially created a hole, it had quickly closed up, and we were all awkward with my de trop presence. When I tried to fit in to the new place, I found the same thing.

In general, I made friends with the few other transients. We all had the same sort of mentality: finish out the sentence in this location, then get our personal belongings, catch a bus and move on the the next place.

As I said, by high school we had all realized that friends are usually the here and now, not so much BFF as BFFN (best friends for now). Mr. Right? No, Mr. Right Now.

A boy I dated in high school kept talking about the future. I'd hum and haw, plead youth, and finally one day I said, "Seriously, neither of us even knows where we'll be in a year much less what we'll be doing...how can you think and plan about the future this way?"

It was a shock to him. He had lived in the same house in the same neighborhood in the same town since birth. Life, from his vantage, was stable, predictable, plannable. Foundations were solid. You could count on the essential elements always being in place.

I saw life as something you responded to more than controlled.

And so, this current life---of people coming and going; companies changing names and merging and diverging every six months; schedules always on different patterns and rarely crossing; taking friendship where you find it and knowing it will likely end in some way when your paths diverge---is no surprise to me, although I suspect it is for some people.

With little depth and history to our relationships, the investment in each other is, I theorize, lesser. Additionally, the personal demands within life are greater. Therefore, I believe the limit on what we can offer to one another emotionally, as support or going out of our way, is lesser. In fact, I don't know that this is a strong value within our society any longer. As Gwen recently said during our school discussion, there is a high value placed on individualism, and at what cost to society as a whole?

The problem is, the need doesn't decrease.

We still need those friendships, that place you go where everybody knows your name, where you can find friendship and support---and we expect much of it. Because we know there must be someone out there just like me or in my same boat, we seek that at times.

I believe more than ever in an increasingly diverse world, we crave similarity. More than ever in an increasingly mobile and dynamic world, we crave stability.

The Internet offers that.

Bloggers can move countries and that is transparent to us! (Yes, I am referencing Joy.) Our different patterns of life and complicated schedules are transparent. The amazingly and increasingly complex world---with more and more objects demanding our attention and the instant and constant accessibility we carry with us everywhere---that can overwhelm our senses are, ironically, quieter on the Internet.

In the dead of night or quiet of morning, at nap time, lunch time, whatever time we find, we can sit, and focus our thoughts into written communication of needs and ideas...uninterrupted. We can respond to one another in the same way.

We can control our investment, how close or how far we get with other people.

We are the architects of our socialization on the Internet.

We create the demand, maximize our utility, allow online social networks to succeed by our preferences and satisfaction received, and the demand grows. At some point there must be some market clearing, equilibrium...or maybe not.

Why do we prefer this? Because it's here on our time and on our terms. It provides goods and services we can't find in our daily life. And why doesn't daily life provide this? Because as our specific demand and expectations of need fulfillment grow, our sense of community and societal cohesion shrinks, ironically, through the expansion of the world.

Moreover, rather than simply having to dig deep sometimes or move on, however unfulfilling that might feel at first, on the Internet, we can feed whatever our need is, endlessly. The near infinite level of supply, through rotable people,keeps our emotions feeling as fat and happy our our middle-class bellies.

My thesis was: Support and sympathy can understandably be in short supply in daily life. If I find myself impatient with my own lingering problems, I can only imagine how my friends---with equally full and busy lives---run out of top priority space for my issues. It's no surprise then that sympathy runs out or is distracted before need ends. The Internet offers an unending supply of near-endless support. But that's not the only reason I turn to it for friendship...

So how would you respond to this question? How do you respond to my answer?

Copyright 2007 Julie Pippert
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To Market, To Market We Go

The university I attended required all incoming freshman in the College of Communications to take a gut course, COM 101.

Memorable mostly for its 8 a.m. starting time, the class supposedly cut across all mass communications disciplines.

I spent many of the sessions sitting in the back of the room - a movie theater, actually - doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, recklessly, in ink.

The theories floated by our professors had ridiculous names like "The Cool Hand Luke Theory" and the "Hypodermic Needle Theory."

However, one morning I happened to be paying attention when it was stated that the future of communications would be based on one intangible commodity: information.

A marketplace of ideas, the professors said, would come to exist with the help of miles and miles of fiber-optic cable, connecting the entire "global village."

Ha! Can you imagine? This was waaaay back in 1989. We didn't have email and I saved all my papers on a floppy disc inserted into my Mac Classic.

But lo and behold, this theory, which seemed so laughable to me, has come to exist and nowhere is that more evident than in the explosion of blogs.

My Google homepage has a widget that gives me access to The New York Times online, and lately no less than three of the headlines splashed across my screen are links to blogs published by the nation's newspaper.

Incredible! Here, side by side with me, is The New York Times.

Self-publishing via blogs revolutionized how I read. Never before have I had access to so many voices, experiences, races, ethnicities and geographies. My site statistics file shows flickers of interest from Hong Kong, Australia and Europe.

Where my point of view was once limited to my local newspaper, television and nationally published periodicals, I can now access information, news and analysis from all over the globe, with little effort.

This revolution allows writers who would previously go unread the ability to reach out and promote their work, in some cases - like mine - driving some revenue, however small, from words they drafted on a lark.

While I won't get into the debate on the relationship between marketing and bloggers, I do believe that bloggers are, indeed, major influencers in the marketplace. Never before have we had the opportunity to harness the power of so many visions and voices to make changes not only in the world of capitalism, but in the world at large.

We must act fast, before the horse runs away without the rider. We must look, learn, read, discern and recognize the power laid out before us.

Now is our time.

Blogging - redefining friendship in the 2.0 world

How is blogging like keeping a pen-pal? Is it at all? Let's see: you can keep in touch, cross continents. There is often dialogues and confessions. Conversations are as likely to be continued via email, person to person, once contacts and trust has been established. It is arguably more convenient, also. One can choose to leave comments or not. One can choose not even to visit a blog or not anymore. That arguably leaves less evidence than of a hand-written relationship; of papers left in drawers, aged epistles which are proof of the owner’s lack of depth or patience.

