The next day, I wake up to questions on Facebook about my blog.  I got an email from a friend who isn’t on FB asking where in the hell my blog was.  I checked my site, and it could not be found.  What the hell?  It’s never been down before.  Ever.  This was suspicious behavior, so I called my tech support (again, my truly awesome brother) ASAP.

“Brother!  My site is down!”  I cried in anguish.

“Call your tech support!”  He said back.

“You are my tech support!”  I retorted.

“Oh yeah!”  He replied.  He went onto my site, and he was quiet for a moment.  Then, he said, “This is…interesting.”

Now, when one cannot access one’s site, one DOES NOT want to hear the word ‘interesting’ in that context.  Patience has never been my strong point, so I question just what exactly is so interesting.

“Your site is gone,” my brother said, his tone bemused.

“What the fuck?????  It’s what?”  Ok, no I didn’t say it like that because I don’t swear (much) in front of my brother, but it certainly was what I was saying in my mind.  Instead, I said something like, “What do you mean by gone?” in an admirably restrained voice.

“It’s gone.  There’s nothing here.  The files, gone.  Interesting.”

Another interesting?  My heart couldn’t take it.  I demanded to know what was interesting.  I didn’t really want to know, but I did.

“You’ve been hacked.”

“What????  Hacked????  Was it personal?????”

“These things usually are.”

All this time, my brother was doing his techie whiz thing, including sending an email to his provider.  He (my brother) hosts my account, so it really is all in his hands.

After an interminable amount of time (probably a minute or two), he declared that all my files were gone.  We had a backup database (thank you, bro, for suggesting that), but still.  It was unsettling to know that someone hated me so much, he would hack into my account and wipe out everything.  I hung up after admonishing my brother to keep me updated.

A bit later, he called me back and told me that his provider had been hacked and that many of their servers had been wiped out.  Our server, alex, was on the list because the virus was alphabetical in nature and made its way to D.  So, we would have to wait for the provider to restore everything.

What?  The provider was hacked?  That didn’t make me feel very secure (although, as my bro pointed out, this was the only time it’d happened), but it did make me feel better.  No one was after me, personally.  Nice to know.

By the way, my brother clued me in on KeePass (which I keep thinking of as KeepAss), which is a system that generates really sound passwords.  I installed it, and I’m keeping it, even though I wasn’t personally hacked.

Now, to the other part of my technological difficulties.  For the last month or so, I have been receiving ominous warnings from Facebook informing me that I am doing something that might be construed as annoying to other users.  I was ‘misusing’ certain features.  They didn’t specify what features.  They only gave general guidelines, such as posting too many videos and spamming.  I didn’t do either of those, so I ignored the first warning.

Then, I got another one.  Concerned, I tried to email Facebook (which is difficult to do in and of itself, since it’s harder than hell to find a viable email address for them) to see exactly what I was doing wrong, but I received no reply.  Because I am a research goddess, I then Googled everything I could about this kind of warning.  It turned out that many users have received an identical warning over the years, and Facebook hadn’t ever addressed the issue.  You can be banned for adding too many friends at one time.  You can be banned for ignoring too many requests at one time.  You can be banned for exceeding the friendship limit (currently 5,000, but they are changing that).  You can be banned for exceeding the group membership limit.  I wasted a lot of time obsessing about what I had done because FB wasn’t telling me.

I was getting frantic and paranoid.  Another reason they might ban or block you is if you post ‘objectionable’ content.  They don’t say exactly what that is (I guess it’s like pornography.  They know it when they see it), and they allow people to anonymously report posts they don’t like.  I have no problems with that, but I do have problems with not being told if that was my particular problem.  You see, I am a tad bit raunchy and a tad bit salty in my posts (yes, just a tad), and I have several friends on my list from high school who are very different than I am now.  It was conceivable that one or more of them reported one of my posts, shocked at my outrageousness.

I grew more frantic.  I also read that FB will block you if you type too fast, but I never took that seriously.  I started to get these warnings quite regularly.  I freaked out more.  I have friends around the world, and we all congregate on FB.  I posted several notices that if I was suddenly gone, the FB police had disappeared me.  I wanted my friends to be prepared.

