My blog is set up so that I moderate all posts before they post; since I haven’t had a real flood of readers interacting in this way, that’s been perfectly manageable for me. I’m also not the type to delete a discussion because it makes me uncomfortable; in short, I trust myself with moderation.
And I had to send a comment to the trash this morning, and I don’t feel bad about it.
This comment was on my older post about whether Harley Quinn should be portrayed as bisexual in DC Comic’s films. The comment was, in its entirety, “What a f**.” Except, obviously, not starred out. If you’re not good at guessing at these sorts of things, it’s a derogatory word for LGBT people. I’m not sure if it was directed at me or Harley Quinn; I discussed the bisexuality of both in the essay. The name and e-mail that this person chose to use with this post were also female, for the record.
I don’t like being called names. I also don’t like other people being called names, especially ones as awful as this. So I thought I’d just clarify, going forward, what the comment policy is here:
- Slurs earn you an automatic trashing. (To be clear, “queer” is not a slur in most cases. Unless proven otherwise, all instances of the n-word will be trashed, since I can’t exactly authenticate skin color.)
- Hate speech? In the trash.
- Swearing is fine. Lord knows I have a goddamn dirty mouth.
- Bullying speech is going to be reviewed by me on a case-by-case basis. Disagreement is fine, but being needlessly aggressive is just unhealthy for all of us.
- And of course: I can and will change these rules or trash comments as I see fit, since this is my blog and I am its overlord. I’m sure I’m not thinking of every scenario right now and I’ll handle those as they come up.
That’s really about it. This is, frankly, the first time I’ve been addressed with hate speech, so I’m more astounded than I am mad, or sad. It’s weird. It’s been a long time since I left my passive-aggressive Tumblr Discourse days behind me, so it’s also been a long time since I’ve faced aggression aimed towards me on the internet. It’s a weird feeling, but I also knew this could be a side effect of putting myself out there.
It’s…weird. But good practice, I guess.
Feel free to, rather than sending hate speech to my comments section or my Twitter, just put your opinions directly in the trash, before I do it for you.