More and more sites—especially news sites—are figuring this out, which prompted a story today on CNN whose headline read: “News sites reining in nasty user comments:”

User comments on news sites, while vital to interactive storytelling in the digital age, often read like scribblings on a bathroom stall: anonymous, offensive and full of hate.

Rants…prompted a Buffalo, New York, newspaper to discontinue anonymous user comments on its website as of August 2. Commenters will be required to register with their name, city of residence and phone number — more information than most news sites require — and staffers will attempt to verify their identities.

PhDork once described the comments section of both the (liberal) New York Daily News and the (not-liberal) New York Post as being the intellectual equivalent of “monkeys flinging their poo at the wall.” Even in a large city like New York, the vitriol—racist, misogynist, neighbor-on-neighbor hateration—in the comments on local news stories can be astonishing. In smaller cities, it’s even more likely that you know the person flaming you anonymously, or snarking on you, your family, your church, your home, etc. Things can spin out of control pretty quickly. So if a news site—or any site—is interested in maintaining some reasonable level of civil discourse, what are they to do?

The debate over inflammatory online comments always seems to boil down to whether users should be allowed to post anonymously….

“With no name attached, the commenters basically wear a hood and swing a sharp axe,” said Robert Steele, director of the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at Depauw University. “The intent in allowing and encouraging these comments online is to increase page views and time spent on the site. It’s a business motivation.” (ed: O hai, Nick Denton.)

I suspect that if everyone had to attach his or her real name, the comments would be a very quiet place indeed. There’s a hell of a lot we’ll share anonymously—good, positive, supportive or enlightening stuff—that we wouldn’t tell a roomful of strangers if someone handed us a microphone. And of course, most trolls, or just plain internet assholes, wouldn’t spew their vitriol unless they can hide behind anonymity. There’s also the issue of safety. There are a lot of wackos out there and the internet—Google especially—will expose you to way more of them than your meat-space will. Would you risk letting everyone know who you are and where you live?

Some Buffalo News users have already expressed concerns for their personal safety if their names and hometowns are posted along with their comments.

Wrote one user, “I’d rather not take the chance that some lunatic does not agree with my point of view and tries to tell me that face to face.”

This actually happened to me last year. I had posted some comments on a Jezebel article about a Modern Love column, pointing out the rather obvious creepiness and misogyny in the author’s essay. The author of the column saw my comments, and while they weren’t especially mean or snarky—or different from other commenters’ comments on the article—he took offense and googled my commenter name, which led him to this site. He then launched a barrage of hostile and vaguely threatening e-mails and comments. I ignored the e-mails and blocked him from the site, figuring there was nothing to be gained by engaging with someone so obviously hostile—and with a prison record (which was one of the things mentioned in the Modern Love essay). When I didn’t respond, the e-mails continued, becoming even more unhinged, and the dude began copying them to the other Harpies, and even Anna Holmes, the editor-in-chief of Jezebel.

Creepy dude’s e-mails and general creepiness were alarming enough that I consulted with a former prosector who specialized in stalking crimes. His advice, which I’ll pass along in case you ever need it, was to send a brief e-mail saying “I’ve read your e-mails. I do not wish to have any further contact with you. I ask that you not e-mail me again.” Once that’s done, if the dude continued to send them, I would have some recourse under New York’s anti-stalking laws. I did send that message, and the e-mails immediately stopped (possibly because, having been in the system, the dude recognized what I was doing by sending that e-mail.) But it was very disturbing at the time, and I was extremely grateful that the creepy dude only knew me as BeckySharper, and that there was no way he could connect my commenter name with my real one.

Personally, I’m in favor of open anonymous commenting, provided it’s moderated. I think there’s more benefit than risk. It’s easy enough for a site to block trolls or ban commenters who continuously violate commenting policy—we have certainly done our fair share of both here—but I suspect most sites don’t have enough staff to handle the job, especially local newspapers, which are run by skeleton crews these days anyhow.