I have a secret. When I was in primary school, there was an initiative to begin a pen-pal program with kids in America. Sexes were split between hats and our future correspondent was drawn as a lottery-- about as random a start to a relationship as any. Thus, many, I’m certain, were doomed from the start. Mine sure was. I do not remember much about my pen-pal, except that she lived in Ohio, and had the roundest, happiest writing I have ever seen and for years after associated with the personality of Americans as a whole. Did I respect her though? No. It was the writing; I have long had mistrust for people with nice penmanship (as those with appalling penmanship, like me, tend to do). So every time I got a letter on that pastel pink paper, peppered with love-hearts instead of dots on the ‘i’s, it made my young blood boil. Would it now? No.

But now I have other tastes to discriminate with.

If I am perusing new blogs and am in less than a benevolent mood, I could (and have) spent a good few minutes coveting their design, their owner’s ability to photoshop, their spacial abilities to be able to fit all their images and accoutrement's into the coding matrix. I can on mine, don't get me wrong, but that’s only because I paid someone to set it up to my liking in the first place. I sometimes feel like a fraud. I feel like I’m one of those domineering (male) bosses in those old movies, dictating speeches and letters to a secretary who is madly typing nearby, being the facilitator of information. What exactly have I done on my blog that is completely unique?

Which brings us to ‘voice’. Of course, our ‘voice’ is our own. No-one’s blog can be exactly like another for that reason. But I adulterate my voice at times, so how can my ‘friendships’ that are based upon the words which I write be fully legitimate? It’s like I’m friendly with ghosts, and they’re friendly with a simulacrum of me. I can see why such conferences as Blogher, then, are so vitally important. They give bloggers a chance to socialise face-to-face; in the ‘old-fashioned’ way. I’m sitting here, on the underside of the planet, where I guess I feel safe to wonder such things, but I wonder what women get out of meeting fellow bloggers? Do any get pinched by the little gremlin of jealousy? Of envy? Of awe? Do they get out of the experience all that they’ve hoped for?

I must admit; I've struggled this week. I've returned from a month's holiday, from (enforced and situational) unplugging. So, if I read your blog, you might've noticed I've not been around for a while. Or have you?

So the other night, I sat down to hundreds and hundreds of unread feeds from my favourite blogs. Do you know what I felt? Dread. A weight of unconquerable labour was gently massaging my head, about to drop completely. Could I really sift through all these posts? Did I want to? These people were my 'friends'. What did I do? I hit 'delete all'*; taking me back to nothingness.

It was a relief: so what in the hell kind of friend am I?



It doesn't seem I've changed very much from when I was a child, abandoning my long-distance pen-pal, does it? I would never knock on a RL friend's door after a month's absence, poke my head through, ask her what she's been up to for the past month, and when she's about to reply, I just put up my hand and say, "Hang on, not interested. Let's just continue our friendship from...now." So why do I do it online? And why am I confessing this secret here, where many of you are my friends, and I am fully expecting an irate retaliation (which I may or may not deserve).

What kind of friend are you? Do you do the same? How do you justify your blogging practice? Or have you been more sensible than I and decided not to follow any sort of self-imposed policy?

Or do you suspect, as I do, that I think way too much about all this. Fullstop. Period.



*On about 75% of them, as it turned out. I checked. But it's still a lot!

Crossposted at Miscellaneous Adventures of an Aussie Mum. Forgive me if I don't respond to comments today. I will be in at the Melbourne Writer's Festival and won't return until later. Then I will.

Lifting the Veil of the Inner Blogologue.

"This will make for a great blog post."
"I am so blogging this."
"Well, at least I got a good blog out of it."

I cringe when I hear these statements. Such hyper-self-awareness makes me uncomfortable. Why? Aaah, because we hate in others that which we loathe in ourselves.

Frequently, more so than I would like to admit, I find myself composing blog posts in my head about an event which I am still in the middle of experiencing. Think of me like Harold Crick, played by Will Ferrell, in "Stranger than Fiction," only my narrator has more of a Southern accent and less of a charming British one. And let me tell you, it is distracting.

A veil of creativity drops before our eyes. We begin to see our
experiences through the thin veil of our blog. We recognize perfect "sound bites." We spot ideal illustrative pictures. We start composing. And if we aren't mindful, we slightly disengage, lost in our own heads.

Perhaps more to the point, then, think of me as Zach Braff's character, Dr. John "J.D." Dorian, on NBC's "Scrubs." While narrating his life in his head, he sometimes gets this faraway look on his face, absorbed in his own self-analysis, and misses what is happening right in front of him. Much to the annoyance of the people around him, I should add. Ahem.

This past Easter was the first with my blog. Toward the end of our family Easter activities, my two year old son began dismembering his very first jumbo chocolate bunny, an occasion worth capturing in photographs for our family album, to be sure. However, as I was snapping away, my husband said to me, under his breath, "You are taking that picture for your blog, aren't you?" I looked up, grateful to see that he was smirking, but felt the warm rush of a blush coming to my face. I was taking this particular picture, a closeup of the gnawed bunny ear, for my blog. Busted.

The first time of many in which I would be busted during an inner blogologue, that being a blog-centric inner monologue.

We all do it. And we can see when others are doing it, too, if we are fortunate enough to be IRL friends with other bloggers, or conventional writers, for that matter. Sometimes they will confirm it outright, other times you can see it in their eyes. They are composing. If we are competitive, we start counter-composing, trying to find the other angle, the more clever turn. If we are credible, we don't start directing.

On the heels of the BlogHer conference, you can almost see it happening in the pictures. You can see the blogging wheels turning. Look at enough Flickr albums and you will begin to recognize the blog-posts-in-progress, as they were at the time. Some bloggers might as well have written the imagined future post titles on their foreheads for future reference.

