President Obama addressed SuzyKnew and 5,000 other women bloggers at BlogHer’s 2012 Conference held in New York City from Aug 2 – 4. Welcoming us on our first day, Obama spoke about the policies and issues that affect women’s lives, including Obamacare, which increases women’s access to contraceptives and better reproductive health. (See Obama’s full address on BlogHer’s website.)
The 8th annual meeting of mainly female bloggers was pretty exciting to me. There were key note addresses and talks by Martha Stewart, Katie Couric, Soledad O’Brien and others. (See the SuzyKnew Facebook page for pictures of these ladies and female bloggers SuzyKnew follows.) The sessions covered everything from raising children while building your business to the latest in blogging technology. (Ok – Yes, I’m still trying to figure out how to apply all the lessons I learned from this latter session.)
Of course, I had to attend the Erotica Out In the Open panel that Ariel Loren, from Corset Magazine, told me about. Blogging and the internet are supporting more and more women in accessing sexual literature as well as health information, building large global communities around issues as well as small communities for specific concerns. Besides Ariel, the panel included Queerie Bradshaw whose spicy blogs mainly on lesbian and queer sex include Nothing Up In Here But Dry Vagainas and Sienna Fein from datingseniormen.com, whose posts on “geriatric love,” as she described it, keep you amused and inspired. The panel moderator was Twanna A Hines from Funky Brown Chick , who talked candidly about how religion affects her sex life, answering my question about how religion can be a positive influence on women’s sex lives. For me, meeting them all was a treat. I also met Ana Santos from www.sexandsensibilities.com, a site that engages Filipina women to be sexually sassy and healthy.
Other bloggers I ran into: Eleanore Wells from Spinsterlicious another SuzyKnew friend, Demetria A. Lucas a.k.a. A Belle In Brooklyn, Issa Rae from Awkward Black Girl and of course others.
The conference had over 130 sponsors, many of whom had booths. Free stuff galore. Can you believe I got 4 free vibrators, including the ones from Trojan’s new launch? The first person to leave a comment will get one of the vibrators mailed to them. Good luck!
Suzy