I’ve been neglecting to write the sort of gritty, TMI blogging that I’d actual built the original Brutal Women blog around for some time now. Some of that had to do with the constant conversation management I had to do when I posted on feminist topics. When people ask me how it’s possible to deal with one-star reviews of my book, I ask them how many death threats and threats of sexual assault they’ve received. This blog has a long history of insighting both nasty comments and outright death threats, many of which I simply didn’t talk about because I figured they came with the territory when you had a feminist blog (ask any feminist blogger, and she’ll likely pull out a slew of death and sexual threats from “fans”).  Funny how much that kind of behavior simply became the norm.  

In the end, it wasn’t so much the threats (the “delete” button is your friend), it was simply the thought of the intensive comment and conversation management I would have to do if I posted a strong, thoughtful opinion here. It’s one thing to unfollow me because I RT an article about how safe abortion is. It’s quite another to read something like this here. Most people feel the need to respond – violently, angrily, emotionally (and in long form!)  – and managing that conversation is exhausting. 

A lot of this lack of spoons comes from the fact that 5 years ago, after just a couple of years of great blog posts, I got sick. . Being sick sucks. My dad says “sick” isn’t the right word, but trust me, when you’re up at 2 a.m. jabbing yourself with your fourth or six syringe full of drugs for the day just so you can keep on breathing, it sure does feel like being sick. It’s just a sickness that never gets better.

After sorting out the Life Crazy that ensured in the wake of my illness, I spent a good deal of time focused totally inward. I realized life was short, and I needed to focus on building a life instead of hating it so much. I also realized that my energy no longer felt so passionate and limitless. I needed to focus on just one or two really important things, and focus everything I possibly could on those. I only had so many spoons now, and I had to use them wisely.

So I got a good job, a few other good jobs, found a fantastic partner, bought a big red house, and adopted a couple of wonderful dogs. I also finally published a book, and now here I am getting ready for the launch of the next one. I spent a lot of time doing all the things that needed doing, and neglected the things that just didn’t seem important, like raging against my life and venting steam to the masses.  

 But here’s the thing.

As the books finally stumbled toward publication, as social networks change and get bigger and move and I tenuously kept up with them through clickity-clacking 140 characters at a time, I knew that by going silent, I was not only cutting myself off from the crazy death threat people and exhausting trolls but also the people who absolutely loved this blog and the wild stuff that went on here – whether it was talking about boxing or books, there were some things I could share here that really did change people’s lives. I have the fan mail to prove that (not as much as the junk mail, but fan mail nonetheless).

I have tried repeatedly to come back to blogging as my world changed, but ultimately the form had lost something for me, or perhaps it was that I was different, or… and in December I remember Toby Buckell’s post about shutting on comments on his blog (for similar sorts of “not enough spoons” reasons). I hated the whole idea of doing something like that, but in subsequent follow-up posts he noted how much he and how it had inspired him to write more posts there. After so many months (a couple years now, really), of sporadic posts, I thought, “Well, shit, yanno, it’s worth a shot.”

Now, after surviving a rather harsh winter but here on the other side still kickin’ (and still selling a few books, apparently), I figure it’s time I gave it one last shot. Cause if turning off comments doesn’t promote more blogging on my part, I don’t know that blogging is going to be in my future, and I recognize that it’s still a valuable platform.

So comments are coming down on the blog, but the blog’s not going dark. Never really going dark, no more than I did.
It’s my hope that this will help free up some of my spoons for some more thoughtful posts, something more than 140 characters of Star Trek live-blogging after one too many beers.

One can always hope.

1) Xmas. I would like one. But I have a deadbeat landlord who still has not returned our security deposit, though he signed a lease with new tenants three weeks ago. So, no presents for us. Hopefully it will come by week’s end. Then: I will click the Amazon “buy” button and be done. Til then, Xmas blues.

2) I bawled through the opening of Up on Sunday night. That said, why was it the wife who had to die so her husband could go off and have adventures? She wanted it so much, much, more. Gah. It’s boys’ own adventure. I acknowledge we need that, too. Still, sad-making. At any rate, Pixar has some incredible writers on staff. They know their medium, and they totally own it.

3) I am reading Felix Gilman’s The Half-Made World. Thus far, it doesn’t suck. Also, bought a signed limited edition VanderMeer book. Cause I’m a lame fan girl like that (once you’ve paid $60 for the limited edition of Dradin, in Love, you’re pretty much sunk). When people moan about the death of the printed book, they forget that collectors will ALWAYS be buying beloved books. It’s the one-offs and popcorn books that will move rapidly and exist solely in the digital.

4) Posts from the old blog, brutalwomen.blogpost.com, are now being redirected here. Sorry. With God’s War coming out next month, it was finally time to consolidate. Don’t hate. That site was so 2004.

