This BlogHer ‘08 session is part of the “Who We Are” break-out session entitled “‘Coming Out’ via Blog.
\

\
Panelists include:
\
Susan Mernit
\
Stephanie Quilao
\
JenB
\
Jess Howard
\
Sarah Dopp (also at Genderfork)
\

****

\

\
Susan welcomes everyone and explains that “coming out” refers to people sharing things that are private on their blogs.
\

\
Her reaction to the sessions here have been mixed. Some have been slow and some are great and more face paced. She wants this session to be more interactive and plans to open it up to the audience to share experiences. She encourages everyone to think of this as a safe space. People are exposing themselves and being vulnerable without a computer screen in front of them.
\

\
Nobody shares everything, there are things we all hold back.
\

\
Stephanie blogs about body image and discusses her own issues with bulimia. She is here because her blog is about 3 years old, but has become a top blog in the body image area. Last fall she had a relapse. Behind the scenes, she was doing something contradictory to her message. People were looking to her for inspiration and to be a role model. In Jan. she came out to her readers and tell them about her relapse. Today she will share how they reacted and the thought process behind her decision to “come out.”
\

\
Sarah has two public blogs. (Above) Genderfork was created under a pseudo-name. Later she came out on her public blog as queer because she was very proud of her blog. “Queer means I’m not straight and I’m not a lesbian, I’m somewhere in between.” Trying to navigate the world with her personal identity known is a challenge.
\

\
JenB doesn’t use last name. Personal blog. Will be talking about infertility and her struggles with mental help. She has things that many people don’t talk about, but that she would like to talk about. Her marriage is off limits for her husband’s privacy.
\

\
Jess writes about her depression and hospitalization. More recently a suicide attempt and her survival. (Audience applauds her)
\

\
Susan asks the panelists to talk about their decision to share things. Did they share it first on the blog and then family or the other way around?
\

\
Sarah: “That’s funny.” She put a post on her blog titled “Queer” and realized she didn’t tell her family yet. She immediately sent out an email to her family telling them to read it and helped explain it to her family.
\

\
JenB: Initially she didn’t feel comfortable talking about it with her friends. If she continued to talk about it, it wouldn’t be warranted. Her blog became a safe place with a big audience to get feed back. Her blog began in 2002 and since then she’s noticed she edits it more because IRL friends and blog friends are now the same to her. She’s more concerned about what they think because blog friends are REAL friends now. She’s getting a lot of support and feels less judged by the blogging community. She has to edit for her family more. She told them that BlogHer was a “Lady’s Writing Conference.”
\

\
Jess: She tries to keep her family and people in her home town away from her blog. She would go to their house and get their IP address so she could block them from her blog. Talking about it online is the only place she feels safe. Immediate face-to-face judgment was hard to handle.
\

\
Stephanie: Bulimia was not a secret to her readers. She talks about the messy middle. In magazines you see someone who is overweight and sad and then they jump to being thin and happy. You don’t see the hard part. She wants to be authentic and show the messy middle. She’s nervous because she used her full name in her blog and in a time where everyone Googles everyone, it was scary. Her blog is her life. She’s talked about date rape and bulimia. You write about your life and share your secrets, but you’re giving people hope as well.
\

\
Susan to audience: How did you come out about something sensitive ….
\

\
Karen, Notes To Self: Last year husband & her faced foreclosure. Waiting for someone to cut off her lights. Both freelancers. Through tears, she wrote where she was and what she was going through. It was very naked, but the support she received from her community was “phenomenal.”
\

\
Audience member: Sex-topic day. She was discussing rape and thought she’d receive amazingly supporting comments, but didn’t receive much. She put herself out there and wanted someone to tell her it was okay. This experience made her less transparent and decided not to share more intimate stories.
\

\
Amy, Contentious: There is a ripple effect. People who are having the same issues don’t necessarily respond. Writes a business blog, but spoke about her personal life and that she’s polyamorous… Was told people wouldn’t think she was credible any longer. “If you think people are going to judge you about it, they don’t. They don’t care that much. It may not be as big of a risk as you think it is.”
\

\
Audience member: Is starting a blog and wants to talk about eating disorders, date rape, etc. Her bosses know her blog and she’s worried about how to act in the office. How do you decide what to share and when?
\

\
Sarah: She’s an independent contractor and was worried it would negatively impact her job. She did it in a way that was contained and didn’t throw it in anyone’s face. Because of that, more people are backing her because her voice is being heard in a way they want theirs heard.
\

