Reposted because it's still a question.

Oct 6 2024 from original publish date Oct 6 2023

by Rose Kaz

Over my years as a bold, assertive and quick witted ginger, I’ve gotten the feedback that I ‘sure do curse a lot!’ I do ‘make great points but do I also need to drop the f bomb so much?’ And my very favorite, and I quote, “You’re so pretty. Ladies like you don’t swear!”

Being the salacious sinner that I am, I thought:

Well f*ck! Should I bat my lashes and shrug it off ??
Or should I sharpen my digital pencil and add another entry to my chapter of this online diary of women thought leaders ??

I bet you can guess which direction I am heading….

Personally, I think there are much bigger fish to fry with the current state of the world than tending to who’s potty mouth is most offensive. In fact, I’d say with current events going as they are, my sailor ways of eloquence should be the least of anyones’ worries. But certainly, I can write something cheeky in my next entry to clap back, kindly, and with f bombs like cherries on top.

The mission of LBI Digital is to have clever conversations about Money, Sex & Politics amongst women thought leaders & business activists so that we can better engage equally in the world around us. And on occasion, I find it helpful to use explicits when digging into these taboo subjects. I don’t always take my inspo from foul mouth mavens,, but when I do, I channel my inner Mae West, delivering a classy, graceful and funny zest to my point- at least I think that’s how it lands!!

As I dab my digital pen in sassy ink for my last entry to the Boss Blog take over for 2023, I’m going to wax poetically about ye old f*cking politics, or at least attempt to.

Don’t worry! I promise not to try & convince you of any side.

I will not draw a line in the sand about who is the least bad of the worst and certainly I have no inclination to throw stones.

But what I will do this season of holiday glimmer is to shine that light a bit brighter into the darker corners of our shared humanity so that we can GLOW the digital place of the Internet up in the next calendar year!.

I also will not trick you via a pollyanna tempo of toxic positivity.

Cool? Cool!

Notably, this bossy Blog was started with collaborative intentionality in the spring of 2021.

Next year, I will pass the keys to the blog back to the community of system change focused women we are building with LBI Digital. I love learning from other thought leaders, industry disruptors & business activists.

And I hope you do, too.

It was important that I spend some time here in the blogosphere for the past few months shining light through my Rose colored glasses & sharing some specific thoughts I have around money, sex & politics .

LBI Digital stands firmly in the notion that when women talk openly and honestly in conversations about these 3 topics, we change culture and thus change lives. We essentially rewrite our own scripts and thus spell out, maybe even code for the future. And that is political.

The current way the internet is built is based upon a Cloud sharing model. Web 2.0 is built on our participation that many of us eagerly do, with tiny computers in hand - also known as smartphones- to do things like ‘post on your wall’, ‘like, comment and share’ & essentially participate in the building of what is shared digitally. This second iteration of the Web has been built around the premise that everyone can be or is a ‘content creator’.

And what if we make that content generative , supportive and directive instead of extractive, commercial and bottom line based so that we can build the next version of the Web collectively? Well, that gets political pretty quickly!

If we the people who are both the users of and content creators inside the Internet’s current version notice our value as creators before that of consumers, we really flip the script of the Web, effectively disrupting the narrative of who builds tech and how it is distributed. If websites and apps are already able to be built by the masses without being coders and we add the swiftly moving factors of AI into the mix, I think it’s more than imperative to ask how our participation ( both digitally and politically) can be leveraged as infoshare instead of infomercial

Turning digital conversations about such hot topics as Money, Sex & Politics that also can greatly affect equity into open data that informs the bots and thus the future builds of the internet is integral. It is also political.

And just to get super clear on how LBI Digital approaches these topics, please allow me to drop some Rose styled definitions here:

Money:

like really elevating women’s access by identifying where we can find more resources for our individual and shared impact through business, education and even much needed community support. Community is the oldest currency in the books. We lean into that in our conversions and our activations through events & programming

Sure, you may want more $8 lattes, cute bags to match fab shoes and maybe even pay off your student debt. And we know lots of money bosses who can help with those lifestyle goals, too. But on LBI Digital channels, we like to talk about ACCESS to money: where and how we can get the green in more accessible ways and getting the f*ck of the hampster wheel of toxic capitalism. THIS IS POLITICAL

Sex :
like really collaborating with our own anatomy, finding accessible health care and even participating in safe and consensual conversations about the actual act of S E X .