Is there something disingenuous about this behavior? Does it lend a sense of insincerity to the eventual post when it's not written on the fly at your keyboard? Maybe that is why I blushed when my husband caught me taking pictures for my blog and not solely for our family album. Perhaps on some level, I want my audience to believe that I never consider my blog other than during the moments when I am actually writing. My life and my blog as two separate streams, meeting only during the time that I am writing. But should "writing" be limited to the minutes during which my fingers are tapping keys?

Frequently, we come across blog posts about the internet connection of a fellow blogger having been down and that blogger having gone a little cabin-feverish with unwritten blog posts mounting in their heads as their usual outlet is unavailable. The blog infiltrates, the veil drops. And we compose.

All of the previous questions aside, I know the answer to the following question: Does my inner blogologue cause me to disengage, even a little, from the events I am currently experiencing? The answer is "yes." The veil of creativity lowers and I know I am not in the moment as much as I was only seconds before. Yet, I can't help it. Or I don't want to.

Consider your child's birthday party. You spend hours, if not days, planning every detail. You revel in the excitement and embrace the hopefulness of the anticipation. Then the day comes, the guests arrive, all of your plans begin to fall seemingly effortlessly into place as everyone is clearly enjoying themselves. It would be a shame to forget this day, so you pick up the camera, whether it be your still camera or your video camera, or goodness forbid-- both, and you start trying to capture these magical moments for your (probably largely unaware) toddler.

You pat yourself on the back for the beautiful shots you are catching. You can already see the pride on your spouse's face when you show them your clever angles and perfect moments. You are getting it all down, all the smiles, all the surprises, all of it. Well, all of it except for one small detail: you. Days later, you'll frown when you realize that you aren't in any of the pictures.

Just as the lowering of the blogging veil temporarily separates us from the events about which we plan to write, the lens of the camera can cut us off from that which we are so intent on capturing. Sometimes it is only after the fact that we realize our peripheral vision was more severely inhibited than we noticed at the time. We hear a funny anecdote about that birthday party and think, "Where was I? Oh yeah, I was taking pictures across the room."

The camera limits your vision to what can be seen directly in front of your lens. Your inner blogologue splits your engagement between the event as it is happening in your head and as it is happening in your real life. Can you not write your life and live it, too?

The opposite could be argued, however. You could say that knowing that you are going to write about something in your blog gives you a different perspective as you are experiencing it, allowing you to see it from different angles. Something that might normally push you over the edge loses some of its own edge because you can see the humor in the situation, as it will be written. Hell, you might even reenact some of it so that you can catch that picture that will send the post right over into hilarity. That is, if you don't just grab your camera as it is happening. All for the sake of the blog. And maybe a bit of your sanity. Yes, an argument I can understand.

More than ever, we are living in our own heads. The crazy thing is that by doing so, we are consequently engaging with others more than ever. What would have been a funny story between you and your spouse is now a funny story between you, your spouse, and your audience. Do we sacrifice an amount of our engagement for a later prolonged enjoyment of the event? Possibly, though not deliberately. Is that a negative thing? You tell me.

The next time the veil of your inner blogologue begins to lower, take notice. Do you stop it? Do you embrace it? Does anyone else notice? Are you embarrassed if they do? Does this, overall, enhance our experiences in the long run?

Just as I am grateful for our albums full of photographs, albeit mostly without me in them, I know I will be grateful for my blog years from now. Sacrifices of time and engagement be damned. Lower the veil again so that I may see and record and remember.

* * * * * * *
Velveteen Mind

Race and Collaborative Blogging

I'm Glennia, a guest poster here this week. I am a Korean-American, the product of a Caucasian father and a Korean mother. For my entire life, I've embraced the duality of my heritage, faced being the "Asian girl" in my all-white school in Ohio, and the "white girl" when visiting my relatives Korea. I am always checking "Other" on government forms when asked about my race. I am the perpetual "other."


I started my blog, The Silent I, nearly two years ago, to share information about a Katrina relief trip that I took with my friend, Jill Asher. After the torrent of words and stories spilled out, I realized how much I loved writing. I then started blogging the stories of our family travels, the small details of places and people we met. I blogged so that I would not forget. I blogged to capture memories for my son to read when he grows up, when the places we've been to as a family are only distant echoes to him. I am an observer and storyteller, bearing witness to the small details and nuances of life.


After blogging on my own for a while, I started to contribute to two collaborative blogs. As a mixed race person, it is probably only fitting that I contribute to two very different group blogs, one with a Korean-theme and the other made up of primarily Caucasian women who live in Silicon Valley. My experiences with these two communities have been as different as the two sides of my heritage.


Kimchi Mamas is collaborative blog of women with ties to Korea. Stumbling upon this blog and "meeting" the Kimchi Mamas on-line was like being reunited with some long-lost relatives, people I pined for, but didn't actually know. The site has been a place where I can read about current events in Korea, Korean culture, and stories of growing up hapa in a world that defines us as one thing or another. The blog sits at the intersection of culture and parenting, dealing with parental struggles to keep the best parts of our culture and instill a respect of our Korean heritage in our children. We often talk about race and culture on Kimchi Mamas, and have open threads for readers to discuss the things that are on their minds. We've had racists attacks that lead to people being banned, but for the most part, it's a lively, respectful discussion.


Recently, I shared a story with the Kimchi Mamas on helping my mom study to become a US citizen when I was 8 years old. It was a memory that I cherish, an experience that shapes much of my outlook on citizenship, social responsibility, and my identity as a Korean-American. I knew that I could share it there, with other children of immigrants and and they would understand. I received numerous comments from readers, sharing their own citizenship stories or their memories of helping parents and grandparents study for the citizenship exam, and comments from people who are thinking about becoming citizens themselves. On my personal blog, when I cross-posted the same story, I got comments like, "That was a nice story." The difference was that the Kimchi Mamas related to the story on a deeply personal level; my blog readers read it as just another observation.