\
Stephanie: There’s a difference between being sensational and showing how you’re healing. “This is what happened, this is what I’m doing…has anyone else been in the situation?” Communicate that it’s a healing process because we’ve all been through a situation like that. That’s what inspires people to come back to read you.
\

\
Susan: Anything you share, positive or negative, will have consequence. People will form opinions about you. Ask yourself why are you sharing this? What is the point? Own the consequences. She heard Amy say she was polyamorous and could relate. She was going through a difficult divorce at the time and didn’t want to write about her personal life because it would affect her job. Once she left her company, she was able to discuss her personal life a bit more and tell people she’s in an open-relationship. People were finding her and assuming that she meant indiscriminate and were trying to flirt with her instead of relate to her. That’s a good example of how she experienced good and bad consequences.
\

\
Stephanie: Is newly single and began dabbling in dating. She’s hesitant to tell them what she does because he will read about her bulimia and date rape stories. They haven’t gotten to know each other yet, it’s only the first date. This could be very awkward.
\

\
Jess: “I don’t have a thought process, I’m just impulsive when it comes to putting things out there.” There are things she doesn’t write about and doesn’t worry about it. Consequences have been varied. She lives in a small neighborhood and has been ostracized from her community because of her blog. The consequences are a learning experience for her and she enjoys it.
\

\
JenB: (In reference to the audience member’s question about writing a blog her bosses know the URL for) She would start an anonymous blog because it was the only way she could feel like she could be uncensored and share everything without consequence.
\

\
Audience member: What has your experience been with people in your life responding to what you’ve written?
\

\
Stephanie: With her, the bulimia has been going on for years so her family were familiar. With her friends it was different. Males were a bit more accepting where as the females were kind of iffy - possibly because of their own issues. One friend distanced herself after finding out. Stephanie is free and open to talking about it and it makes others uncomfortable because maybe you’ve stirred something up in them that they can’t deal with. Some people will distance themselves because of that.
\

\
Susan: Are there people in your life that telling things on your blog has it brought them closer or pushed them away?
\

\
Sarah: She keeps a locked LiveJournal for her messy personal life stories. She handpicks her audience and strangers cannot stumble upon it. She has very different relationships in her life between her blogs. LiveJournal users get to know her in a very intimate way that she’d never tell them in person. Some people will come up to her and respond to a post she wrote three weeks ago.
\

\
JenB: Her in the city friends read her blog, but don’t comment or say much about what she wrote. She gets treated neutrally. She wonders why they haven’t checked in on her.
\

\
Audience member: Maybe because they view it as your diary and respect that. She’ll receive comments from strangers, but not a lot of check-in from her friends.
\

\
Susan: One of the things everyone would agree on is often when you do post personal blogs, you get an incredible community of people you don’t know. She remembers when she got divorced she started a private blog and had 5-6 people commenting who stayed for 2 years. The other side is the whole idea of what if you do have something you want to reveal. What kind of support or preparation do you want to go through to get it out if it’s not fueled by emotion. How do you manage that? What makes you decide to take that step? What pushes someone into that moment saying “we’re going to talk about this.”
\

\
Susan asks audience members to share experience about taking steps…
\

\
Audience member: Just started her blog. Only child from divorced family. Dad has a second family. Doesn’t have a good relationship with step parents. How do you talk about something that is so defining to who you are, while respecting the fact that they have a family who they’ve been very good to? The last thing she wants to do is expose her siblings parents in a bad light because she knows how that feels. Knowing that even if you’ve portrayed something neutral could be taken offensively. How do you share a very strong point of view?
\

\
Audience member: Add a disclaimer to your site. “FYI This is what I’m talking about, I love my family, etc., etc.” She’s in HR and people ask her questions that are legal in nature and will refer to her disclaimer before she gives advice.
\

\
Jess: “If you’re going to talk about your family, you’re in for a potential world of hurt.” She wrote about her family and it had horrible consequences. She’d love to write about things that happened in her childhood that made her who she is today, but that is one of her boundaries.
\

\
JenB: Unless they don’t read it.
\

\
Susan: A challenge with blogging is that you have to assume that some day someone might find it and you will be linked to it. Be realistic and know that some day, if this comes out, you are not completely destroyed.
\

\
Audience member, from Recovering Straight Girl: Didn’t use any personal information or real names and her mother and ex husband found it along with a girl in HS found it. She eventually gave up and stopped trying to hide. But knowing that certain people are reading it, she thinks more before writing. She’s still very authentic, but hesitant.
\

\
Audience member: Even when you’re talking in generalities and you’ve disguised people, if they’re in your life, they will think it’s about them. She wrote about someone and many people thought she was talking about them.
\

