So, we have this:
For God’s sake you and Ren are the most negative, rage-filled bloggers I know for all your raving about sex ‘positive’ this and that. Like taking every single critical thought about sex positve as personal attacks against your desire to pole dance (did anyone criticize you for pole dancing by the way? I missed that part) or do sex work. Banging your heads constantly against that brick wall of how stuuuuuupppppiiiiid everyone is for not comprehensively understanding the terminology and the meeeaanning and history of “sex positive.” Who fucking cares? Be a feminist and enjoy your pole dancing and write something about how women are being treated outside blogland. Between Twitter updates and disecting comments from ‘radfem’ blogs, your blog has gone down.
So, anonymous commenter, does dissecting comments in my moderation queue that talk about how much this blog sucks because I spend so much time disecting [sic] radfem comments (funny, I thought my high point with that was around mid-2006) further contribute to the downward slide of my blog? Congratulations, we’ve just gone meta!
The possible perceived irony is not lost on me that I am posting the comment here as a jumping-off point for a post, but won’t be letting it out of the moderation queue to show up where this person tried to post it. Well, I don’t care.
And that (”Well, I don’t care”) would typically be the extent of my reaction to such a comment anyway - I mean really, I don’t understand what motivates people to leave such comments (especially anonymously; if you really feel that strongly, at least have the guts to put your name to your words). If you find yourself “bored to death” (this is the clever little fake email address the person entered; boredtodeath@brickwall.com, to be exact, brought to you courtesy of IP address 67.159.46.12) with a blog and think the blog has “gone down,” then truly, I cannot understand the motivation to leave a comment saying as much. To me the solution is simple: STOP READING THAT BLOG. No one’s putting a gun to your head and forcing you to read it, and anyway, as I’ve said countless times, the primary reason this blog exists is for ME, not for anyone else. Or, as Pink would say, “I’m not here for your entertainment.” You don’t like Twitter updates? You don’t like dissection of radfem comments? *shrug* The door’s thattaway, I won’t miss you.
Some things truly do just roll right off me. I think that under normal circumstances, the above comment would. But maybe not, who knows. Because, even under normal circumstances (whatever those are - but I mean, when I’m not dealing with some major life upheaval, I guess) there are some comments that even though objectively I know I shouldn’t give a shit about, because who the fuck is this person and why would I care what they think and it doesn’t matter anyway - well, the comment will get under my skin anyway. I’ll feel that familiar “sting,” that’s the only way I can describe it. And rather than try to quell those reactions, walk it off, suck it up, tell myself it doesn’t matter, I think it’s better to allow myself to feel what I’m feeling, and explore why a particular comment hurts me when another, objectively comparable comment does not. I’m a fan of the introspection and examination, after all (which is why radfems who constantly implore sex-positive feminists to do more “examining” really make my blood boil!).
This comment above, when I first saw it earlier today, made me want to cry. I don’t accept the “If you get upset the bully has won” line. I also don’t believe that crying equals weakness. I could puff out my chest and protect myself with snark and pretend like it didn’t affect me, but the truth is, that comment made me sad. Angry, too, definitely; but sadness was the immediate feeling that swept over me.
I’m on this new/old pursuit of trying to write as if no one is reading. That’s why I started this blog: to write for me. Granted, I won’t do some of the stupid things I did at first, bless my heart, like mention my employer, talk about the details of their ordering system and why it sucks, mention my boss by name and talk about why she sucks, etc. But hey, it was 2002 and not many people were reading blogs - such as, fortunately, the manager of the Borders in Athens!
Oops, digression. But as I was saying, I’m trying to get back to writing for me and no one else - but when I get comments like this, it shakes me up and reminds me that yes, there are people reading, and some of them are downright despicable and will try to hurt me. Either they don’t think of me as a person with feelings (I guess for some people the internet really does lead to depersonalization?) or, more disturbingly, they know full well I’m a person with feelings but they don’t care and they WANT to hurt me. And yes, I know that says much more about them than it does about me, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m hurting.
Believe me, I have plenty of experience with people being malicious toward me for being openly and unashamedly sexual, for being a feminist, for refusing to “know my place” or laugh at their stupid, offensive jokes. So while I understand that this kind of vitriol/backlash/hatefulness happens often and to many people, when I really think about it I still cannot really understand WHY someone would feel the need to lash out at someone for being a feminist, for example. What are they so scared of? (And yes, I know full well what they’re scared of - not that they’d ever admit it. But still, what makes people, even if they’re scared, lash out like that in such an unthinking way?)
As to this particular comment: Did anyone criticize me for pole dancing? Oh, honey, you did miss that part, didn’t you! I have a whole stable of comments from people telling me just how deluded I am, and won’t I please examine some more, and WHY do I do it, c’mon, explain WHY, because the fifty explanations prior weren’t good enough, and apparently I DO have to provide explanations on demand, because if I don’t then it just shows how defensive and insecure I am, and certainly a point-blank “fuck you” would be totally inappropriate…
Maybe one day I will get to a place where all or most of these comments roll right off of me, instead of just some. I’m working on it.
All this reminds me, I have another post started in draft mode about how I think people should be nicer in general, and I don’t buy the “proud New Yorker” thing some people do where they’re like, I’m an asshole and I’m proud of it, I’m going to be blunt, so there! I think that sucks. I don’t think bluntness by itself is anything to be proud of, although at times it can be (e.g., calling out BS, not sugar-coating difficult truths, not gossiping behind people’s backs). Again: context, people. I should finish that post.
Yesterday on Twitter 