I think at Kimchi Mamas, many of us find a community that we don't find in our daily lives, and a safe place to discuss things that others in our social spheres might not understand. I had dinner with two other Kimchi Mamas a few months ago, and one of them remarked, "I think this is the biggest gathering of Korean-Caucasian hapa women I've ever been to!"


It seemed funny that three people would be a large gathering, but true. There aren't many places where you find large communities of mixed-race people, but when we do get together, there is an instant recognition, a familiarity that comes from being the perpetual "other." There is a twenty year age gap between myself and the youngest Kimchi Mama, but I find that the experiences of all of them resonate with me, even if lives have been completely different from each other.


The Silicon Valley Moms Blog is a collaborative blog that a couple of friends of mine started about the same time as Kimchi Mamas. The writers are predominately white and middle class, with several Asian moms in the mix (though the founders have tried to recruit other moms of color to contribute). In the SV Moms Blog, the things we have in common are a location and the fact that we are all mothers. There are a number of different points of view represented on all different issues. For the most part, the postings are funny stories about being a less-than-perfect parent and the crazy place we call home, along with some topical stories thrown in for discussion. The community aspect of the blog is apparent when we get together in person, and in off-line discussions.


On SV Moms, Race is rarely a topic that is discussed, and when it has been, it has been somewhat incendiary, as Jason mentioned in his posting. There are postings that I relate to, and some I can't fathom at all. I don't have the same sense of cohesion and community that I have with Kimchi Mamas, but I enjoy reading the various points of view that come across on SV Moms. I can't say that I "know" who the readers are in the same way that I have gotten to know the Kimchi Mama readers from their frequent comments.


When Kelly of Mocha Momma raised her question at BlogHer in the "State of the Momosphere" session and asked why advertisers don't solicit help from bloggers of color, it occured to me that I get solicited by advertisers fairly regularly on my personal blog and via the SV Moms, but have never seen a request come through Kimchi Mamas. It wasn't something that I thought of previously, and figured that maybe one of the other Kimchi Mamas were handling any requests for these types of things, or the group had decided not to accept any advertising beyond the BlogHer ads. Then, Stefania spoke up and said that Kimchi Mamas has not received any marketing requests. At the time, I felt like I was gobsmacked in the head with a big old reality check.


I sat in that session and tried to wrap my head around this information. I was wondering why I get solicited to try products, but the Kimchi Mamas blog does not. Is it because I have an Anglo name? I don't hide the fact that I'm half-Korean on my blog, but I don't have many pictures of myself, and it's not the subject of every blog post. I see that as part of my identity as writer, mother, wife, citizen, traveler, lawyer, and all the other aspects of myself. It is perhaps the singular thing that defines me at my core: person of mixed-race, always balancing between two worlds.


Kimchi Mamas has about ten times the number of readers than my personal blog does, and a much more devoted fan-base. We have regular readers and commenters there that are as much a part of the life of the blog as the contributors . The Silicon Valley Moms Blog gets a dozen solicitations per day from advertisers, and has a similar number of readers/page views per day as Kimchi Mamas. Why is that? Is it because the Silicon Valley Moms Blog does a better job of selling itself that Kimchi Mamas? Possibly. Or do the advertisers shy away from something that is perceived to be "too ethnic" to have broad appeal, while SV Moms are considered to be mostly white and upper middle class?


After Kelly raised her question, I now think it is the latter. I also think it is a huge mistake on the part of the advertising world to ignore the community aspects of blogs like Kimchi Mamas and Rice Daddies and the loyalty and participation they engender.


Some of the advertisers have argued back that they go with "quantitative" analysis of Technorati rankings and perceived popularity of particular blogs to determine the blog's influence. I don't think that argument holds water. If it's influence marketers are seeking, then it would seem that a qualitative analysis would be more fitting. One measure of that might be reader loyalty. How many subscribers does a blog have? How many active, repeat commenters?


Additionally, I don't think it should matter one whit if my last name is Campbell or Kim or Leung as to whether or not I would drink a particular brand of coffee or use a particular detergent. If advertisers are going to seek us out, they should solicit to us as educated and thoughtful consumers first, and as people of a particular race or background second. We can decide what is appropriate for ourselves.


I think that one of the great developments in the blogosphere over the past few years has been the emergence of sites people of color come together to share their experiences in a safe place for discussion and consideration. Aside from the ones Jason mentioned, there is Nisaa (We Are Muslim Women) and Sepia Mutiny (Indian-American). I enjoy reading those blogs because they offer insight into communities that I don't know much about, and help me better understand the world. I think advertisers miss the mark completely when they ignore the impact of these types blogs and their ability to foster community and influence readers.


Collaborative blogs allow different voices within a defined community to be heard, and allow people who are not of that particular background to gain insight and understanding. Stereotypes are harmful because they deny the essential humanity of the individual to think and act and make choices based on their own life experience. We live in a society that celebrates the "rugged individualist" and "out of the box thinker", but does everything it can to make everyone fit the same mold.


It is those individual stories and responses to the world that defy racial stereotyping and broad generalizations, but resonate deeply and build community. They are stories that need to be told. They are stories that need to be heard. Embracing those stories and communities makes them no longer other; it makes them us.

what’s race got to do with it: some thoughts on parentblogging, community and identity

This week at BlogRhet we're featuring posts and interviews and general discussion on the topic of race and identity in the blogosphere. Be sure to weigh in with your thoughts in comments, or write a post and send us the link.

TODAY: guest post by Jason of Daddy In A Strange Land and RiceDaddies; cross-posted at Daddy In A Strange Land. (Tune into to Kristen's radio show this Wednesday to hear her chat with Jason on the topic of race and blogging.)


