There are two things about me that immediately would make someone question my decision to go to BlogHer.

(Get your mind out of the gutter, its not my left and right testicles…jeez! But, thats a good one!)

1) I have only been blogging for less than a year. I dont really have a “theme” like the bloggers I look up to have and I am pretty sure that most people just skim my posts for the dirty words.

2) Alright, you got me, its my balls.

For me, all kidding aside, there was a very specific reason I was planning on not attending BlogHer, even though its held this year in my home city, San Francisco (technically I grew up in the South Bay, but if SF can claim the Silicon Valley, I can claim their sorry asses too).

They dont let men speak.

Before you start listing all the reasons why that happens (women are under represented at other conferences, men are loud, with all the hot men in social media, the women couldnt concentrate, etc.) let me be specific.

I dont care if men choose to speak or not.

Now that I have completely confused and bewildered, let me say that I believe (dammit, another one of my tenets) in personal freedom. Like the great Humpty Hump said, “Dowhatcha like, unless you like gang bangin’.”

Conference organizers have the right to set up their conferences any way they want. They can sit behind a “community” and lay the responsibility of the decisions made on the “community,” but at the end of the day, a conference is a business like anything else, and most decisions are made to make a conference profitable (I mean successful).

A conference is also just like a concert. You go if the band is good, but more importantly, you go because your friends will be there.

And, I think, to a certain degree, thats what BlogHer is forgetting. Its not the speakers, although they are nice; its the attendees.

My thinking was: If this is a conference for women, by women; where women can interact in a positive way without the pressures of others being around, how does my presence benefit anyone other than myself?

My good friend Erin chides me by saying “Micah, you have never experienced what its like to have 1000 women in a single place truly enjoying and learning from each other.” She is correct, but again I ask, how does my participation benefit the “community”?

I cant speak on a panel, although I know I have interesting and informational things to say. I will be surrounded by women that are there for each other, not some dude from Boulder.

I can visit family, which is always nice, but I could do it much more cheaply then throwing a conference in the middle of it.

So again, why am I going?

Because its important. Women have been a largely quiet force in most communities for a long time. If it takes a separate event to be able to hear that voice, then I need to go and listen. I need to learn and understand. I need to see and experience.

I dont need to talk. These women can read my blog, or see me speak at other events.

I need to be there. I need to be there so that I can understand why 1,000 women are not comfortable attending the other 8 billion conferences that take place year round.

Because learning all of that will make me a more understanding person and how better to benefit others than to understand them.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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