When I first started blogging, I considered establishing a commenting policy. I decided against it because I thought it was a bit presumptuous to assume anyone would want to comment on anything I wrote. Not that many do, but it’s enough for me to write about.

Awhile back I wrote about effective ways to conceptualize and deal with sexual violence. Almost a month later I received a bad comment, which I ignored and chose not to publish, until today – billoreillysloofah, here is your bad comment, with my response in bold.

[Quoted from my blog post] “It is well established in feminist legal critique that female complainants are discredited if they fail to conform to an archaic stereotype”

In this section you list one of these stereotypes as being “consistent”. Surely in any crime if the alleged victims’ story is inconsistent this is a red flag, no? [Not necessarily. Memory can be unreliable, fickle and impacted by trauma. It’s usually exculpatory enough for almost any alleged perpetrator to walk even if there is evidence pointing to guilt, which is a problem.] It’s hardly a “stereotype” in any case. [It is. You didn’t present evidence that it’s not a stereotype. The quote is from a peer-reviewed paper in an academic journal written by a law professor.] Imagine one is accused of a crime and the accuser changes their story to suit new facts every time they are presented with them. Is this to be ignored by the defence council? [Of course not. That’s not the argument]

I would wager it is also ‘established’ in these particular feminist legal critiques from whence you draw your quotation, that all men are guilty of something and that false rape allegations do not exist – so juries can safely disregard the possibility. [This is exactly what I think. Men are trash. Go die in a fire.]

The first paragraph isn’t terrible. The extent to which a victim is consistent is worthy of consideration. But the second paragraph is utter garbage. So, billoreillysloofah, don’t bother responding to this. I couldn’t care less what you have to say. Life is way too short to deal with the likes of you.

Part of my annoyance is due to the lag time. Within a few days of a post, I’d probably approve it and respond. During that time span other readers of the site may see it and add their two cents. But when too much time passes and an argumentative comment is left I’ll probably deny it, unless I think it’s interesting or worthy of a back-and-forth discussion that only myself and the commenter will see. The above comment is neither of those things.

Anyways, here are some other “rules:”

• It should probably go without saying that I will not allow any bigoted comments.
• If I reject your comment and it’s not bigoted, that means I think what you’ve written is wrong, illogical, not pertinent to what I’ve written, or any combination of the aforementioned. Perhaps there is also a taint of bigotry, such as using “feminist legal critiques” as a pejorative. Overall, it’s not something I want to see on my blog and I don’t wish to waste my time responding. You are totally free to think that I’m a , libtard, cuck, soy boy (my body is probably 3/4’s soy at this point) or any number of epithets used for fragile snowflakes such as myself. You can rest assured that I don’t have the mental faculties to go toe-to-toe with your impeccable logic. You’ll have triggered me, and my rejection of your comment will preserve the sanctity of my safe space. Or, deep down, maybe you’ll consider the possibility that you’re a piece of shit.

That’s really about it. I don’t mind people disagreeing with me – almost everyone except for this commenter has done so in a way I have no problem with.