When Do I Turn Off The Comments?
By: Alexandra Tsuneta
Tags: Ｍedium, Advice, Women, Digital Life, Community

When Do I Turn Off The Comments?

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

I write about feminism and politics so I expect the same rude, brash, offensive, and insensitive comments that I get every single day, but lately, it’s been exhausting. Because of my history of abuse from men, in general, when I get comments calling me ‘terminally dense,’ telling me that I’m a ‘stupid bitch’, or explaining to me how I am ‘acting just like white racists,’ for writing articles about racism, it begins to remind me of the abuse from my biological father.

I’m sure that my feelings are not unique because when I scroll through Medium and read articles written by likeminded men, women, and non-binary people, I see eerily similar comments, a lot of them from the same men, and I can’t help but imagine how damaging some of these comments really are. Recently, I read a hot-button topic article with about 16k claps and I expected to read hundreds of offensive comments, to my surprise, however, the writer had turned the comments off.

I had never considered turning off my Medium comments because I love talking to my readers, I love discussing what I have written, and more often than not I meet new readers and get to follow amazing writers. However, when I am bombarded with offensive, sexist, and racist vitriol day after day, the thought of turning my comments off becomes increasingly appealing.

In May, I wrote an article about digital commentary and the anxiety and nervousness that overcomes me when I receive a notification that a man has commented on one of my articles.

In an excerpt from this article I write about abuse:

“I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. I want to think, “Eh, they’re just lonely and angry and have nothing better to do,” but then I realize, no, they have to know what they are doing: these men are taking up space that was never meant for them, they are shouting at women through the void of the internet, and they probably do the same in their daily lives. These are the same men that abused me, raped me, and called me names that I dare not repeat here. Every comment seems to come from the same mouth or the same hive mind. Every scream, be it just in text on a screen, is tangible in its anger. I worry for my life sometimes and I know I am not in that worry alone because I read the articles on the same subject by other women writers, I read the comments from men on their articles, too.”

My life is very publicly displayed on the internet; I live and travel in an RV full time so I have an Instagram documenting my excursions, I have a Patreon where people can learn even more about me, and my husband and I run a podcast about intersectionality on the road as well as our own personal experiences about travel and living nomadically. I explain this because it is very easy to find out a myriad of information about me, I don’t write under a pseudonym, as some women have tried to convince me to do for my own safety after a particular strand of hateful comments, a quick Google search will bring up who I am and possibly, where I am.

Hateful vitriol, attacks, and sometimes death threats are all too common for women writers. In an article by Annie Gaus for The Daily Beast, she calls a woman writer’s first death threat a milestone:

“After talking to some of my peers in tech, science, and gaming journalism, it became clear that these annoying events are not only commonplace, but practically a rite of passage. Among those I know personally, well over half have received messages similar to mine, whether on Twitter, in comments, a phone call, or in some cases even physical letters.”

Leaving hateful comments and death threats are abuse, point blank, and men have to know that this is what they are doing, abusing women writers. I question it time and time again and I never come up with the right answer: is it patriarchy, toxic masculinity, fear from men that women are finally speaking up, hate, or just a mix of many different things? When I get these comments I often look at the profile of the commenter and look at their other responses; is it just me or are they commenting on other articles by other women writing about the same topics?

More often than not, there is a slough of the same comments on many different articles. Sometimes, though it is rare, I will receive a hateful comment (and I suspect it must have been extremely bad) and it will be hidden from me. Perhaps Medium has begun policing the threats or perhaps the writer wrote it and then blocked me. Either way, it is so commonplace that many women on Medium have written about the hate that they receive.

Unsurprisingly, I do not see the same kinds of articles written by men.

So, the question really is, when do I turn off the comments? Do I attempt to shelter myself from hate in an act of self-preservation or do I weather the storm, block and hide the worst of them, and continue on so that I can have an open dialogue with other writers and readers that are genuinely interested in the topics I write about? At some point, we all reach our breaking point and I’m just not sure if I am there yet. However, I am also not sure I want to reach that breaking point.

There is only so much abuse and hate that one person can take. When I write I don’t write to enrage men, I write to attempt to educate them. I write to attempt to shed light on issues that women and minorities face, but nothing quite gets hate like the articles that I write that are directed towards men in particular. Nothing quite gets backlash like articles I write about white men.

All anybody wants is to have the freedom to express themselves and I suppose, in a way, that is what these men are doing. They may be expressing themselves in hateful, negative, and abusive ways, but they are expressing themselves nonetheless. However, do we have to respond or even look at all? Or, can we turn off the comments, mute, block, and remove their posts from our feed? I often do all of the above, however, sometimes it is not enough.

I suppose the only thing I can do is keep writing.

I won’t be silenced by hate, because that is what they want.

However, I will continue to silence the hateful, sexist, and racist commentary.

There are endless questions in this piece, but the bottom line is that regardless of the hate we get we cannot stop writing because if we stop writing they win. Injustice wins, and isn’t that what this is all about: writing as an attempt to educate people on injustice and potentially make an actual impact?

I suppose by continuing to write I am kind of turning off the comments because by continuing to write and by continuing to open up this space for dialogue, I can only assume that some people listen, some people soak it up, and then they will begin to educate others; and that in itself is all I want, to make a positive impact on people and to change the narrative.

So, let’s change the narrative together, in each piece about racism, sexism, and racial injustice, when we open up the floor for dialogue and teach one another, perhaps we can teach others, and perhaps, one by one they will listen and learn, and each day things may get better.

Or, maybe I’ll just turn off the comments.