Please Get a Different Hobby

I promise, self-reflection is far better than whatever this is

Recently, I had the audacity to write a story about convicted rapist Danny Masterson, the character letters written to beg his judge for leniency, and our culture’s tendency to protect abusive friends because “we’ve never seen them behave like that.”

I also had the nerve to suggest that victim-blaming rape culture re-traumatizes victims.

It gets worse.

I tied it all into the child sexual abuse and alleged murder I’ve been fighting to get justice for… for more than two years.

Shortly after publishing this outlandish piece, I got my first comment on it.

A fellow writer highlighted a specific phrase, and then they hit me with the cold, hard truth:

That’s right. The very first comment on my story about people enabling the abusers we like was, “And you profit off it by writing about it, bitch. Shame on you.”

For context, this is the piece they commented on:

And this is the section that presumably riled them up, at least, according to their highlight and almost immediate reply:

Oh well, at least they clapped?

Perhaps you know what happened next. Or, at least, you may know the outcome for that other writer.

That honestly seems to be the only part most people care about right now.

The writer who left that comment got banned from the platform (apparently, it wasn’t their first suspension) and announced across social media that they’d been unjustly banned.

In a subsequent reply to questions about the ban, they gave out my identity, which wouldn’t have bothered me if they’d simply been honest about why they’d been banned. They claimed they apologized (I guess they meant they apologized to the people who banned them because they didn’t apologize to me).

Virtually everybody responding to the news seemed to think it was impossible that the banned writer could have done anything wrong, because they’d never seen that writer be anything but kind.

For a long time, I’d never seen an unkind word from them, either, but over the past 6 weeks, they left a strangely racist comment about abusive musicians on one piece, told me to “get fucked” on another, and then they called me “bitch” in what sounded (to me) like a needlessly hostile comment.

Look, I realize it’s very “cringe” for a 41-year-old woman to say comments could bother or even hurt her, so I won’t get into that.

I will say it’s been interesting to watch the drama unfold because somehow I’ve become the mean snitch who got somebody banned from the platform.

But by doing what, exactly… existing?

Publishing a story they think I had no right to make?

Well, now, there are stories demanding that this writer be brought back. There are stories about how silly the whole thing is and how presumably I made the banning happen.

One fellow writer joked that maybe I should take it as a compliment because a “bitch” is a female dog.

Blink.

Nice community, folks.

In case you missed it, there’s a real person on the end of such comments, folks. Hi. I’m a real-life single mom who’s been very open about her struggles with mental health and chronic illness (lipo-lymphedema), but I didn’t actually get this writer banned.

Does that even matter, though?

If they left at least three nasty comments for me, how many other nasty comments have they left for other writers you also don’t like enough to defend?

This situation brought an old bully out of the woodwork — someone who once spent many months targeting me with lies — to the point of “profiting” off baseless allegations against me of child abuse, and marveling at my “many issues.”

They, of course, agreed with the original comment on Twitter, pointing out that I am a bitch.

When I read that, I had already left what I thought was a civil tweet to the writer about the situation.

The writer didn’t reply to me, but they did mention in the thread how they don’t get called names… presumably because they don’t write “hot takes.”

Ohhhh, okay.

Is THAT my great transgression here?

People think I am a bitch who writes “hot takes on the news?”

Does it make any difference that I’ve had the blessing of victims/families in both cases to even write these stories?

For what it’s worth, I’m very sorry that a writer on the platform got banned “because” I published a story that somehow made them call me a bitch. Or because you assume it must be my report that made it happen.

Never mind that this was the third time I’d seen them behave so unprofessionally. Or that other people clearly reported the writer’s comments.

Granted, I’m no angel. I am compelled to speak up when some folks want me to shut up.

Yes, I also know people think I'm weird. I know that my autism is not all autism. My trauma is not all trauma. My ADHD is not all ADHD.

I overexplain myself, I overthink, and I care deeply about justice. I hate to be misrepresented.

I try to speak up when I see somebody else being mistreated because I know how lonely it can be. I also know how bad it feels to be bullied in adulthood and then feel like an idiot for even admitting that it hurts.

I also believe in standing up for myself. Maybe that’s what makes me a such a bitch.

Because I did respond to some of the rude comments this writer made. Which may be majorly cringe, as well.

My God… if this is how people respond to such basic and inappropriate behavior from a grown adult — behavior that we all learned was unacceptable long before high school — how much worse do you think it might be to try and speak up about far more serious abuses?

This reaction is precisely why so many people struggle to tell anyone about abuse — because an abuser’s friends just can’t believe it could be true.

For what it’s worth, Wednesday Addams aka Christina Ricci has a little something to say about this strange phenomenon, too.

Thank you for proving my point.

Now, could you please find a new hobby?

Rather than retweeting rumors or writing stories about free speech with zero regard for the context or consequence of meanness, maybe try asking yourself why you’re cool with bashing a fellow writer for actually doing her research.