Last week, the parentblogosphere (or at least the neighborhood I frequent) was buzzing, post-BlogHer, with HKMIC (that’s Head Kimchi Mama In Charge) CityMama/Stefania Pomponi Butler’s smackdown on clueless PR flacks trying to get mombloggers to flog their stuff for free to their highly coveted demographic. Seems that that demographic of tech-savvy, hip, acquisitive parents doesn’t include parents of color. As for the perception that PR folks don’t pitch mombloggers of color, one dude straight-up told Stefania, “You’re right. We don’t pitch to bloggers of color. We just don’t know what to do with them.”

Ummm, say what? Now, before I go too much further, let me say this. This is not about wanting to be marketed to, or to be offered swag or recognition. I mean, sure, free stuff can be nice, and knowing that folks read you is ego-boosting, but you all know I write (unfortunately) so infrequently that I’m not about to put a reviews blog on my to-do list too, and I am so technologically backwards that I couldn’t tell you any site stats to save my life. And yes, some more diverse and non-stereotypical representations of p.o.c. in media, whether fictional, non-fictional or marketing, would be nice, but that’s a “duh” proposition, and a blog topic in and of itself (as are the concomitant topics of teaching critical media literacy to our kids and combating the ill effects of rampant commercialism and capitalism on our families and communities. (Say that five times fast.) [Have I told you how much I love the Home Depot ad where the AsAm mom bribes her daughter to trick the clueless AsAm dad into wanting new a new kitchen? Or the Baskin Robbins (I think) commercial with the AsAm grandpa (or older dad? could be!) who changes the kid’s F grade to an A because the offscreen mom had promised some ice cream treat for an A, and then he busts past the kid to get to the car first? Heh. But seeing as how I can’t even remember for sure who was selling what in that one, I guess it didn’t really work on me. Oh well.]

No, this goes beyond clueless folks who don’t know how (or why) to sell to parents of color. This is about how blogging, specifically by parents about the enterprise of parenting, builds communities that both replicate and challenge boundaries of inclusion and exclusion found in “the real world.” Though a lot of talk stemming from the BlogHer incident revolves around the marketing piece, let’s bring it back to the real, deeper question that Mocha Momma posed at the beginning of the State of the Momosphere panel: “I pointedly asked if we could please discuss the lack of racial diversity in the blogrolls and communities we find ourselves in as a general topic but if we could explore issues of moms of color.” When the conversation got stuck on marketing and monetization, she tried to get it back on track, asking the marketing folks, “When will the diversity come into play?” Except for Stefania’s comments, the assembled mombloggers let the question and the topic die, ignored. And here, then, is the crux of the matter, straight from Mocha Momma:

Certainly, I am grateful to the dozens of people I spoke to after the session was over. There was a full 20 minutes of chatting with people who agreed with my comment and told me to press on and to keep fighting for women of color. I needed something else instead. I needed any of them to take the microphone and say, “Excuse me. Isn’t anyone going to answer Kelly’s question?”

Where were you, Mommybloggers? I needed you.

The concept of finding community through blogging, especially parentblogging, is an interesting and important one to me, because I started reading blogs and writing blogs because, like so many, I was looking for online community to combat offline isolation. I was a multiracial, Asian American, politically liberal, stay-at-home-dad living in a conservative, homogenous, segregated, traditional community where all those things made me “other.” Of course, I was used to being “other,” I’d practically made a career of it. But in looking for information about being a SAHD, or even looking for a recommendation for a non-ugly diaper bag, I stumbled onto the parentblogosphere. A handful of dadblogs served as my gateway to more blogs, as every new blog and blogroll and comment link introduced me to a world of SAHDs and SAHMs and WAHDs and WAHMs and work-outside-the-home parents of all types and stripes.

And then I started to notice something, something not surprising for the guy who used to start every class in college by tallying apparent race and gender demographics in his notebook margins to get a preemptive handle on potential participation/representation issues: I started gravitating to bloggers who turned out to be parents of color, or parents (through adoption or intermarriage) of kids of color, or multiracial parents, or Asian American parents, and not only that, I started looking for them. It wasn’t that race, culture or identity were necessarily major themes or even talked about at all on all of these blogs, but when it was there, I noticed.

With those that did explicitly talk about the intersection of race, culture, family and parenting, the connection was even deeper. Why? Well, I guess that’s part of what we’re talking about here, or talking around—the invisible line between those who understand that, and those who even have to ask the question, and the wish that, at least in these virtual communities we share with others due to the ties of parenthood, we could get rid of that line altogether, or at least assume that those on the other side of it realize it’s there and are doing their part to erase it.

When we launched Rice Daddies as a group blog by Asian American dads, started with the only other two self-identified AsAm dadbloggers I’d been able to find at the time, I wrote that what we had in common was that we were Asian Americans who happened to be dads, and dads who happened to be Asian American. While one or another part of who we were might come to the fore on the blog at any given time, they were all integral parts of who we were. So, while we expected it, it was still frustrating to deal with commenters who said things like, “I thought this was a blog about parenting, what’s with all this race stuff?” When Anti-Racist Parent launched, I wrote about how, contrary to popular belief, racism is a parenting issue. When it comes down to it, I notice when issues of race, racism, and diversity are raised in the parentblogosphere, or when parents of color are blogging (even when it has nothing to do with race) because it’s still an exception, because it’s noticeable.

Thinking about issues of blogger diversity after the Blogher session on inclusion and exclusion, Mocha Momma wrote:

That brings up another question as well: why aren’t the Top Bloggers people of color? Where is the Black/Hispanic/Asian/Indian Dooce? Is there a mommyblogger (I think I will just pick on stick with that one genre for the moment to make a point) of color who is considered an “expert”? The reason I ask this has to do with a question someone posed to me in a private email (which, as you’ll realize, needs to be out in the open here so I’m repeating it).

Are you a mommyblogger?

Well, that was rather pointed. I mean, it reads “Mocha MOMMA” on my address bar and my banner. To be fair I have children. They aren’t the focus of everything I write about so does that make me less of a mom?

No. Not at all.

