Which is worse, rape threats or lightening up about rape threats? Since I hardly ever get rape threats and the ones I get are absurd, it is not really for me to say. The question here, is what does a woman who is active on line and gets numerous and scary rape (and other) threats feel about those threats vs. advice from allies(ish) who say “don’t worry about it, just leave that behind.”

This is tricky stuff, because the overt strategy one takes can vary depending on circumstances and there are a lot of valid strategies one can choose, but few strategies one can foist on others.

A person who is outspoken about a particular issue and receives threats over that issue could take those threats very seriously, calling in authorities, hardening defenses, counter-agitating or counter-activating, and so on, while publicly not talking about the threats at all, or perhaps very publicly brushing them off.

Or, the recipient of the threats could do something very different, bringing the details out in the open, making clear to her audience what is happening and why it is wrong, and making the whole thing very public, in order that people know. And maybe that people change. Or, at lest, that social expectations change ands some people shut up.

These two strategies differ in a number of ways. The former strategy may effectively neutralize some of the threats, those from attention seekers who are themselves paying attention, perhaps, but it will do little to stop or slow down threats from your basic miscreant. The latter strategy is likely to generate more threats because, simply, more jerks become aware of a particular target, but the public strategy serves a larger, very important purpose of educating people to the fact that these things happen, and not only that, but they happen commonly and are rather severe to say the least.

It is really up to the person who is at the receiving end of this horrible stuff to make that decision. One thing can be said, though: because of the dynamics of interaction on the internet, the woman who calls out the harassers in order to move us all forward, in the general direction of civilization (which is slowly being reinvented on the Internet) and widespread social justice, is ultimately hurting herself for the benefit of others. When a man does that sort of thing, Internet society calls him a hero. When a woman does that sort of thing, Internet society at best questions her motives, but commonly does worse. She is labeled as a cunt.

Here is my friend and colleague Rebecca Watson laying out her position on this issue in her most recent YouTube vlog, “Dear Guy Who Wants Me to Stop Talking About Feminism“. She addresses the question that is the title of this post.

I’m not embedding Rebecca’s video here because I want you to GO TO HER YOUTUBE CHANNEL and watch the video there. That way, if you feel like leaving a comment, you’ll be there. I assume most, perhaps all, readers of my blog will be supportive and thoughtful. Otherwise go fuck yourself, OK?

Thank you very much that is all.

A critique of a talk by Rebecca Watson is very likely heavily influenced by the critiquer’s membership in one group or another as defined by The Great Sorting. This not because Rebecca is a polarizing person. It is because she has been outspoken on issues that tend to polarize people, like feminism. This polarization is enhanced by the fact that a break-off group of skeptics have chosen to join the haters rather than the thinkers and doers. Also, she leads a group of women who have tried to open up the Skeptical Community to having more female participants and to more frequently address women’s issues, and this has led to significant push back. As you listen to Rebecca’s recent talk on Evolutionary Psychology or read critiques of it, especially those that specifically call her talk “science denialism” or “creationism” or some other absurd thing, keep that in mind.

(Because it isn’t science denialism.)

I’ve been asked by numerous people to read a blog post called Science denialism at a skeptic conference addressing Rebecca’s talk, written by some guy named “Clint,” but when I notice the blog network it is on, one created specifically to support the opposition to Atheism+, “Free Thought Bullies,” and Skepchicks, I find it hard to convince myself to spend the time on it. When I read the title of the post, which makes use of the inappropriate and absurd hyperbole just mentioned, I find it hard to convince myself to spend time on it. There may well be useful ideas in that post, perhaps it is even brilliant, and I’m not saying I’ll never read it. But I’m very busy and the chance of that post being informative or useful, and not overly annoying, is very slim. In other words, Clique Membership is more important, in many instances, than any honest attempt to engage in a conversation, for most of the people who respond publicly to anything Rebecca Watson says. For now I’m guessing that Clint is a Cliqueist.

This post-Great Sorting bias is evident in a recent comment by blog reader “bks” on my earlier post pointing to Rebecca’s talk. “bks” refers to Clint’s post and says “Now I’m really glad I didn’t waste 48 minutes..” Perhaps Clint was very convincing, but given the qualities I see in Rebecca’s talk, I don’t se how he could have been both convincing (of the talk not being worth listening to) and honest or thorough at the same time. Here are the facts surrounding the comment:

1) I am a behavioral biologist with expertise in the area of Rebecca’s talk, and I said I liked the talk although it had some flaws.