\
Audience member: From a large company point of view, she started her first blog off of Microsoft Portal. She’d go from conference to conference and only talked about technology. The one time she did, someone called Microsoft trying to access to their corp net pretending to be her. She stopped posting there because of that. It was very scary. She started a new one, but doesn’t talk about anything personal because she is a part of a bigger company. She lives vicariously through other bloggers since she can’t put anything personal about herself on a blog.
\

\
Susan: (to the audience) What is most useful to you? What do you want to know? What else do you want to get out of this session? What do you want to share?
\

\
Maria: Doesn’t share much personal information. Even when she writes things that don’t have to do with her, people still get the wrong impression. If she does talk about her family, she will talk to them first and get their permission to discuss it on her blog. If she doesn’t get their okay, then it’s not okay for her to discuss.
\

\
Lisa: She doesn’t say anything about anyone on her blog that she wouldn’t say to a stranger at a bus stop. She moved from having a personal paper journal to a blog and realized she wasted a lot of time bitching about other people in her diary. Her blog is about her and her personal business.
\

\
Audience member: This is an imperfect medium in certain ways. Lives are imperfect. It won’t be an easy place to talk about our feelings and experiences in a way that won’t hurt anybody. “In order to talk about difficult things, we have to take the risk. It’s not a risk-free environment.”
\

\
Susan: What have you learned that you can teach everyone in this room from the moment you started to speak about your topic, to today.
\

\
Sarah: “I’m not the only queer person in the world.” She used Twitter to find people who relate to her and within 3 days she had about 50 people in her “posse.” There are people like her and make her feel stronger. Speaking her truth helped her find out she was not alone. “If you can bear the risk, the rewards can be great.”
\

\
Jess: The lesson she’s learned is that being honest and proud of who you are is an amazing experience. You’re not alone and honesty is a really powerful tool.
\

\
Steph: A lot of her readers can relate to her. Working in PR is difficult because you are the perfect face of the company. To come out and say that it’s tiring being perfect was a big relief. “It’s like taking off pantyhose and being able to breathe!” People like you more when you’re yourself. Be real. When you meet someone who is authentic, it’s refreshing.
\

\
JenB: It’s cyclical where it is less icky. She wants to be a success story some days, but that’s not how it’s gone. Some days are good and some are shitty. She wants to be the sitcom where in the beginning she was feeling bad, then she’d learn a lesson and overcome difficulty and in the end, she was happy. For most people that’s not how it works. She’s having trouble getting the happy ending.
\

\
Audience member to JenB: Has it kept you from sharing?
\

\
JenB: “Yes, because I’m worried people will get tired of hearing about me trying to find the right medication still, etc.” She knows that she’s receiving a lot of positive reinforcement from her readers about her setbacks. She did have a good experience saying more and getting more feedback, but she wants a better ending.
\

\
Audience: Is having an audience affecting your progress?
\

\
JenB: “No, I don’t think so. I think it’s all on me. I am responsible for the icky middle.” She has a support system.
\

\
Susan: “One thing about transparency is that sometimes you are exposing failure where you didn’t mean to. What is the value of choosing transparency? It makes us vulnerable to both criticism and pity at times….”
\

\
Shuna, from Eggbeater: to Jess - “Ignore me if i start crying.” She survived domestic violence situation many years ago….in a queer relationship…it does happen. Went to closed domestic violence sessions and one thing she realized was “that which I have already exposed and know is there and I’m not hiding it…the person who is interested in holding that against me no longer has the power.” She wouldn’t stop writing things in order to get a job because she would probably get fired anyway because this is who she is.
\

\
Audience: For Stephanie and others who blog about ED issues. Is it ever triggering for you to write about it? Does writing about depression take you to a darker place?
\

\
Stephanie: Evolved her blog. Her blog is about healing. She starts doing research and ventures into ED issues and it’s really dark. It does trigger her sometimes. When Documentary Thin came out, she couldn’t watch it because of the triggers. She won’t blog about what she’s doing because there are people looking for ED tips to maintain the lifestyle. She wants to maintain the message of healing and not feeling alone.
\

\
JenB: “I wish the things I talked about would come to an end.” We’re not alone. One of her most popular posts was when she talked about “shitting her pants.” All of a sudden everyone has or does shit their pants. She felt commonality about that and felt it was heartfelt.
\

\
Jess: She is getting better, but writing about the same things is that the journey continues. She’s moving forward.
\

\
Sarah: Expects her blog to evolve with her.