What’s my point? That it matters that we’re here. Whether we’re talking explicitly about how race and difference affect our lives as parents and the lives of our loved ones or not, it matters. Does anyone besides me care that the woman behind Motherhood Uncensored, Cool Mom Picks, the Parent Bloggers Network, and The Mominatrix is a hapa mom? Maybe not, but it matters to me. Does anyone else notice that the mastermind behind ParentHacks is a South Asian American woman? Or that the dad behind Thingamababy is a partner in an interracial marriage and the father of a biracial child? Or not only notice but appreciate that there’s an Asian American on the crew at Dadcentric or that there’s not one but two black dads with The Blogfathers (not to mention an out gay dad)? Or a Latino dad writing for Neal Pollack’s parenting humor blogzine? Or Asian American moms blogging for Parenting or the Seattle Post-Intelligencer?

That’s not even to get into the sustenance and energy I get from blogs like Rice Daddies, Kimchi Mamas, Filipina Moms, Our Kind of Parenting, Anti-Racist Parent, and the blogs of all the contributors and regular commenters on these sites who are unafraid to say yes, this shit matters, for us, and for our children, and let’s talk about it.

On BlogRhet, a site that is “a discussion space that reflects on the practice of blogging itself, especially as it pertains to questions of community, citizenship, and identity,” blogger Tere writes of feeling a strange sense of exclusion as a Latina momblogger reading the mainstream of the momosphere:

The second reason for my prevailing sense of exclusion is by far a more important one to me…. And that is the fact that I am a minority; and that, more than anything, perpetuates this feeling - even in places where I have been included.

If you doubt it (or, do you even think about it?), let me confirm it for you: the mommy blogging community is white. And I am not. At least, not as a general cross-section of Americans define "white". I am white in race but Hispanic in culture. And that makes me not white - at least to anyone who is not like me (I use the term "white" and "regular Americans" to mean white Anglos and basically, what has always been considered the majority in this country)….

[…]

And while blogging has opened my world in so many ways, it has also made me feel quite alienated at times. It has underscored just how different I am. And it's frustrating. I mean, I read some things that are completely foreign to me. Like, I can't wrap my head around it. And then I check the comments out, and everyone's agreeing, and I'm just floored….

Obviously, this is not intentional exclusion. But it is a kind of exclusion nonetheless. It is my feeling that the MB world-at-large is predominantly made up of white women. Few are the African-American women, the Hispanic ones, the Asian ones, etc. Of course, this ties to questions of privilege; and the assumption is that white, in many ways, equals privilege. But there are plenty of African-American, Hispanic and Asian families that are educated, wealthy and just as privileged as white ones (to name the top minority groups in the U.S., but certainly this is can be true of all minority groups). I have made an effort to find blogs (specifically, MBs) by minorities. And they're out there, but not as many as I wish there were, and certainly not in numbers that would drive the point home that we're here and living and loving and have just as much to offer as anyone else. This dearth of minority-voice blogs is another topic unto itself, but for the purposes of inclusion or exclusion, I have to ask, where are the minorities as far as commenting in MBs? I mean, yeah, you don't comment on a blog by first announcing your ethnicity, but there is a void of comments and conversation from women (and mothers) from the perspective of a minority voice.

Is this just me? Do any minorities who read MBs ever feel like, "WTF? I so can't relate"? Does anyone else feel sometimes that the mommy blog world is a microcosm of the United States, where white voices lead and prevail and there seems little room for minorities? And where these white voices seemingly have little to no experiences beyond their white world?

[…]

The exclusion of the mom blog world of minorities is simply one based on ignorance. You cannot address, or include, that which you do not know. It is true of me in the reverse. But as the minority here, I can't help but see it as a disadvantage….

That’s what we’re talking about here, at the root, not advertising dollars or even readership stats, but acknowledged presence in this community we’ve already called our own, acknowledgement of our diversity and our issues, of our part in all of this. So that there are no more “surprises” like the “White PTA” fiasco on Silicon Valley Moms, with some folks wondering why others were so upset. So that when someone, say, a newbie parentblogger of color, or even a PR flack, reads a piece on Babble’s Strollerderby decrying the treatment of bloggers of color, they don’t have a forced moment of cognitive dissonance when they glance over at the bios of the resident bloggers.

After watching the fallout from this year’s momblogger panel at the nation’s premier event for women bloggers, I can only hope that any parenting-focused events at next year’s planned Blogging While Brown conference feel more like home for folks like us.

...and now for something completely different...

ah, summer. sweet, humid, vapid summer…season of sunny delight. if all our cultural, seasonal stereotypes marched off to high school together, summer’d get to be head cheerleader.

except this summer has been kicking my ass like some kind of sadistic personal trainer, instead. without me even getting a single toned ab in the process.

our household is emerging from an entire month of miserableness and poxplagues and coughing the night away. i’m working the full forty-plus hours a week for the first time since oh, about 1998, and full-blast, since the project i manage was three months late getting funded and still needs to be ready to launch in schools come September…plus there’s this impish wee boy who comes home every evening and has learned something new and i’m smitten and need some full-blast left to go to the park after supper and make sure he doesn’t actually eat those whiteboard markers he so enjoys extricating from my bag. and everyone i know, plus their dog, has come to visit over the past three weeks.

what i’ve seen of summer basically amounts to a few evening promenades, about three mosquito bites, and an attempted trip to the beach that resulted in me trying to Febreze the scent of Oscar’s vomit out of the back of the car. the rest? has been spent frantically juggling.

i don’t know how to stretch myself a whole lot further. i am a haggard poster child for “needs a summer vacation.”

but if i had five or ten straight days off, to bask in sunbeams and drink mojitos, what would i likely do? (other than get my child to the beach with a sandpail and Gravol, of course). i’d spend it on the internet, catching up on all the conversations and life changes i’ve missed while summer’s been holding me captive from my online community.

yep. if i could save time in a bottle, dear internets, i’d huddle inside with my laptop and spend it with you.

