Comment from Snardiff, in the discussion on the post Do We Concede the Ground of Death Too Easily?: “You are a cretinous, ugly, buck toothed lesbian. Why would anyone listen to you?”
#mencallmethings
Not sure I have too much to add to this one. It pretty much speaks for itself. Apparently, the only reason a women is worth listening to is if (a) she is attractive, and (b) she might potentially have sex with you. If she is an ugly lesbian, then she fails on both counts, and her ideas are not worth listening to. (Too bad they didn’t get the memo that I’m actually bisexual. Maybe then my ideas would have been worth consideration.)
And I’m now going to issue the standard request that I always issue when the #thing that #menhavecalled me is some version of “ugly”: Please, unless you’re a personal friend or someone I’m having sex with, don’t try to make me feel better by saying that I’m not ugly. If I write about fashion or post the hot pic of myself in the Skepticon calendar, you can say nice things about how I look… but please don’t do it here. I’m not calling this out to garner reassurance about my appearance. I’m calling this out to show people the kind of shit women routinely deal with. I have a thick skin, and I don’t get my feelings hurt by sexist jackasses calling me names. That isn’t the point.
The point isn’t that I’m not ugly. The point is that it shouldn’t matter.
Wow, that comment just kind of came out of left field too…
And I’m not saying that you are any of those things, but even if you were, how does any of that determine the value of what you say? (This is mostly rhetorical, in a sane world it doesn’t)
I really just didn’t get that comment… It makes no sense. I mean, you’re leaving a comment that says “No one listens to you” after over 40 other commenters responded to a post. You had to have noticed most of them were a little long to just say “LAWL GRETA Y U NO PUT OUT 4 ME?!” Why is there even a point in saying something so obviously false? Who are you trying fool? If it’s yourself… Gosh that is way too sad.
Although I would have said ignoring him would be pretty poetically just- you know, tables turned and what have you. It just made me giggle.
Yes, but the weighting is halved due to only being half heterosexual, and halved again due to being so so ugly. It all makes sense this way, honest!
Thank you, Internet, for letting women walk around inside the heads of men. Mind the gap…
http://jezebel.com/5914417/no-matter-how-unhinged-you-act-dudes-on-the-internet-will-still-try-to-bang-you
Holms @ #3: Good point. But bisexuals are all total sluts who will fuck anything that moves, so shouldn’t I get extra “listenability” credit for that? :p
When “people” (I put that in quotes) are reduced to pointless name calling it’s a pretty good sign they have absolutely nothing intelligent to say.
Thanks for posting this.
Strikes me that a “buck-toothed lesbian,” even in a misogynist’s mind, might still have something worthwhile to say about the state of modern dentistry or the quality of toys available at Toys in Babeland.
If I’m not allowed to tell you I think you’re adorable, can I at least say I think you’re brilliant? And clever and witty? None of it would be flattery.
I’m sure you’re aware that the more popular a person becomes, the more shite gets thrown at ’em, too. Brian Epstein would shrug and say, “They’re just jealous.” LOL
For some reason, the first thing that came to mind when reading this poor shlub’s comment was the “lesbian vampire” segment on The Rachel Maddow Show. XD
“You are a cretinous, ugly, buck toothed lesbian. Why would anyone listen to you?”
I am going to answer this question.
Because GC writes remarkable stuff, worth thinking over, at least now and then.
Snardiff doesn’t. Why would anyone listen to him?
The point is you have a beautiful mind.
It is that mind that provokes the fear that is the cause of the need to diminish you.
Stay beautiful.
Second comment sorry.
I actually pity someone who needs to try and hurt others in order to feel a sense of worth. Every one of us is the product of generations upon generations of sacrifice, suffering, and love, how can anyone call the current manifestation of all that human glory ugly? those who sacrificed that I may live may have been your forefathers/mothers and visa versa, we are all connected we are all one extended human family, that is why when one of us has their rights withheld, we all are made less, if one of us is called ugly we all are ugly.
Everyone knows that the worth of your arguments is perfectly correlated with the desire of the other party to bang you. That’s why there are so many underwear models in positions of political power. Duh!
I believe (b) can be overridden if you’re an attractive lesbian, then you simply need to let them watch you have sex. Of course, they may still want to use their astounding, godly masculinity to ‘convert’ you at some point. Alternatively, bisexuals can worship a man’s subjugating genitals and put on a show with other women at the same time.
*shudders and scrubs skin for weeks* I doubt I’ll ever understand the warped justifications that exist in the minds of such individuals. Primarily because I have no desire to understand such egocentric maliciousness, I just long for it to be obliterated so brilliant ideas can always be cherished.
Using ‘cretinous’ as an insult to an atheist adds an extra layer of incompetence to the attempted slur.
LOL, yes, cafeeine, if you’re in the know. But the derivation of “cretin” is quite obscure.
Translation: “Rarrr! That’s not what I believe! I wanna yell loud, scary words!!”
Reading the things that men call you really makes me feel embarrassed to have a penis. Greta you are one of my favorite people. Keep up the good work!
Your mind is utterly beautiful, and that is what really matters.
#mencallmethings
Another one to add to the pile: annoying
You follow up a terrificly thought-provoking post (God’s solutions to the dying are a total cop-out; here’s how we can do better!) by dignifying your troll with a response (boys can be so petty and mean-spirited when shielded by internet anonymity, but I’m not fishing for sympathy at all!).
You’ll continue to present ideas worth reading, though. And I’ll keep looking for them here; not all chores are pointless.
