Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia 2013
We've learned a lot from this year and we've gone back and forth on ideas for the next year. What we've decided is to change the name from Hop Against Homophobia to Hop Against Homophobia and Transphobia in honor of IDAHO. Also, did anyone else wake up on Sunday with half the blogs yet to read? Well we did. Originally we decided on four days, but that was before we knew that 275 blogs were going to sign up. So for next year, we're going to increase the length of the hop. We don't have the exact number of days yet, but we're thinking maybe ten or so. It all depends on which of the below option will be chosen. The start date will be on May 17th 2013, so mark your calendars :)
There is one other thing we've been going back and forth on. We want to spread awareness of homophobia and transphobia - this includes awareness of issues facing gays, lesbians, bisexuals, asexuals, pansexuals and the whole QUILTBAG. That was what was done this year. We had experiences from gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans* - all of whom were M/M writers/publishers/reviewers. The question is: Should we restrict this hop to the M/M writing community or should we include the whole GLBTQ writing community? There are pros and cons to both.
A lot of you may be thinking that we should open this for everyone, the M/F writing community too, but we feel like we have to limit this somewhere or it will become difficult to manage. Our method of drawing visitors in and get them involved is to offer up prizes. It worked well this time around, and although many would have visited without the prizes, we doubt they would have bothered to visit so many sites in so few days without them. We feel that we have to limit the hop to a group, because if the hop will link thousands of blogs people might find it daunting to visit every blog. Supervision would be tricky - it was tricky enough with 275 blogs (making sure the links worked, checking to see if someone didn't post, hunting down emails that had been typed incorrectly, responding to everyone who needed help, our latest endeavour to link directly to the messages and pull out quotes, etc.).
A lot of you may be thinking that we should open this for everyone, the M/F writing community too, but we feel like we have to limit this somewhere or it will become difficult to manage. Our method of drawing visitors in and get them involved is to offer up prizes. It worked well this time around, and although many would have visited without the prizes, we doubt they would have bothered to visit so many sites in so few days without them. We feel that we have to limit the hop to a group, because if the hop will link thousands of blogs people might find it daunting to visit every blog. Supervision would be tricky - it was tricky enough with 275 blogs (making sure the links worked, checking to see if someone didn't post, hunting down emails that had been typed incorrectly, responding to everyone who needed help, our latest endeavour to link directly to the messages and pull out quotes, etc.).
Anyway, these are the two options we've narrowed down and we'd love to get your input on this:
1. Open the hop for the whole GLBTQ writing community. The hop will get a wider exposure and this is the group we're fighting for, so it makes sense to have everybody under one hop. The "downside" is that the hop will be huge, probably with twice as many blogs signing up. Again, we fear that the visitors will find a big number daunting and will be less inclined to take part.
2. Limit it to the M/M writing community and see if there are any F/F and Trans* writers who would be interested in hosting the same event on separate hop-blog sites. The hops will be smaller and more manageable, but the exposure of IDAHO will be just as good. We have founded a group called Writers Against Homophobia and Transphobia (WAHAT), and the separate hop blogs (the main hop sites) could work together under that group. We could join forces in advertising and promoting, and we could help each other to make every hop a success. There would be less links to monitor and the hops would run smoother. Each group could focus on reaching their target group with their messages. We're also toying with the idea to talk to YA writers, and horror writers, and sci-fi writers (etc.) to see if there's interest in creating YA Writers Against Homophobia and Transphobia (who would try to reach their target groups of YA readers), Horror Writers Against Homophobia and Transphobia (etc), to try to bring this out of the GLBTQ writing community.
So what do you think? Do you know of F/F writers who might be interested in hosting this event for the F/F writing community? Or writers of Trans* fiction who might be interested in hosting a hop for the Trans* writing community? Or should we just keep it all under one hop?
We would LOVE to hear your opinions :)