Just out of curiosity, how many of you would comment under your own names—on this site or any other? Is there an ideal way to handle commenting or do we just need to make it up on a case-by-case basis? Go ahead and…y’know…comment…

The comment was on a post from January by SarahMC about a recent study that showed that instead of women “trapping” men by getting pregnant, it’s more often men who try to impregnate their partners against their wishes.

What was fascinating about this piece of trollery wasn’t the usual chauvinist vitriol, although that was certainly present and accounted for. It was that the troll basically admitted that what SarahMC said was true….but tried to Mansplain it away. I’ll spare y’all the full comment, because it was long and hateful, but the grossness was just too ridiculous not to pick apart. And really, what are trolls for if not to provide us a good troll-stomp every now and then?

To wit:

I can’t believe $#!% like this makes it on the web.

Yes, well, that’s the thing about the web. All kinds of $#!% winds up here, including your comment.

What struck me as funny—funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha—is that this troll won’t use a swear word. It’s totally fine to leave a hateful, crude and nasty comment, but swearing? Out of the question. He’s a classy troll, y’all.

While I’m sure men do this often enough, the notion that a man can control a woman by getting her pregnant in this day and age is the dumbest $#!% I’ve heard all week.

He’s sure men actually do abuse their partners this way, but it doesn’t really matter because even if they do, it won’t work! Females being so ball-busting these days, and all…

There is a whole cottage industry of women who sabotage birth control in order to have the baby of wealthy athletes. We have reality shows (Basketball Wives) devoted to this fact of life.

Because if it’s on reality TV, it must be true. He saw it on VH1 and therefore, he is obviously right!

It is certainly true that men often pull off a condom during sex. I would say the numbers of such men would be easily what you’ve stated here.

Again, he’s not denying the truth of the study itself. But wait—he’s gonna Mansplain it! Strap on your barf bags, sisters!

However, they’re [sic] motivation is very simple. Bareback feels much better. Certainly in most cases there’s no intent to actually have a child or control a woman. They’re simply trying to get a better nut.

Yes, he actually said that. SRSLY. I hope his dick falls off.

But the last line of this comment leaves me scratching my head. It’s almost like a Zen koan. See if it makes sense to you:

Jesus victimology is alive and well I see.

Is he missing a comma there? Did he mean to use “Jesus” as an interjection/epithet: “Jesus, victimology is alive and well”? Or did he mean that this study is part of an ideology of victimization embodied by…Jesus?  Or that the women in this study are martyrs, like Jesus?

Anyone want to hazard a guess? WWJD?

Word.

In The Atlantic, Sady Doyle dissected Caitlin Flanagan’s recent piece on teenage romance, observing that

[B]oys aren’t treating girls badly because they have sex; they’re treating them badly because we live in a culture that encourages disrespect toward girls. A man who dislikes women as a group does not change simply because he becomes intimate with one particular woman, and telling girls that love is the key to ending a man’s hurtful behavior plays into many of the most pernicious myths about abuse.

A 2005 survey revealed that one quarter of girls who have been in relationships reported that their boyfriends had pressured them to have sex they didn’t want. Thirteen percent said they had been physically abused by boyfriends. The feedback in the comments? Girls need to take responsibility for themselves. Girls need to have higher self-esteem.

Gee, if it weren’t for defective girls, teen dating violence would not be an issue. Victim-blaming is as old as dirt, of course, but a self-esteem boost is not the cure for gender oppression (or any oppression, for that matter).

Earlier, Jezebel covered the recently released Kendra Wilkinson “sex” tape. It’s considered a sex tape rather than a rape tape because bullying an unwilling woman for access to her body is totally normalized. In the comments, woman after woman sympathized with Kendra and told stories of similar experiences. Meanwhile, other people lamented that girls just don’t have enough self-esteem. If only girls wouldn’t put up with such treatment. If only they said “no” just one more time, if they said “no” louder, men wouldn’t rape them. We can’t expect men and boys to respect girls and women who haven’t overcome the “low self-esteem” resulting from a lifetime of sexist programming.