Haha!! Cafeeine, I had forgotten that etymology until you mentioned it. More lolling to be had.
For what it’s worth, I started reading your blog by way of Pharyngula and quickly became an admirer. Very few writers can muster your quality of eloquence and critical commentary (it’s not just the well-crafted phrase, it’s the well-formed idea).
FWIW, your blog has quickly become one of the must-reads each day for me. When it comes to opinions that matter, I hold yours in high regard.
@Mark White: Thanks for the laugh in the morning 😀 Yes, I guess, sometimes it’s just that.
“Too bad they didn’t get the memo that I’m actually bisexual. Maybe then my ideas would have been worth consideration.”
Well, sometimes.
Also that person assumes that the only “ones”, i.e. the only people, are straight men.
“Buck-toothed: Your argument is invalid.”
(could be an image macro)
This comment struck me as so stupid, over the top and out of context that my brain automatically put it in the spam folder while reading the thread. I see that as the person that is addressed, this is not so easily ignored. It’s a nice exhibit of deliberate sexist bullying strategies. In this case the originator was too dumb to pull it off (and dumb enough to try it on you), but in other circumstances, with other victims, this can actually work, and that’s scary.
A woman says/writes her thoughts. Her thoughts are passionate, insightful, well-researched, beautifully expressed, etc.
Thoughts of privileged jerkass male listener/reader:
*considers woman unattractive* “Eww, she’s ugly. I wouldn’t do her in a million years. Was she saying something? Pfft, who cares. She hasn’t fulfilled her duty to look like someone I’d wanna screw, so anything she says is worthless. Herpaderp. I think I’ll call her things.”
*considers woman attractive* “Hubba hubba, she’s pretty. I wanna do her. Was she saying something? Pfft, who cares. She must have slept her way to where she is, ’cause pretty = dumb. Herpaderp. I think I’ll go give her a naked picture of myself.”
@thebookofdave, oh noes! We would NEVER want to DIGNIFY a TROLL with a RESPONSE! Thanks for telling Greta how to run her blog, though. Double points for simultaneously missing and proving her point.
Is it safe to assume that the people who respond to this with variations on the “Ignore it and it will go away” theme haven’t been bullied/targets of bigotry themselves?
Thank you for posting these #mencallmethings. Thank you for making people as accountable for what they say online as what they would say in person. If someone said that to you in real life, of course you would call them out on it, so I’m glad to see you do it online!
I get so mad just thinking about how someone could write that to you. Then I try to think about how miserable that commenter must be in his own life…I mean, it must be exhausting to be constantly enraged that people you don’t want to f*** are saying stuff. How unhappy must a person be before deciding that spewing venom is a good use of his time.
@Illuminata :
Pretty safe, yeah.
“don’t feed the troll”
“don’t dignify it with a response”
“don’t be so sensitive”
“you need to rise above it”
= SHUT UP!
I found the “Ground of Death” article yet another really good piece of freethought. Over and over, Greta manages to break down and simplify topics others (like me) may have – but have trouble explaining.
In fact, the article prompted me to “join” Greta’s blog. At $5 a month, it was a steal.
Andy
I think that poop-flinging monkey got lost on his way to some other blog.
It amazes me what Pastors will hand out cookies for these days. they must be getting desperate.
I remember one time I was really angry as a teenager. I don’t remember what I was angry about, but I remember thinking that I wanted to break something. So I did. After I broke it (I think it was my model of the space shuttle) I remember looking at myself in the mirror and feeling like an idiot.
I didn’t do anything to make my situation better. I had a broken toy, and I felt like a fool.
To this day, I still don’t know why I thought breaking something would make me feel better. It’s a really dumb idea.
It is a lot like calling someone names or making fun of them when you disagree with something they said. It doesn’t make you feel any better, and you look like a fool when you do it.
I feel sorry for that guy who made the stupid insulting comment. His comment makes him sound like he is really emotional and not in control of his situation in any meaningful way. He sounds sad. I hope he grows up.
That’s one of the things I like about text fora on the Internet (as opposed to, say, face-to-face discussions or public debates or TV news stories): it’s a lot easier for people to hide their appearance. Or, as they used to say, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”
This tends to remove irrelevant factors like whether the person is beautiful, or has a whiny voice, or smells bad, or has a distracting tic, and helps focus readers on the quality of the arguments, or the usefulness of the advice, or relevance of links, and so on.
You, Greta, have a picture of yourself in the sidebar, which allows us to put a face to the words. But I wouldn’t want you to feel pressured to do so: I tend to see a person’s online persona as somewhat different from their real-life persona. For instance, PZ Myers is a fire-breathing mecha-megasquid online, but from the one or two times I’ve met him in real life, he seems like a soft-spoken teddy bear. I don’t mind people keeping some separation between their real-life and online personas. (See also Orac and Digby.)
Greta, thank you for saying this. It’s always irritated me when people attack appearances rather than actually looking at ideas. When I was younger and in my “awkward” stage, people brushed off everything I said because I was “ugly”. Now, the coin is flipped and everything I say is moot because I’m “too hot to be smart”. It’s irritating to have your thoughts and views valued solely on your appearance, and so many people shy away from that topic. Thank you for not doing that.
thebookofdave, the thing is, having your ideas valued based on your appearance isn’t something that’s just online – it’s something many women deal with on a daily bases in the real world as well.
Possible response to such abuse: Imagine that it happened, not on the intertubes, but on the street.
Then imagine that, over his shoulder, you see Hothead Paisan looking at him, having heard what he said, and she has her classic “way pissed off” expression on her face.
Improvise from there.
🙂