My BlogHer Cross-Post for Clitoris Awareness Week or I Don't Like Flower Pics Used to Represent Female Genitals

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Well, I just came out of a fairly exciting week - which is to be expected since it was International Clitoris Awareness Week, am I right...am I right? For real though, the personal and work life was particularly full. I also cranked out a blog per day, which is about 2 to 3 times more blogging than I usually do. Plus, I wrote an extra blog to cross-post onto BlogHer. Let me discuss that whole thing a bit.

I'd already registered as a member of the site a while back, which just means my blog is listed in their giant directory, but to actually get a post on the site one needs to actually create a new post just for BlogHer on their site. They promote it as a way to show off your blog's style, so that if people like it they can click through to your blog for more reading. That's good enough for me. Cross-posting had been on my to-do list for a while now, and it being Clit Week, it seemed like perfect timing.

My thoughts were that I should write something that clearly touched the critical Orgasm Equality Movement points I hold dear like;

• orgasms come from clits not vaginas although media and society in general insinuate the opposite for some god-awful reason  
• women can orgasm as quickly, easily, and reliably as men do...as long as the right parts are stimulated

You know, that sort of thing. However, I didn't want to be too in-your-face with it. I was hoping this would get me randoms just stopping by to check out the post. I didn't want to turn anyone off, but I also wanted to grab hold of the chance to put a progressive pro-clit bug in these random's ears. You can see how my little post eventually turned out HERE.

Let me just go back and point out that I was a little obsessed with creating this post. I put more time and effort into it than I should have. I was worried about what picture I should use in it, whether the grammar was checked thoroughly, and what title would best lead people to read. Also, I was trying to format the post so I could have a good little blurb that showed up in the preview post - which is the first thing people would see before they clicked in to read. For some damn reason though, the things that were supposed to let me do that weren't working. It made me want to punch the hell out of my computer screen, but eventually I said F*** it, and just uploaded it. The preview ended up just being my first few lines, and I moved on with my life.

It sat in the line of cross-posted blogs in the "All posts" category for about half a day, not getting much looks, and then I got an email from the Love&Sex editor saying she was going to feature it on the Love&Sex page and on the BlogHer home page - which I was totally cool with, as you might imagine. She also said they'd done some light editing to make it fit their format, which meant they changed the picture, the title, and the amount of text we saw in the preview. It went from the title, "A Little Activism for an Underutilized Body Part, Anyone?" with a balloon picture (seen in this post) I made where one balloon said "Clitoris Awareness Week" to the title "International Clitoris Awareness Week: How Aware Are You?" and a picture of a blossoming red rose. I guess I shouldn't have worried so much about the title or the picture or the formatting. I could probably have hours of my life back if I'd realized that. Anyway, I wasn't too worried about the changes, but I would like to point out that I think it's kinda creepy strange to always use pictures of flowers when speaking of women's genitals. It makes me think of weird, spiritual-based, old hippie love-ins that I might find featured on the 3rd segment of HBO's Real Sex. I don't like it, and I would never have chosen that pic, but what-evs.

So, anyway, the post got featured this past Thursday on the Love&Sex section, and then a few hours later I see it on the BlogHer Home Page, and then the next day it was highlighted as one of the 4 scrolling featured posts on the home page, so I was pretty pumped. A lot of people were seeing it - I mean a lot to me at least.  So far, I've had over 2000 reads (although that might mean someone just clicked on the page and then left before actually reading anything), almost 300 people shared the post on Facebook, about 40 people Tweeted it, and 1 person Sparkeld it. I have no idea what that means, but I like sparkles, so I feel like it must be good. Point is, I'm really excited that people were reading about this crazy orgasm activist stuff, and even more pleased that at least some people thought it was interesting enough to share with their friends. It gives me hope that people will actually be receptive to the contents of this upcoming movie and that some of these ideas actually have a fighting chance of catching on a bit.

So, that's my story. I'm probably gonna start trying these kinds of cross posting things more and more. I mean the whole point of all this is to get these ideas more into pop culture, so the more eyes I can get the better.