2) Clint is (probably) a politically motivated Rebecca Watson Hater, though he might also be a student of psychology or something, and he claims, apparently, that Rebecca’s talk is totally wrong (correct me if he’s saying her talk is good, but that is what I understand to be the case).

3) On the strength of those two assertions, “bks” decided to not bother listening to Rebecca’s talk because it must be bad, rather than judging it only after reading it.

That is a great example of the sorted sorting sordidly. “bks” could certainly have done what I’ve done … decided to not read it for some indirect heuristic reason. But that does not seem to be what he’s done. He seems to have judged it without seeing it.

Here’s what I like about Rebecca Watson’s talk

Much science is misrepresented or mistranslated as it reaches the public arena. For instance, say some cellular biologist unravels a small but important detail of the S Phase of cell division in eukaryotes. She writes a peer reviewed paper on it. During the process of developing the press report of that paper at her institution, some public relations expert pries the word “cancer” out of a lab assistant who is nineteenth author on the paper. Yes, yes, technically cell division is related to cancer, so the more we know about cell division the better, probably. So, now the press report says “New Finding at MRU may lead to cancer cure.” You know the drill.

Skeptics, including the special variety of Skeptic known as Skepchick, founded by Rebecca Watson, sometimes tackle this kind of misrepresentation or other misunderstandings of science. Many skeptics do not do so from the point of view of trained scientists. Even the trained scientists write about things that are not their own field of expertise. But skeptics, including Rebecca, generally have special insight (from skeptical philosophy and experience) which allows us to write useful essays, or give useful talks, that critique either woo and bullshit (homeopathy, Bigfoot, etc.) or the misrepresentation of science (Mono Lake aliens, some paper being misrepresented in the press as leading to a cure for cancer, etc.) There is a risk, though, of getting some if it wrong or contradicting oneself or making another error. For such a sin, we should not be carrying out summary executions. If we are sincere about our goals, we should be doing something different.

Evolutionary psychology is a bit different from other areas of science. In some ways, I consider myself an evolutionary psychologist, in that I am totally on board with the idea of identifying evolution based descriptions and explanations for features of human psychology. Some of my best friends are evolutionary psychologists. In fact, I’m pretty sure there is one using my bathroom right now, as I write this.

But there is a lot of what I consider inadequate science and bad reasoning being done within this field. There are two key features that I have critiqued: 1) The assumption, without evidence, that higher level psychological functioning in the cerebrum operates as behavior specific and distinct modules that are shaped by Natural Selection to do specific things … which develop to a significant level of specificity primarily by genetic programming; and 2) That the modern human is essentially a Ju/’hoansi person in a technologically and culturally different world, and that the Ju/’hoansi person represents a single physical and behavioral phenotype of human shaped by 2 million years of the same kind of selection operating on a single human ancestral population, and that this Pleistocene environment of evolutionary adaptiveness resembles the Serengeti.

So, when an evolutionary psychology paper gets out into the public arena, it may well be misrepresented by the media. If you work your way backwards from a misrepresented paper to the source in cell biology, physiology, endocrinology, and many other fields you’ll generally find good research when you get to the original published work, but, when you work your way backwards from the Major Media representation of evolutionary psychology, you often find that the paper itself is highly problematic. This is probably true for other areas of psychology as well (and sociology) for a variety of reasons.

Rebecca pointed this problem out in her talk and gave several examples, and, essentially, informed her audience that when they see certain things in the public press reports about human sexuality, sex differences, and related topics, the basic research in those areas may itself be highly suspect.

She is correct.

Here’s what I did not like about Rebecca Watson’s talk.

We know more about early hominid behavior than Rebecca indicated, but not at the scale needed for many of the assertions made in evolutionary psychology. So she’s right but I would say it differently. My critique is not that we don’t know about the Pleistocene, it is that there is a lot more to know than “it looks like the Serengeti” which would also imply that the amount of information we still seek much greater than often assumed by evolutionary psychology researchers.

Rebecca claimed that the idea that men hunt and women gather is highly questionable and cited a number of examples that contradict this. She’s got that mostly wrong; those examples don’t contradict the fact that the vast majority of mammal (and reptile) meat that ends up in forager meals is from male hunting. Having said that, “men hunt animals” and “women gather plants” is an oversimplification. In various societies men gather quite a bit, and often, much of the men’s diet is foraged plant food they eat while hunting. In some societies women do most of the fishing (but not in all cases). And, there are a few cases where women engage in mammal hunting, but that is rare and exceptional and the nature of that engagement often underscores rather than obviates the commonly asserted sex difference in foraging behavior, for reasons beyond what I can cover here.