Please pause briefly on the thought of ye old bump and grind because many women, myself included, have not been taught about our own bodies in honest and biological ways. Having open and informative conversations about ACCESS to sex as an educational topic as an inherent right to this knowledge may actually incline many of us to enjoy the actual act of the f*ck more and advocate for ourselves in what we really want. It’s also of note that most large, social platforms do not allow for education around sex, anatomy, reproduction, and our unalienable health rights to happen without shadow banning by the puritanical bots. Many of these educators have developed work arounds to trick said bots from taking their much needed and generative content to the trash section aka ‘other porn’ on the internet... And we shouldn’t have to trick robots so we can share vital information. THIS IS POLITICAL.

Politics :

like really inspiring with women across the isle as we learn about other perspectives, engaging in actual discourse whilst showing respect and all the while activating our political voice. In the years since 2016, many cisgendered, married women found a confidant in me and shared that their voting practices often followed that of their male partners. They also confessed they didn’t feel proud of this and wanted to better understand politics. This tells me that we as women are realizing more and more how important our voices are to the actual practice of a democracy. Our sharing of simple steps to political engagement from the local level on up for women of all ages, of any skin tone and from any economic background is… F*CKING POLITICAL.

I’m also willing to bet you thought about at least one of these topics at least once today.

Right?? And that may well make you, dare I say, political? Oh f*ck!

In hosting the LBI Digital Money, Sex & Politics podcast, my interview style aims to spotlight the thought leading lady guest so that she has the bulk of the airtime. In fact, the entire model of amplifying women’s voices by using tech for good is to use the simple tools of tech to build better digital bridges between blogs with backlinks, pouring SEO sugar into the LLM’s and thereby building our own ladyboss LLM,

Because ultimately our shared humanity is the antidote to any robot take over through AI!

When we build new systems as upgrades from those that are not supportive, we see change happen in concentric circles. I am speaking here about tech but as we know, tech touches many, many sectors and thereby lives.

Noticeably, we are in the midst of a great opportunity for a system upgrade, globally. My call to action on the various systems we can effectively upgrade is asking that you, me and your Mom start bloom scrolling instead of doom scrolling!

So what’s more political:

F bombs or Genocide?

Basically, my existence as a woman of Jewish lineage, who identifies as queer, who’s Spanish ancestors both perished and persisted through the Spanish Inquisition, Holocaust and into this moment, is f*cking political.

f*cking genocide

For the record, I do not stand with Israel.

I do, however, stand with humanity because thankfully the medieval times are now only a place where you go for strange field trips with in-laws or to satiate your need to eat an entire rotisserie chicken with your hands in public.

So why then do we conduct warfare like we don’t have indoor plumbing or for that matter, why do we humans think war will solve anything? Particularly by using civilians - women and children as front line combatants ?

Many of us humans happily left the notions of medieval scholasticism that were largely barbaric in nature by following the directions of kind mansplainers like Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, etc into the Renaissance; also arriving to the scene: flatware. This time in history, still written with war and all things patricahal, was key in defining our shared humanism.

Beyonce isn’t the only one that is calling for another Renaissance.

This time it’s digital, it’s inclusive and…you guessed it, it’s political as f*ck!

a digital renaissance

Our shared humanism is the antidote to any robot takeover and for that matter, colonial supremacy and authoritarian rule that subjugates any one group to be ‘other’, ‘animal’, or ‘extinguishable’.

Our use of technology as a tool that bridges divides, builds inclusive solutions to age old problems of division and prioritizes community as a powerful force of commerce IS POLITICAL.

Our big mission through LBI Digital to build the safest and most important place on the internet in a truly collaborative and inclusive way is aimed at co-creating a better internet for everyone’s experience. I absolutely realize this is political. And since it is political, the change that this build can affect beyond it’s digital footprint is what keeps me writing,

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