now, culturally, that desire represents a heinous abomination.

because summer is the time to unplug. in pop culture, summer seems to signify some glorious release space from the grind of everyday life…it’s carefree time, outdoor time, relaxing time, all set to some Beach Boys song or the soundtrack from Grease. and it’s eternally sunny, but without humidity or skin cancer. this version of summer doesn’t have rain. it’s a simulacra, a copy of a cultural childhood memory that never really existed in the first place except in pastiche, all the best pieces from a hundred zillion sources, distilled…but that only makes it more powerful. i may never, ever, in my life have spent a summer wiping the sand from my browning shoulders at a cottage by a lake…but i still hearken to the siren song of that image. and i can still smell the suntan lotion on my imaginary skin and covet the freedom to do that much nothing with my day.

and yet…and yet…the idea of going unplugged for a week makes me shudder.

because much as i wouldn’t mind pulling the plug on the work email for awhile, and could live happily without deadlines, no number of umbrella drinks by a pool or glassy waterskiing surfaces can replace the play i get to revel in out here in the blogosphere, websurfing. this girl, in reality, can only handle so much sand in the crack of her bathing suit, and nothing bores me faster than lying in the sun wondering if my pasty flesh shouldn’t get covered, already.

the cultural fantasy of summer is built on the premise that trading routine for some version of sun-drenched reclining and pampering is the ultimate in relaxation. if that vision did once reflect the dream of us teeming masses, it may need some reinvention, and soon.

because my new Summer 2.0 fantasy model involves a cottage with wireless. while i’d love to be freed from the regular grind of work and laundry and traffic so i could check out shells on a beach with Oscar for a week, and watch the stars come out and build bonfires and practice my breaststroke, part of what it means to me to ‘relax’, now, is to commune with you all. to enter this virtual room of my own, and track an infinite number of stories. if i had infinite time to comment and engage and pontificate and giggle, too…whilst reclining in a hammock with an icy pina colada? i might think i’d died and gone to heaven.

but Oscar? yeh. um. see, i want him to come to this fantasy cottage without too many electronic games or DVDs or whatever plugged-in gadgets and necessities his older self might deem necessary in this fantasy world of summers-t0-come-where-i-actually-get-a-vacation. yeh. double standard. but there’s a whole world of nature out there to discover, you know?!? sigh.

what does “unplugged” mean to you? is it an unnatural state only tolerated due to the power outages following summer lightning storms? or would you retreat to a cabin by the sea for months at a time if you could, and eschew electricity for the beauties of nature alone? do you think there’s a sea change coming in what it means, culturally, to relax? does ‘getting away from it all’, for you, involve getting away from teh internets too?

what’s the longest you’ve ‘unplugged’ for over the past couple of years?

Race & Ethnicity: It Matters

I have, no kidding, about 12 posts sitting in draft mode. Everything from my review of a product to some randomness about an ex-boyfriend.

But I can't get to work on any one of them because they all seem so frivolous to me today. I've spent my morning muddled in something deeper, something that is ever-present whenever I'm perusing the blogosphere. Today, the pressing thought on my mind is race and ethnicity. And while everything is a jumble in my head right now, I feel a need to get these thoughts about there, to process it all, to join the conversation and say a few words on behalf of the Hispanic side of the blogosphere (Hispanic side, mind if I speak for you? Thanks!).

People. Gente. I don't want to tell you (again) that my hyphenated identity makes me feel left out in a community that is largely white. Because while this is still true, it is less true now than it was just weeks ago. The parenting blogging community has been (hopefully, rightfully) turned on its head after one of the panels at this year's BlogHer Conference (wherein Mocha Momma and CityMama raised very important questions of race, diversity and marketing in the parenting blog world).

One of the thoughts that's been rolling around in my head is the idea that race is invisible or non-noticeable on the blogosphere (this began with my inclusion/exclusion post at BlogRhet but has been expressed elsewhere). On one hand, I get it. I want you to see me as "Tere" - mother, wife, writer, all-around interesting human being. I want you to read me and email me and be my friend regardless of whether I'm white or olive or bi-cultural or speak English with a distinctive "Miami accent". On the other hand, I can't shake the feeling that only white people don't see color because well, they don't have to. When you're the majority and part of the race that dictates what's "normal", race isn't much of an issue to you personally. That's not to say that I've lived my life solely through the lens of being Hispanic (because let's face it: in Miami, I'm in the majority and it's white Anglos who are minorities), but I am well aware that, outside of South Florida, in person, that is what jumps out first, and that is what "marks" me, far and above anything else.

How does this translate in a medium like the Internet? I get why people would read someone else's site and not attribute a race or ethnic identity to them. I mean, even as someone who is proud of her Cuban heritage, that's not all I want you to see, nor do I feel compelled to work it into every post. So no, white people, when you say you don't see race, I'm not insulted. But I do wish you would see my ethnicity and recognize the monumental role it plays in making me me. And, just as I feel lost sometimes because of cultural differences, I am, in many ways, just like you. And whether you believe it or not, whether it's has or hasn't occurred to you, you have as much to learn from me as I have to learn from you.

At the same time (paradoxically so?), race doesn't *matter* to me inasmuch as determining whom I will read. It is not the sole reason I would read someone; I need good substance to read a blog regularly. I greatly enjoy blogs by minorities - the voices they bring, the perspective they offer. I see a reflection of myself there sometimes, a recognition. But in looking for good content, and for content that I can relate to, race ultimately doesn't matter. Go figure. It's something I'm still trying to make sense of myself, even as I write it.