Almost everything you ever hear about foragers, by the way, is an oversimplification, and I’m afraid that most people who talk about foragers, especially Evolutionary Psychologists, are happy to keep them simple despite the fact that they are not.

What next?

But otherwise Rebecca Watson’s talk was an informative and entertaining approach to bringing a valid critique of evolutionary psychology to a public audience, with humor and in fun and in all the other ways Rebecca is so good at. The Guild of Haters, however, care less about advancing skepticism than about plying their trade in snark and drek, so of course, they will not claim to see any of that. It would ruin their fun.

I would like to work with Rebecca on some of the details of this talk. It would not take much to fix up some errors that I see as important, but tangential to her main point. Maybe we’ll go up to the cabin next July and spend a couple of days on it. There may be hunting and gathering opportunities.

Update: Now I don’t have to read Clint because Mark did. Thanks Mark.

The original video is HERE. Please be so kind as to go and “like” it, as there will be many haters who will bother to go and “unlike” it because they are haters.

CLICK HERE for my followup post on this. And, HERE is another, related post.

So, I receive nasty horrid verbal attacks from people who hate me and what I stand for, but do I get these nasty horrid verbal attacks in the way that, for example, Rebecca Watson or Amy Roth or Jen McRight get them?

No, I don’t. I don’t really feel like I am at much risk of being physically attacked or raped, although I do not regard physical threats as unimportant. It is just that I am a very large, muscular man with martial arts training who never goes anywhere without my pit bull, and I always carry a gun. I am also famous for kicking ass, generally. Nobody will attack me. Also, even though men are in fact raped now and then (I myself was sexually assaulted a couple times as a teenager, by women) it is a much more likely thing to happen to a woman and the stakes are different. So really, I’m not worried.

Also, I have received a steady trickle of threatening missive from creationists for longer than most of my colleagues in skepticism even knew such a thing was possible. My first threatening notes were on Compuserve in the 1980s, the first act of violence perpetrated against me in person because of my politics not carried out by a police officer was probably in about 1986, the first letter I ever got (that’s like email but on paper) threatening me with death or dismemberment was in 1998 or so. So when the Slime Pitters or their kind, or the regulars over on Whats Up With That blog, take my comments out of context and attempt to bludgeon me with them, lie about what I’ve said or done, or threaten to kill me with their favorite Glock, it is something I’m a little used to.

For various reasons, then, while I do receive these nasty notes and threats and am the subject of harassment now and then, there are a few reasons why it might bother me less than it would bother some others. And all that is context for what I am about to say to you.

Here’s the thing. If you see any of the notes that climate scientists get, or that the Skepchicks or various female bloggers get, and you are a typical person with any degree of empathy at all, you would probably see it as a bad thing and you would understand how receiving such a note might be difficult. But really, you might also very easily write it off as “nothing but trolls” or you might figure that anyone who gets into the business of taking a sociopolitical stand should expect this treatment and while it is not good and while you don’t want to blame the victim, you might figure that it is not really all that bad after all.

And you would be a little bit right, but you would be mostly wrong. Let me help you to be mostly right instead.

The Skepchicks, to take one example, or high profile climate scientists like Michael Mann, to take another, receive an order or two magnitude more of this crap than I do. This does not make it easier for them, it makes it harder. And, threats that involve highly violent sexualized language and rape threats are some large factor worse for the Skepchicks and other woman than anything I get. So, when I, a guy who receives these things, sees what happens to them, I have to adjust how bad it is for me by a considerable amount in order to know what it is like for them, so I can potentially get what it is all about, and it is still only a guess. On the other hand, when YOU, assuming for the moment that you are a person who does not receive these threats, sees examples of the obnoxious tweets, threatening emails, discovers that there are entire web pages and twitter accounts created just to have a place to put awful comments about one person, or hears about some hateful person showing up at a conference someone is at with a t-shirt designed to do one thing only … to make that person feel bad … you have to multiply your experience of zero by some large number in order to be able to get it.

Problem is, zero times some number, any number, turns out to be zero. I don’t know why they invented arithmetic with this highly inconvenient flaw, but they did. So, the thing is, maybe you can’t really know what it is like to be Amy Roth. Or even me.

