the ch!cktionary — Hating On Women Bloggers

15 Feb 2010
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This is an oldie (but a goodie) from See Emily Blog, who writes in this entry about the vitriol directed at women bloggers, such as mommy blogger Heather Armstrong and me. (Confession: it blows my mind that someone would mention Sex and the Ivy in the same breath as Dooce.)

Emily sums up the haterade on my blog like this:

I constantly see some flat out disgusting and insulting comments thrown her way, even though she rarely writes about her sex life anymore, and if she does, there’s very little detail … A lot of Chen’s posts have some type of comment about how she needs psychological counseling to face the childhood demons that turned her into such a whore and ruined her life.

Which is funny, because the reason I started therapy during my sophomore year of college was because the fallout from my blog made me very, very depressed. Not prompted by childhood demons, but rather the cruelty of, well, the world. I’ve since grown the fuck up and realized that assholes are nothing to be sad about.

I can’t tell you how shitty I used to feel when I was 19 and fielding vicious comments on a daily basis, but I grew a thicker skin and got used to it. It only ever really bothered me when people close to me became collateral damage via association. But even though some of my detractors have gone after my roommates and my family, they never managed to figure out the identity of anyone I hooked up with or dated … until Patrick. Part of the reason why I no longer write as explicitly as I used to about my sex life on Sex and the Ivy, is because I’m in a relationship which has become impossible to hide. It’s pretty telling that I ever even tried to hide it and even more telling that I failed, despite my best efforts, to keep Patrick’s identity a secret.

Armstrong turned the tables by starting an ad-plastered site that republished all the hateful comments directed at her. I’m tempted to do the same for sheer entertainment value (though probably not for profit, given my significantly lower traffic). Thoughts?

Stay tuned: the next time I take a break from my thesis (uh, don’t cross your fingers), I’ll write up a handy guide to the four or five types of haterade you might expect to encounter if you’re a woman blogger.