So, Jen’s out:
But I simply no longer love blogging. Instead of feeling gleeful anticipation when writing up a post, I feel nothing but dread. There’s a group of people out there (google the ironic term FtBullies to find them) devoted to hating me, my friends, and even people I’m just vaguely associated with. I can no longer write anything without my words getting twisted, misrepresented, and quotemined. I wake up every morning to abusive comments, tweets, and emails about how I’m a slut, prude, ugly, fat, feminazi, retard, bitch, and cunt (just to name a few). If I block people who are twisting my words or sending verbal abuse, I receive an even larger wave of nonsensical hate about how I’m a slut, prude, feminazi, retard, bitch, cunt who hates freedom of speech (because the Constitution forces me to listen to people on Twitter). This morning I had to delete dozens of comments of people imitating my identity making graphic, lewd, degrading sexual comments about my personal life. In the past, multiple people have threatened to contact my employer with “evidence” that I’m a bad scientist (because I’m a feminist) to try to destroy my job. I’m constantly worried that the abuse will soon spread to my loved ones.
I just can’t take it anymore.
For the unanointed, a year and a bit ago Rebecca Watson, a blogger, atheist and skeptic, posted a video about moving house in which she spoke for about 30 seconds about the fact that she attended a panel at an atheist conference that dealt with sexual harassment of women in the movement, and despite talking about nothing else all day and making her intentions or lack thereof very clear, was accosted by some socially awkward jerk in the lift at 4am on the way to her hotel room. Before this video was posted on Skepchick and here, we all thought we had a fairly tight-knit community of people who not only lacked belief in gods, but also shared other common goals and values. Boy, were we ever wrong. Continue reading →