Well, there probably is a way, and the truth is that if you are one of the haters, you are going to figure out a way to deny the damage you and your friends do, and if you dislike the whole hate people who stand up for feminism or science or who speak out against sexism or racism, etc. thing, then you will reach into your own experience and find something that is not zero that you can multiply by some number to reach a rough idea of what it is like.

vreify, at Teen Skepchicks, has written a blog post following up on one written several days ago by Rebecca Watson, in which she notes that these things, the threats and harassment, probably turn people away from the skeptics movement, people who should not be turned away. That is probably true, and that is probably why the slime pitters and other haters do this. Not because they don’t like skepticism. To the extent that they have a clue as to what skepticism is, they probably support it. They just want this community to be more like themselves, to be less inclusive of people who make their sexism and racism and other isms uncomfortable. They are children with a clique and they are having a big tantrum at everyone else’s expense. Shame on them.

I don’t like what vreify said at the end of her post:

Yes–sexist behavior is damaging to its targets. But it’s also damaging to the community. If skeptics want to quibble about old pictures of the Loch Ness monster, it doesn’t really bother me. No harm done, even if we’re not focusing on issues that I care about more. But if skeptics want to vehemently hate women who are making their minds and voices heard–honestly? It makes me think about getting outta here.

I don’t like that because I don’t want to see more people driven out of the skeptics movement, especially younger folks and especially women.

There is a solution to all of this, not a grand fix it all solution, but a smaller, doable one that will make a difference, even if it does not repair all the damage and stop all the haters. But I will not say what it is out loud. Let me know if you want to know what it is.

I may or may not have exaggerated about the pit bull, the gun, and the marshal arts. I have been going to the gym a lot lately though, so watch out!

I was at a local event recently where a group of sex-positive third-wave feminist women had traditionally used a certain amount of overt sexuality to raise some money. They had been doing it for a few years and had gained a certain reputation and a certain following. A friend of mine who knew of their work but did not know them personally joined in during this most recent event and volunteered to work the door, as it were, to help to relieve some of the visitors and participants of a little cash (this was a fundraiser). I was not present for that part of the event but some of the people involved, who had been involved for several years, later said to me that they felt my friend had gone a bit over the top in her performance. I asked for a description of what concerned them, and when I heard it I had to laugh a little. You see, over the years, these women have changed their own act from a more to a less sexy parody version of themselves, toning it down and calibrating, for a number of different reasons. The young woman who joined them this year had calibrated her own approach to their reputation and not to their current approach. She was a blast, as it were, from the past, and that was a little shocking.

It seems to me that there is a spectrum of sex positivity along which sex positive third wavers exist, and that not everyone is in the same place at the same time. The disturbed and disturbing universe of Elevator Gate seems to involve, to some extent, the pitting of people in one place against those in another. I’m seeing this mainly in places outside the immediate discussion of Elevator Guy and Rebecca’s talk, etc., but this does really seem to be happening. Have a look at this piece by Greta Christina. Greta discusses the potential outcomes when outspoken people are far from each other in their calibration of what is acceptable, what they expect of each other, and how they are willing to view other people.

It pisses me off that, in order to be taken seriously as a female intellectual voice, I have to hold back my sexuality. Especially since it’s such a no-win situation. Women who are too sexual aren’t taken seriously, and women who aren’t sexual enough aren’t taken seriously. Women who are conventionally attractive get valued solely for their sexual appeal; women who aren’t conventionally attractive get dismissed for their lack of it. Women who are conventionally attractive are assumed to be dumb bimbos; women who aren’t conventionally attractive are assumed to be either bitter or desperate. Women who are conventionally attractive get trivialized; women who aren’t conventionally attractive get treated with pity and contempt. We can’t win.

We could, if we want, stand on different parts of the multi-dimensional spectra of sex positivity and scream at each other for doing it wrong. Or, we could do what Third Wave Feminism is supposed to do: Recognize diversity and work with it, like it, love it, deal with it. And have those conversations.

And now, on to the next part in this series: Knowing when to shut up!

When Rebecca commented about Stef McGraw’s commentary in her talk at a the CFI Student Leadership Conference, at which Stef was in attendance as a student leader, there were those who complained that this was unfair; Rebecca has a big presence and a resounding voice on the Internet and in the Skeptics and Atheists communities, and for good reason. Therefore, when she speaks critically of a person or a person’s ideas, where that person has less of a voice, who is less well known or less well established, that could be seen as somehow unfair, or at least, uneven.