Queengeorge wrote a really wonderful post on this, concluding

It’s wonderful to teach girls the importance of confidence. But all of the confidence in the world won’t stop abusers. That isn’t how it works. And putting out the message that “self esteem” and a good upbringing are the things that will stop abuse – well, that’s just plain wrong. More than that, though, it sends abused women the message that if they’d only loved themselves a little more they never would have gotten hurt. And as a woman who loves herself quite a lot, I’m pretty sure that just isn’t true.

And I’ll leave it at that.

Here is an excerpt from the highly mature response she received from the blogmistress/founder (it is cleverly entitled “Hey Barbie’s [sic] – shut your yapper”):

I am a barbie and proud of it. But I am not proud of the fact that it took me 20 years to figure it out, all the while letting the Jelly’s of the world make me feel like crap.

The green-eyed-monster will kill you. This I know is true.

Yes Jelly, my feelings are “a whoop-dee-do” — They count. They matter, and your attitude is completely discriminatory –just as you accuse us as being.

And, for the record, I don’t feel sorry for you or anyone else —tell me what exactly I am supposed to be feeling sorry for again? How do you define fortunate?

After reading your words, you know what I was left with? “Ohhhh…whoa-is-me.” How long will you cry in your soup before you wake up and realize you wasted your life being pissed off a the wrong thing?

Hugs and kisses ,
Barbie…the goddess you will never be.

Now, ordinarily I would say to myself, “Self, this is just an asshole on the internet being an asshole.  Read nothing into this, Self.”

Unfortunately silly blogmistress’s underlying message rings too familiarly for me to be able to leave it at that.

If one patronizes any kind of women’s website, it becomes impossible to escape discussions of body image and weight because they are so utterly personal to us, and so tied to self-image, because we live in a society where women’s primary mode of worth is as decoration.  These discussions inevitably descend into utter clusterfucks, satisfying when one is looking to live through a good old dose of vicarious internet drama but obviously generally useless in terms of getting anyone, anywhere.

I shan’t repeat myself on thin privilege, or on why the perspectives of the not-thin should not threaten thin people so much as they seem to.  I get that thin women also have experiences of body image, and I don’t think that those experiences are invalid.  But I can say from the perspective of someone who fails the BMI test that I feel like there is plenty of space in this culture already devoting to the airing of the body neuroses of able-bodied white “thin” ciswomen – this is what women’s magazines appear to exist for – and that I find that it’s too easy in the atmosphere of these “supportive” body-image discussions for those same women to insist on centralizing their experiences, and for them to slip into saying things that inadvertently insult/question people of other backgrounds, and privilege certain body types over others.

And I will also say this:

Obviously everybody wants to support each other, and I don’t think the commenter approached the issue in a particularly constructive manner.  But, then, I don’t expect as much of commenters on progressive blogs as I do of their masters and mistresses.

I think that the way we really support each other as women is never to presume that our shared gender means that we are immune to other forms of social stratification, i.e. race, class, etc.  Among these, like it or not, is the body-type hierarchy, in which, for better or for worse, certain kinds of bodies are more “socially acceptable” than others.

I know that thin women have often said that they too feel alienated by body standards, and I do not discount that experience.  Men also feel alienated by patriarchy, probably far more frequently than many of them would like to admit.  But just as some man’s personal alienation from patriarchy doesn’t cancel out patriarchy as a force of social power, a thin woman’s discomfort with body standards does not cancel out fat hatred.

Now, were this a blog that claimed to speak exclusively for thin women I suppose that would be one thing.  But it’s a blog that claims to speak for all of us.  And it’s at that point that my patience with listening to a thin woman’s claims of persecution, and more generally that her experience is sufficiently universal to cover everyone, ends.

Anyone agree?