This issue has spun a tangent about marketing (or rather, the lack of it) to minority parents. And yeah, it's true: PR folks and companies don't hit up overtly ethnic blogs/bloggers. I can't begin to guess the reasons for this (oh, I could: ignorance, cluelessness about different cultures, misguided notions about particular ethnic groups), but it's been pointed out that marketers care mainly about hitting blogs that have high traffic numbers. In this regard, I think I fall somewhere in the middle, or perhaps I slipped through the cracks. I get a good number of pitches, many of which are irrelevant to me or what I write about. And as you can see on my sidebar, I'm now a member of the BlogHerAds network (which, I'll admit, I thought was only for very high-traffic sites). I don't know what the perception is on the marketer's end. Do they know I'm Hispanic? Do they care? Do they know that my traffic numbers are pathetic compared to the popular mom bloggers?

My attitude about this is that I'm happy to review products (and therefore provide free PR) for companies/things I would really use (but not anything else). I'm flattered that I'm "noticed". But you know, I would love to be contacted, to be asked my opinion and for reviews, to have advertising on my site, precisely because I am Hispanic. I would love for my ethnicity to be a highlight, a reason for - anything. Like Mocha Momma asked, where indeed is the Black/Hispanic/Asian/Indian Dooce?

The general question seems to be: does race matter in the blogosphere? The wonderful part is that bloggers of color are taking the issue head-on. For me, for this Cubanita, it does matter. I want you to know me as I am, as I see myself. I want you to expand your horizons and get to know people who are different, even as you make your way through the delicate topic of race and culture. I want to be part of a larger parenting/blogging community without feeling like my ethnicity is ignored or unimportant simply because the majority doesn't quite know how to address it.

I have found the best summation of my own feelings in what Julie wrote today, and I take her words to reflect my thoughts:

"Because while I don't think another person's race ought to matter to me, in my assessment of them, it can matter to them in how they feel a part of the world and therefore I ought to respect that, especially if they ask me to consider it as part of my understanding of them as an individual. I ask the same. My racial experiences are a part of me, too, and have affected how I view race, racial issues, and culture. Where I come from, the place and the people, affect who I am and how I perceive things, as well as my beliefs. I think this rings true for all of us, regardless."

There's more to be said on this topic. Other bloggers are asking good questions for this conversation to expand upon. I'll be tackling these as time allows and as my thoughts cohere.

What I Write is Mine, Isn't It? Blogging, Intellectual Property, and Identity

Hello my name is Rachael and I used to write at CrankMama. I started CrankMama on a lark in August 2006, wanting an outlet for all my naughty dark lusty and sassy mama thoughts. I was dying for somewhere to express the millions of ways I was not, could not ever be Donna Reed, could not ever *not* swear around my kids, cook a reasonably tasty meal, stay at home without meaningful work, give up a fabulous sex life, leave aside 100% of my own ego for my children. I was drowning in spiritual suburbia, and CrankMama was my express train to midtown Manhattan with a pocket full of cash and a brain full of daring.

My computer, anthropomorphized and worshipped, cuddled more than my husband, was my instrument of adventurous warfare on vanilla mommyhood everywhere. My solution for sleepless worry, my nascent feminism and amorous curiosities found an outlet.

As it grew bigger, I became known (albeit only to a few) as CrankMama, which was perfectly fine with me, and this persona of a sassy, shit-kicking potty-mouthed mama developed, at once more than and less than me.

But here's the rub (and the clumsy hard, repetitive kind without lube), like many women writers, I lacked confidence in my abilities as a writer. I was comfortable "only" being a blogger because it seemed so much less risky than claiming to be a writer (if you say you're a writer and they ask where and you say "a blog" you just sit there waiting for the laughter). I was chicken. I was shucking and jiving the sisterhood I claimed to defend.

So I partnered with two other women. One would design the site, one would figure out the technical end of things (this was before I realized that Wordpress is as easy to use as a call girls' black book to find a Republican Senator).

One year later, the partners began requiring more and more meetings, discussion of products, and finally a contest about which I just couldn’t get lubed up. Now I like some beautiful men and I like some sweet creative contests. I also love objectifying men because it’s a reversal of power that is so delicious it belongs in a pie. But I did not love this contest at all.

And besides, after a year of all of this, I had become a writer. I was willing to hold my head up (even while superstitiously crossing fingers behind my back) and say out loud "I'm a writer. I write at CrankMama." And what I wrote there was powerful (for me), personal, full of confession, love and adoration, and stories of my children.

And this personal thing wasn’t business enough for my partners. Too personal, too connected with me as a person and on from there. It took only a couple of silly tear-filled (mine) meetings for me to realize that life is too short to fight over a blog.

So rather than stay and fight I left. And started Redsy.

Do I have any rights over all the material I wrote during that 12 months? According to my former partners, my rights aren't exclusive. I partnered with them on a venture that morphed into quite something more than I bargained for. But surely this is how these things often happen? They change beyond recognition and certain of the original founders want out? Who keeps the goods when the shop changes hands?

More importantly (and apropos to BlogHer last week) am I still CrankMama?

The problems of intellectual property are complex because how does one begin to define what is one's own idea? Ones own material? If I had stayed and fought it out, I would have had a strong argument. I wrote every single post for a year.

But what does it mean when someone doesn't steal your property exactly because you gave it to them at first and then wanted it back?

The deeper issues here are those related to the trouble (and glory) involved with being a woman, a mother, an artist, a writer. "Who am I?" easily morphs into "What am I worth?"

If you came to me and described that someone was keeping your website up that you had written and was attempting to cash in on your efforts, I'd hop a plane and meet you in a pub, scratch pad in hand ready to write-out our fighting script. I’d hold up signs that say “Let’s get those fuckers!” I’d put your head in my lap and pet you to sleep. But I just can’t fight that way for myself. I can’t. And I’m no shrinking Violet.

What we create on our blogs is our own intellectual property. But if it's personal and political and confessional and confrontational, if it's from our hearts, it is so difficult to fight it out. Like splitting a child in two or staying to watch one of those horrid bullfights to the end. I'm too inside the whole thing. It's too personal.

So this is what I’ll do. I’ll weave a tale, share my story. And as a result, this burden will blow away on the wind. And you can build me some lovely voodoo dolls, and we can share a drink and a laugh. And all will be well again.