On the other and, Rebecca certainly has not only a right, but in her role, a responsibility to speak out and she was in fact responding to public comments Stef had made.

There is an irony here which has been pointed out a few times: Rebecca was speaking as a leader in the skeptics community to other leaders or future leaders in the skeptics community. She was not speaking as a notable star before her fans, but rather, as an established representative among emerging representatives. Saying it yet another way, the Rebecca-Stef differential in power was surely less than some insisted it was, and was transient in any event.

And, all of this is significantly diminished in relative importance by the two or three remarks made on Pharyngula (PZ Myers’ blog) by Richard Dawkins. Whatever differential in bigness of voice may have existed between Rebecca and Stef is miniaturized by the colossal size gap between the voice of Richard Dawkins and pretty much everybody else.

I think it is perfectly reasonable, and actually rather important, to discuss this differential. The effects of different size voices in our variously overlapping communities are rather obvious and they matter. At no point should someone like Rebecca, in relation to Stef, be asked to quiet down, and at no point should Richard Dawkins be told to shut up either. The insistence that Rebecca was wrong to disagree with a mere little person is just another form of silencing and it should not be tolerated. But, having said that, we can all recognize the differences in strength and reach of voice and what effect that has on our overall goals and on functionality within the community.

Face it, there are big people and there are followers. Not everyone can be classified into either category (actually, most people probably can’t be) but there is enough of a fan-phenomenon that bigness of voice can have some fairly absurd effects. There are followers of various well read blogs who will pretty much go along with whatever Simon says (Simon is a variable, you fill in the name). I have seen Simon make a remark that is tongue in cheek, or simply mis-stated, or perhaps intentionally vague, only to have the followers embarrass themselves by going along with it or being confused about what was meant.

The bigness of the voice matters. I did not particularly feel that Rebecca crossed some boundary when she remarked on Stef’s remarks. I think the accusation that Rebecca had screwed this up was little more than post-hoc hate mongering. But, the problem referenced is real and worthy of discussion. How do people like Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and Rebecca Watson mitigate against the negative effects of their bigness? How do they even identify it? How do we deal with this as a community? I assume this all falls in the category of basic privilege checking, which some people are already good at, others perhaps need to improve.

Well? How do we address this? (Place your answers in the comment section below.)

And now, on to the next issue…

When Elevatorgate happened, the ensuing Universe Known as Rebeccapocalypse was shaped and determined by a number of early events that have caused the final result … well, not the “final” result, but the result that we are stuck with as of this writing … but had those first few days of Internet activity been a little different things might have come out a different way.

Here I would like to do two things.

One is to suggest that the horrid stinking gaggle of frothing winged monkeys that get their marching orders from Franc Hoggle and a few others have a point … actually two or three points. The other is to explore five issues (including these points) that came up in the early days of the Rebeccapocalyptic Universe and that could have become nice, interesting little galaxies of conversation but instead became stinking useless black holes orbited by the aforementioned frothing gaggling winged monkeys.

Before I take a step further into this mess I want to be very clear about something: This is in no way an effort to reach a hand across any sort of chasm or to build any sort of bridge, and in no way should any of the things I say in this regard be interpreted as either a) even an iota of respect for the Hoggle gang and what they stand for and/or step in and/or eat for their stinking trollish breakfast; or b) even a tiny withdraw of allegiance to my esteemed and wonderful colleagues in the blogosphere (you’all know who you are) who are almost always right when everyone else is almost always wrong. This is not a reconciliation. This is, rather, an exploration of missed opportunities to have some important conversations, opportunities that were ruined by the middle-school level sniping and backbiting that ensued early on. This is not an attempt to invite the winged monkeys to the conversation. They are not welcome. If you are a winged monkey reading this now, please go away.

The issues I’d like to bring up are a little complicated, and while there is overlap, they are also fairly distinct. For this reason I want to address each one in a separate blog post in what I hope is not a futile effort to keep the conversations that might ensue each on their own track.

