(en)gender

I meet a lot of lovely people as a result of writing two books, and I meet them via email, online, on social networking sites.

Recently on FB, I decided to restrict who I friended to people I’d met, people who I knew pretty well, people I’d worked with, went to school with, taught… you get the idea.

Some people have been upset that I de-friended them, & I’m very sorry they are.

Mostly I was tyring to protect my friend & family who often got friend requests from total strangers who “collect” friend on FB – usually for the sake of marketing something. Then someone told me about this ACLU quiz about FB’s Privacy Policy – or lack thereof – which everyone who uses FB should take.

I did make a point of asking people to move to my more public page on FB so that I could cut down on the spam, but left messaging available to anyone & everyone.

Honestly, I was about *this close* to eliminating my personal page altogether but decided to try out this compromise first. Sadly, I offended people who I didn’t mean to offend even for a second.

Apologies: navigating private & public is no easy task and surely requires someone far more graceful than me.

A very happy birthday to Mara Keisling of NCTE!
To thank her for all her hard work, make a donation for her birthday.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney will be sad, as will the rest of his family, but wow: if you’re going to go, Cliff Maloney did it right.