People, I know you mean well and I love you for trying to promote my wisdom among the masses. However, there is a group of people out there in the blogging world who kind of scare me. I once participated on one of their blogs, got accused of being a man, and was banished with undeserved derision. Since then, I never went back. Still, years later, people would lash out at me at completely unrelated blogs in extreme rage over that insignificant little discussion at a blog I only visited once in my life.
Another one of them (this blogger will not be named because I really, really don’t want to bring her or them here) blogs under a double name (or maybe there are two of them) and is a very angry, really disturbed individual who sometimes comes to this blog with absolutely no provocation on my part to leave scary, unhinged comments that terrify me. I’m seriously fearful of this person and really hope she (or they?) will eventually forget about my existence. I will never understand what can possess a person to keep reading a blog that enrages her to this extent. This kind of self-torture is incomprehensible to me.
These people hang out together at their blogs where I never go, and I avoid all of them like the plague. If I participate in a comment thread and see one of them there, I leave immediately and never come back. They scare me not because they write angrily or passionately (I’m obviously in no position to criticize anybody’s anger) but because I don’t understand what provokes it. In order to disagree, you need to speak the same language and share a frame of reference. With these people, though, I can never guess what provokes them and why.
I am not suggesting, of course, that people are only entitled to the kind of rage that I can understand. Far be it from me to dictate to anybody what should or should not make them angry. All I want is not to be part of a dialogue that confuses and scares me. If I and these bloggers exist in vastly different universes, then the best thing for us is not to intersect. Nobody here is better than anybody else. We are simply too different, that’s all.
This is why I’m asking everybody to do me a favor and not link to me or mention me in any way in the presence of these people and on their blogs. I most sincerely wish them the absolute best in all of their undertakings and encourage everybody to read their blogs and discuss things with them if that’s what they want to do. I just want never to be brought to their notice, if possible.
Clarissa's Blog 
If it’s the same double named blogger I am thinking of, and if memory serves me correctly, I am thinking the vitriol has to do with your criticism of attachment parenting practices. Attachment parenting advocates are like home schoolers. Any whiff of critcism inspires hysteria and agression.
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Yes, I think that is it. The scariest moment was when this person left a comment saying something like, “I haven’t read this post because I know it will be garbage just like everything you write.” I can’t imagine what needs to happen for me to waste my life on leaving such comments on blogs I don’t like.
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It’s one of the drawbacks of being even mildly popular on the internet, that you’ll attract these angry obsessed losers. They’re worse than trolls because they genuinely believe what they’re saying and aren’t doing it just to piss you off.
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It’s nice to think of this as the price I pay for fame. 🙂
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On the other hand I am free to write what ever I want on my blog without fear of anybody, but my parents reading it.
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You must be a very self-disciplined person to avoid those blogs so totally. I myself read some of them, despite similar feelings to yours, purely for schadenfreude. This is a very bad habit that I need to break.
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I often get links from websites that let me know when somebody somewhere is saying something nasty about me. Or I get emails saying “Look at the horrible stuff X says about you.” I never even get tempted to follow these links. I just delete them.
Of course, if I followed the link and engaged in debates with the haters, that would promote my blog. But it isn’t worth it for me.
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This is a very smart way of doing things! Why court negativity unnecessarily? Plus your blog is clearly popular enough on its own, no promotion needed.
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“Plus your blog is clearly popular enough on its own, no promotion needed.”
– Thank you. This is a very nice comment. 🙂 🙂
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Haters will hate because they are jealous that you have a devoted readership who cares about you, and the issues you discuss, which are always of tremendous importance. But I hope you moderate their comments out when they come! Nothing pisses a hater off more than when you don’t even allow their comment to see the light of day! I have, btw, no idea who these people are, but they sound nasty.
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Thank you, my friend!
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I can relate. Once certain communities label you as dumb, crazy, or whatever else (which happened to me early in my blogging) there is no going back. You are out of the in-crowd and can never fully regain respectability.
You are very smart to avoid places where you can get irritated. I try to do it too, with more or less success. I stopped commenting altogether except on blogs where I know I can say what I think with reasonable assurance that I won’t get crapped on.
There are topics where I feel very strongly against the practice, such as circumcision or home schooling, but I realized that just don’t have the stomach to argue online after stepping on these landmines a few times.
I always enjoy your writing even when I am not 100% in agreement. Keep up the good work!