First, I’ll touch on the question of power and relative power (on the Internet, mainly) vis-a-vis the question of whether or not Rebecca Watson should have commented about Stef McGraw‘s comments. I don’t want to speak about that event so much as the overall question of how differential levels of fame, infamy, or exposure shape our conversations. Then I want to talk about the question of spectra. Dawkins berated Rebecca for addressing something other than female genital mutilation. People have berated Ana Miller and me for addressing something other than Carnage on the Highways in our Fukushima Updates. And, most interesting, Rebecca got into trouble for actually addressing things like female genital mutilation while at the same time addressing lesser crimes against humanity while at the same time addressing annoyances. It is as though we expect the peas to get into the mashed potatoes and at the same time know that if they do the dinner is ruined!

Third, I want to talk about calibrating and recalibrating things. Years ago, on the Internet, I used the word “bitch” (in reference to myself … I was feeling bitchy about something). I was taken to task for using a sexist word. Now, we have men using the words “cunt” and “twat” to insult and threaten women, and screaming about how the use of these words makes them feminists. Calibration? Probably not. More relevant to the present discussion is calibration of sex positiveness. Should there have been a skeptical nude calendar? What if that was attempted in, say, 1880 to support getting the women’s vote? What if women went into the street today and burned their bras? Would only the EPA notice? This is a touchy subject because I will actually be suggesting that people change over time, in part because of experience and in part because society changes. I would hope the Skeptics Movement has at least some degree of fluidity and evolvability and that skeptics can recognize and understand this.

Another issue I’d like to touch on is the ways people tell other people to shut up. For example, there is the method whereby you sigh and go “Oh, I’ve had enough. So everyone else must shut up now,” or some version of that. Or one can issue a call to not feed the trolls. I’ll probably talk about a few different ways to tell people to shut up or to otherwise hijack the conversation, and tie up a few other loose ends as well. Like for example, if it really was Richard Dawkins who used the term “Muslima” to tell Rebecca Watson to shut up. Or was it the Zombie Richard Dawkins who said that?

I’ve suggested this before, and it may be worth repeating: Imagine that Rebecca Watson, Stef McGraw, Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Barbara Drescher, Stephanie Zvan, All the Skepchicks, Me, all the other bloggers, and most of the commmenters on our blogs discussing Rebeccapocalypse all worked for the same big-giant company and this entire discussion happened at work. Imagine what the HR (Human Resources) department would be required to do, would want to do, would want to avoid. Imagine how they would handle the current discussion, and what they might do to avoid future difficulties like this from arising, by following best practices and following the law to the greatest degree possible.

Imagine that.

And now … “Power and Presence on the Internet and Elsewhere”

De-dum dum…..

Now THAT was funny. Unlike Kurt Metzger. Kurt has suggested that women can avoid feeling sexualized by sticking to purdah. That’s when a woman covers herself from head to toe, inclusively, with cloth. It is a practice of patrarchical, misogynist societies in which women are totally controlled by men, often subject to brutal violence, and even killed for not knowing when to shut up or breaking barbaric and absurd rules. Kurt Metzger is a comedian, so what he said can be taken as a joke. Whether or not it can be taken as funny is an otter matter.

Rebecca has a new post up at Skepchick that reviews some of the latest conversation about her sexuality, hypersexuality, lack of sexuality, and so on, and which specifically addresses Kurt Metzger. From what we see there, we may hope that he has not given up his day job as a bus boy or whatever.

Aside from the critique of Kurt, one of the most important take home messages from Rebecca’s post is this one: When you hear someone telling someone to “not feed the trolls” or when you find yourself saying that to someone, please consider that this might be something other than sagacious advice. There are definitely times when it is a good idea to not feed the trolls, but when you tell someone else to do this, you may be telling them to shut up, and they may very much have a right to not do so. Or even an obligation to not do so. In any event, it is really their choice and your advice may be a bit paternalistic.

This observation … that “don’t feed the trolls” sometimes equals “shut your face, bitch”* comes with a dose of extra meaning and strength because Rebecca actually tends to starve the trolls, considering a) how many trolls are constantly sniffing after her; and b) how little she responds to them compared to other bloggers or commenters.

The funny thing about Kurt Metzger is that he isn’t, even a little. He is so unfunny that every time he tells a joke a baby bunny rabbit dies. The last time anyone laughted at a Kurt Metzger joke it was his cat and it turned out to be choking up a furball. He’s so not funny, the government took the close-parenthesis symbol off of his keyboard. But I digress.

My advice to Rebecca: Don’t feed the trolls. Instead, kick them in the ass vigorously down the street.

Read Rebecca’s post.
____________
*My wording, not hers. But it works.