5) Some Xmas money from my folks went toward buying J. and I some twin Droid X’s. I am now a certified android-lover. I am serious. I can even write and edit stories on this damn thing. Also, it slices, dices, and makes a mean cup of coffee…

6) Posts. I have some. Also, some book three excerpts. Also, Iron Maiden excerpts (the book, not the band, people!). But tra-la J. has been home all of December because he’s not working nights, which means I’ve been a bit distracted. Expect more missives when he goes back to working nights. I know, I know, it’s weird that we like to hang out.

7) I’m not allowed to play WoW again until I have a draft of book 3. It’s the only way I know that ENSURES that I will have a draft before winter’s end.

That is all.

There’s some fun stuff that comes with blogging. I remember going to a Wiscon the year after I started and how people came up to me and introduced themselves – total strangers – saying they read and followed the blog. It was… weird. As a writer, the cliche is that everybody asks you, “Where do you ideas come from?” In the blogging world, the first thing other bloggers ask you is, “How do you deal with negative comments?”

Blogging is a great way to prepare yourself for when your first book comes out. If you haven’t started a blog and you want to be a writer who actually engages the world, I highly recommend it. Because, if you’re lucky, you’ll say plenty of things on your blog that make people who don’t even know you hate you. And people hating you, for a writer, is a very similiar feeling to people hating your book. So you’ll grow some thick skin real quick.

It’s funny that people who read your posts get far more personal in their attacks than people who read your fiction. If you’re lucky, they engage with your actual argument, but more often, they feel it’s necessary to personally attack you. Which is weird, since they don’t, you know, know you. But blogs are far more personal spaces than books, in part because of the fiction/nonfiction divide and in part because there’s not the status confirmed by mega-publisher standing between me and the reader. We read stories differently if they’ve been published vs. unpublished. I expect published stories to be better. It doesn’t mean they are. But I have different expectations. The web has become a great equalizer, and it means there’s no longer any ivory tower for you to hide behind when people throw stuff at your crappy arguments.

Now, there are all sorts of things I can infer about a writer from what they write. But I don’t know that I’ve outright called an author a woman-hating faggot, for instance, because of something he’d written.

But when you’re loud and offensive and explicitly tackling feminist issues on a blog, the odds of a day going by in which you’re not called a man-hating lesbian go up the more you post. Now, there’s certainly nothing wrong with being a man-hating lesbian. There are certainly women I find attractive, and certainly some men I strongly dislike. And I suspect the vast majority of people in the world find some women attractive and strongly dislike some men, and vice versa. What gets me is how this stuff is brought out to silence the speaker. To invalidate what they’re saying. You could have the best argument in the whole world, but one scream of “man-hating lesbian” and some weirdo thinks they’ve cut you down.

Um, no.

See, here’s the thing, folks. If you choose to live publicly, you have to deal with the haters. And there will always be haters. Far more haters if you have an explicitly political blog. They will send you nasty emails and threaten sexual violence and call you gay, because this is about the extent of the scary stuff they can think of.

That’s the good news. Because if it you know how to throw a good right hook and don’t find being gay offensive, the world is your oyster.

Yes, really.

I’ve gotten all sorts of hatred spewed over here in the six years I’ve been posting to this blog. Thing is, all everybody talks about is the bad stuff (look at this post, even!). What we fail to talk about (and what nobody ever asks me about) is how to deal with the *good* stuff. I’ve had fan letters and thank-you letters and some really good stories about folks who changed their lives because of a personal story I shared here. I’ve had letters and comments that literally leave me speechless (or word-less at least). In the face of strong, heartfelt emotion I always have trouble responding, and it’s no different with blog comments.

We continually focus on the bad. I know a handful of female bloggers who’ve deleted their blogs due to harassment. That’s a tragedy. I understand it, sure, but it’s a tragedy nonetheless.

When you start thinking about quitting, pull up the good conversations. The fan emails. The amazing comments. Remember the lives you’re making better.

And just know that harassment comes with the territory. Harassment means you’re doing something right. It means you made somebody uncomfortable. It means you’re freaking them out and shaking up their worldview. It doesn’t mean you need to shut up.

When people ask me how to moderate comments, I actually find it to be a trivial question. It’s not about how to moderate comments. It’s how to have the courage to keep talking when everybody wants you to shut the hell up. Hatred is exhausting. And we focus on the hatred, of course. We give negative comments three times the attention of positive ones, which always makes it seem like there are more than there really are.

The kind of blogging I do, I realize after my long hiatus, really is about courage. I was worried all the time about what people would think. I was worried about strangers at cons. Stalkers. Potential employers. Work colleagues.

But there’s also a lot of good that comes from it. A lot of people who find some value in it. Who take courage from it.

And that makes it all worth it.

You have to figure out what’s worth it for you, too. I don’t envy the bloggers who’ve been targeted with hate campaigns from the big conservative or MRA blogs. I don’t envy folks with exes who stalk them via their blogs. I don’t pretend that “just ignore the haters” works in every instance. But the majority of the time, what we need to go forward is, simply, courage.

And a willingness to hit the “delete” button.