Jen Baghia over at Twitter (@littlebrownjen) was a bit offended when she saw this show-cased as the photo of the day over at Georgia's Creative Loafing.

My response? My heart's calcified with these kinds of photos. Am so used to being portrayed as just a piece of bulbous ass I have no outrage left. I did say though that I thought it described Latinos in general and that's what I wrote on the photo yesterday. I take it back: I think this is they way they just look at Puerto Ricans in general.

What do you think?

Yes, I said it. Am ashamed to admit am ... gasp! ... heterosexual.

In the past few weeks I've been asked more than a couple of times if am gay. Am totally flattered. I mean, I get offended if I don't get hit on by a mamacita at least once a week.

Unfortunately ... ahem ... I like dick too much. Like, you know, the kind that is attached to a really hot and sweaty and horny guy. Yeah ... that kind.

This blog though has been a queerish blog since forever. We used to have Jeff Langstraat blogging about queer politics in the US eons ago. Now we have Leo Igwe doing it from the context of Africa politics and culture.

Am happy to call myself a fag hag --even though the term is so totally politically incorrect-- and an honorary member of the clit club.

Do I ever fantasize about being gay?

Totally. For an instance I think it would make my love life easier and then all I have to do is call up my lezzy or gay friends to smack me into reality. My love life woes may have different contexts but they hit me in just about the same way as theirs hit them.

Have I kissed a girl?

Yup, and then some.
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Please vote for the two panels I've proposed for next year's South by Southwest Conference and Festival. You can find an explanation about the conference in my post for the first panel I proposed, The Wise Latinas Digital Club.

Now I need your attention for a nerdier matter: "The Politics and Economics of Digital Identities" or how who you are is becoming a valuable tansactional commodity for others but you in the new surveillance economy of the social web.

Yes, the panel is meant to blow the pink-colored glasses we've been wearing when talking about social media and the goodness of gated social spaces like Facebook.

Yes, the panel is meant to make a connection between your buying experience at Amazon.com, Netflix and The Patriot Act.

Yes, the panel is meant to present the "Vendor Relations Management" and OpenID movement to a wider audience.

Will it do justice to such a vast and wide topic? Not in 90 minutes. Yet I hope it will rattle the minds of more than just a few people over such an important topic.

The panel was titled "The Politics & Economics of Identity" and misidentified as a solo event. It's a panel and the actual working tite is "The Politics and Economics of Digital Identities":

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Please help me get The Wise Latina Digital Club panel in the SXSW2010 conference. Go vote for it NOW!

The South by Southwest Music, Film and Interactive Conference and Festival is one of the most prestigious tech and media conferences in the United States. I think it was Tara Hunt ( @missrogue ) who described it as "the geek prom" and that's as close to the heart of this event as anybody can get.

SXSW has been historically one of the most inclusive tech and media conferences as well. Under the direction of Hugh Forrest, the conference has has had for 4 years, if not more, a Black Bloggers panel (which I never get invited to be in, by the way) and they've always gone out of their way to create a gender balance in the number of experts that is unprecedented when compared to other big media and tech conferences.

That said, panels in which Latinos and other specific digital ethnorati are showcased are still non-existent. Part of the reason is interest: SXSW panels get selected through a combination of staff, advisory board and general public voting.

Yet part of it really has to do with perception: Although there's been a number of extremely prominent Latinas in tech and media (am looking at you Mena Trott); when it comes to actual naming actual thought leaders, the average tech and media conference goer would be hard pressed to think outside of the mainstream faces of Latinahood like JLo or Eva Longoria.

We really haven't had in this country anything like the selection and confirmation of US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to really put nerdas and geekas on the thought leader map. Even after all these year, I still have to battle a whole spectrum of stereotypes that go from the "brimbo" (brown-skinned bimbo) and "high-end puta" on one end to the "welfare MILF" and "illiterate spik" on the other.

Hence the need to not only "panel" but to bring together and celebrate a lot of The Wise Latinas that we have in the media and tech worlds. Hence The Wise Latina Digital Club:

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