Letters to the Editor
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I post a lot on political blogs and I try specifically to get on right wing blogs.
I enjoy taking the wingnuts on in their own territory. This leads to me getting quite a few threats and a lot of abuse and foul language sent my way.
I've come to appreciate that when someone descends to name calling, insults, foul language or threats, they have nothing else in their repertoire to use against me. That's when I know I have won the argument.
What seems to enrage trolls the most is when you respond to them in a calm, rational, polite and logical manner. That drives them into frothing rage and they intensify their efforts to get you to respond in kind.
I'm a former Vietnam Marine turned dirty phucking hippy and I'm a wingnut's worst nightmare, a dirty phucking hippy that can pick you off at five hundred meters with iron sights so I don't worry much about threats.
As I posted on the thread about Ms Sierra, there is a line from the old Doors song _People Are Strange_ that I think speaks to a lot of the misogyny that you see online.
People are strange when youre a stranger
Faces look ugly when youre alone
Women seem wicked when youre unwanted
Streets are uneven when youre down
Men rarely turn to other men for emotional support, it wouldn't be "manly". A man without any real emotional connection, like a man without a woman, is essentially emotionally isolated. Humans are social creatures and being isolated makes us strange rather quickly.
I think that is what you are seeing online, a lot of men with no woman who are emotionally isolated and angry at all women because of their perceived rejection by women. A lot of geeky guys are shy and shy men are at a severe disadvantage in meeting and forming relationships with women since men in our culture are supposed to be the ones to initiate contact with women.
That's my hypothesis in a nutshell, I would be very interested in any comments or criticisms that anyone might have.
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Give this a little more thought
Joan, you claim that Salon's women writers have received more abuse than the males, and then quote someone responding that the problem was "the kind of woman writer Salon has been fond of publishing in the last few years ... Smug, self-satisfied, without any kind of real difficulty except their sad inability to make the rest of the world understand, and so appreciate, them for who they are," and then you sarcastically say "Glad we cleared that up," apparently without giving it even the slightest consideration.
But whoever wrote that has a damn good point, even though it wasn't expressed very well. Take a few of your male commentators--Conason, Greenwald, Blumenthal, Keillor, Leonard--and compare them to your female ones--Paglia, Lamott, Dickerson, Traister, yourself. In general, do you see any difference here in the seriousness of content, the rigor of thought, the consistency, the inclusiveness, and the fairmindedness of these groups as a whole, to mention only a handful of the qualities of good commentary? As an editor-in-chief, you'd better see that difference. If, as a whole, your female writers are more heavily criticized, then the first question you should seriously ask yourself is whether they deserve it more. Because in this case the answer is yes. And then I recommend you ask yourself why that is.
And furthermore, this essay would have been much more persuasive if you'd taken a serious look at the abuse the males receive online generally (not just in Salon) and then compared that to the misogyny you've seen in order to come to some conclusions. But if you did that, you didn't share it with us.
Unfortunately, here's another case where I agree with your premise--that there's too much misogyny online--yet I find your argument disagreeable.
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You're a moron Walsh
Also, how a guy who calls himself "Rageboy" can have his reputation harmed by Sierra's complaints kind of escapes me, but Locke is entitled to his hurt feelings.
Oh, how droll. Oh, how pithy. What a sharp crack directed at his internet handle. How could his reputation be harmed? If the accusations are false, as Locke claims, then how about defamation of character and libel? This kind of idiocy fuels misogyny.
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Hateful speech is boring
Joan, I am very happy to read that there will be some editing of the letters to Salon. Too many of the letters don't illuminate or add to a conversation but are only childish rants meant to hurt and insult. It's time to stop giving these types of people a forum on Salon.
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there is an inherent imbalance when some people in the discussion are anonymous and some aren't
but it is EQUALLY CERTAIN that if everyone's wife, mother, grandmother and employer hear everything that they say online that there won't be much there worth hearing.
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Daniel, you're such a tough guy!
Make sure you call your daddy up and tell him what a big man you were on the internet today.
But seriously, I never really understood why you'd want to put a letters section in Salon at all. 90% of the responses are utter crap- including mine! Perhaps especially mine.
Anyway, I advise the ladies of Salon to keep typing away. Don't let the bastards drag you down.
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I insulted Walsh.
I insulted Walsh in the letter's page of her interview with Lamott.
I think I called her writing narcissistic and I did make a reference to Lamott's wrinkles.
Guilty and guilty.
Lamott's sycophantic interview with her friend Lamott was deeply flawed and read more like a fan-letter than a real interview. I also took objection to Walsh's apparent self-congratulatory intro in which she tells us how she gave a free spare advance copy of Lamott's latest book to a woman at the nail-salon.
I mentioned Lamott's wrinkles only because Lamott and Walsh spent so much of the interview talking about it. I wrote that it wasn't remarkable that a 52 year old developed wrinkles. I also made a crueler remark about how Lamott didn't appear to be aging particularly gracefully (wrinkles, pink-lipstick and dreadlocks). Again- I wouldn't have mentioned it if it weren't a part of Walsh's interview.
If Walsh didn't want us to discuss looks and aging then she probably shouldn't have discussed it herself in an interview setting.
Here's the rule- you write about it- and I have permission to talk about it on the letters page.
Don't complain to me if Lamott writes article after article about her own parenting skills- and I then turn around and call Lamott a bad parent.
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I'm not saying that Ms. Walsh's thesis is without merit, but I doubt that many of the letters in response to the Lamott interview had much to do with misogyny. They were mostly concerned with Lamott being a preachy narcissist and Walsh being a treacly sycophant.