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If it’s the two people I’m thinking of, I have been abused by them, too. I cannot abide either of them, and stopped reading their blogs as a result.
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Yes, I do remember them attacking you over a completely inoffensive, very honest and interesting post.
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Hey that is the same blog that had this wonderful quotation downgrading the victims of communism.
“In other news: Gerda Lerner, the pathbreaking women’s historian, died yesterday at age 92 (h/t to cgeye on the blog and Indyanna via a private e-mail for tipping me off.) I for one am glad that her connection to Communism is right there on page 1 of her New York Times obituary–Betty Friedan might be rolling over in her grave about the prominent discussion of the CP, but can’t we be okay already with the truth of the historical connections between Communism and other mid-twentieth century Progressive movements like Civil Rights and feminism? Like most people born in the 1960s, the Cold War shaped my childhood but I outgrew it, just like my big hair, my Duran Duran albums, and other relics of the 1980s, thank goodness.”
http://www.historiann.com/2013/01/03/a-conversation-with-chauncey-devega-about-guns-masculinity-and-the-white-violent-crime-epidemic-gerda-lerners-life-and-death-and-why-im-okay-with-skipping-the-aha-agai/
Communism as a Civil Rights Movement and the movement to memorialize its victims put on the same level as Duran Duran albums.
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Oh God. This is one of the things that keeps souring my relationships with many of the people in academic circles. Somehow, there is always compassion for victims of genocide everywhere in the world except for victims in my country. People actually roll their eyes and sigh in a bored way when I mention Holodomor (for the first time in their presence. It isn’t like I talk about it obsessively.)
This is why I’m so happy to find out that there are historians who are still interested in researching the genocides and mass deportations in the USSR. I’m even happier that somebody is daring to mention the racist component in these persecutions.
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Really people roll their eyes and sigh when you mention the Holodomor? I just can’t imagine such rudeness. Those type of things simply don’t happen here in Ghana. When I taught in Central Asia I would occasionally get really strong reactions from students who were hearing about Stalin’s crimes for the first time. Some of them got really angry, not at me, wondering how could their government have sent millions of its own citizens to wastelands to die. When I teach the Holodomor here in Africa the students are just stunned. The idea that a regime could starve to death part of its own population is something that they have never even imagined before. Although unfortunately it has happened here in Africa as well for instance under the Stalinist government of Mengistu in Ethiopia.
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“Really people roll their eyes and sigh when you mention the Holodomor? I just can’t imagine such rudeness. ”
– The rich Marxists are particularly likely to do that.
“The idea that a regime could starve to death part of its own population is something that they have never even imagined before. ”
– And on purpose, too. This was done purposefully. I know you know, but I always feel the need to repeat that because the official line in Russia is now that “this just happened.” Even though dying of hunger in Ukraine, a country with the most fertile lands in Europe, is as easy as freezing to death in Havana in July.
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To be as fair as possible to the blogger in question, I think she’s just referring to the American communist party which was ahead of the curve on some issues including unionization and civil rights (and since they never were elected to anything had no chance to screw things up). The cold war reference was that there was a tendency to ignore or deny the existence of the party and the few better ideas it had.
Their biggest fault was (kind of deliberate) ignorance of a lot of the abuses going on in the USSR and similar places.
In my continuing fairness the blogger in question could have made the distiction much clearer (and that whole blog looks as toxic as hell, it’s like the bright yellows and reds that nature uses to warn the wary away from stores of venom).
Warning sign : Repeated use of the “I never said X” when X was very heavily inferred. A person who does that is the human version of a coral snake – get close to it at your own risk.
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It’s the flippant tone more than anything else that got to me.
I haven’t been back there since the “effectively gendered male research” and I’m strongly convinced that a person who can come up with that evrbal construction does not have anything of interest to communicate to me.
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Sorry I reblogged one of your posts, but I understand your concerns. I’ll take it down. BTW, I notice you’re now in the WordAds program. Have you formed an opinion on it yet. I’ve been in it from the get-go, but need to increase readership to make any money. i think some of the WordAds video ads are very cool.
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No, no, it’s fine. All I meant is that people post links to me on the blogs of these scary people. You are definitely not a scary person and I’m honored to appear on your great blog.
I just turned on WordAds a few days ago, so I’m not even sure how that will work out. I will write about it when things become clear.
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