Hey, I'm rich and white, now!

Jory Des Jardins, BlogHer co-founder, my neighbor and supremely fabulous blogger at Pause, was interviewed at The Huffington Post recently. The expanded BlogHer website and organization has been getting some wonderful, positive reaction and a fair bit of negative, knee-jerk backlash (generally along the lines of ... it's by and for women, so even though men are welcome, it must be whiny and sexist.) I've got to say, though, that some of the commentors to Jory's interview blew me away by their complete lack of taking even the most cursory of looks at BlogHer before launching their attacks.

Especially this one from "netparrot"

Oh thank goodness - I was worried that rich, white, liberal women weren't adequately represented online (*cough*HUFFINGTON*cough*), so thank goodness BlogHer stepped into the void. Especially since sites like TypePad and Blogger.com like, so totally exclude women! Well, they don't actually, but you know, since their URLs have no feminine pronouns in their domain names, so that won't do.

Of course, I'm simply aghast at the lack of black and latino voices on BlogHer, so it's time to balkanize again.

By: netparrot on May 31, 2006 at 05:59am

I suspect that, in addition to me, some of the women* who are Contributing Editors, Conference Speakers, or who are on either the Conference Team or Advisory Board will be stunned to find out that they are white and/or liberal and I would be willing to bet that any woman involved in BlogHer would like to know how netparrot knows anything about their finances, let alone knows whether or not they are rich. If you think Arianna's voice somehow doesn't count because she is rich,white and liberal, then what are you doing over there supporting her blog by commenting and not starting your own non-white, non-rich, non-liberal male blogging community? (Perhaps there are not enough poor, non-white, conservative male bloggers to put on a show?)

*Charlene Li, LaShawn Barber, Liza Sabater (whom Jory specifically mentioned), Marian Douglas, Nichelle Stephens, Lynne D. Johnson, Tiffany Brown, Trisha Okubo, Zadi Diaz, Kim Pearson, Laina Dawes, Danielle Henderson, Karen Walrond, Liz Henry, Desigal and LDW, plus I'm sure I've missed others.

If you are coming to Day 2 of BlogHerCon '06 check out the panel I'm moderating on "Identity and Obligation" where we will discuss issues around identity and blogging.

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