This week, I didn’t get any warnings, and I foolishly thought my troubles were over.  Why foolishly, you ask?  Because on Thursday night, right in the middle of posting, my account was disabled.  One minute, I was posting to Rubo’s wall, and the next, my account was gone.  I got an email from Rubo asking WTF, and I had to say my account was disabled.  I emailed that message to several of my FB friends, and they started to brainstorm how to get me back on.  I would like to give a shout-out to Rubo, Alex, Topaz, and TiredMom for working so passionately in trying to get me back on FB.  You guys really made me feel so much better about the whole situation.  I would also like to thank Choolie and Gregory for being so supportive in my time of need, too.  Y’all rock!  Oh, and much love to my bro who tried to help me figure out what to do about having my account disabled.

I sent an email to Facebook inquiring as to why I’d been disabled and how I could get my account reinstalled.  In the meantime, I was thinking of ways to get this known in the traditional media because it seemed a crying shame that they could disable an account so cavalierly.  I felt very unhappy, isolated, and depressed without my account and without my blog.  One reason I didn’t want to open up a Facebook account was because I knew that I would probably grow dependent on it.

I could have started a new account, but I didn’t know if I wanted to do that.  If I did, I would have severely culled my friends list as I was convinced one of them ratted me out.  I didn’t want to have to watch what I was posting, weighing every word.  That didn’t seem like much fun to me.  Saddened, I went to bed at five in the morning.  I couldn’t really sleep, though, so I got up at ten.

When I got online a bit later, I had an email from Facebook sitting in my Inbox.  I was afraid to open it because often times, FB would send out a boilerplate email saying you have been terminated, this is our final decision.  Very few people got their accounts reopened, and most of them took days, weeks, months in order to do so.  Imagine my surprise when I read that they had reviewed my case and reopened my account.  I was pleased, but one line irritated me.  It said that I had been warned several times about posting too quickly, but that I had ignored the warnings.

Well, no, I hadn’t been told that.  I had been told that spamming would have triggered the warning.  I didn’t spam, so I never thought that they meant me when they said spamming was a reason to be blocked.  If they had said, “You are posting too quickly to your friends’ walls,” then I would have known what they actually meant.  I sent them an email saying so.  I got a response saying that Facebook has a limit as to how fast someone can post, but they cannot tell me what that limit is.

I posted a snarky post on my FB page (‘coz I am all about the snark) about how it would behoove them to have a better spam filter.  gex rightly pointed out that it’s damn hard to write an algorithm that finely calibrated for a site that large.  She also was right when she added that the problem was their customer service.  My brother had also told me both these things, but I really needed to hear it from someone else.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it’s true.  I still think it’s a tad silly that my posting speed is what got me banned, even though I can appreciate not wanting people to spam.  I type fast, but not that fast.  I used to open several windows at once so I could reply to several different posts at the same time, but I don’t do that any more.

I digress.  The biggest sticking point in this whole thing is not once did FB tell me what I’d done wrong in specific terms.  I spent the last month guessing and panicking, but I had no way of knowing for sure.  They want to be the best social networking site on the web, but that isn’t possible if they don’t fucking explain situations like this to the customers.

I’d like to say that while I was pissed about the whole situation, FB had a perfect legal right to do what they did.  I have to say that because many people who’ve been banned the way I was have been making noises about illegality.  If no money changed hands (and in some cases, it did, so there is more of a case for illegality there), then they can do pretty much whatever they want to do.

Back to their customer service.  I realize that they are a huge website that operates around the world.  However, if they truly want to be the best, they have to work on their people skills.  It’s really not good PR to just yank people’s accounts willy-nilly and with blanket warnings.  Oh, and when people inquired as to the content that was objectionable, Facebook would say it couldn’t tell them for security reasons.  That was my biggest gripe of all.  How the hell could I fix my behavior if I had no clue what I was doing wrong?  It still leaves a sour taste  in my mouth.  I will continue to use FB, but I’m a lot more cautious now.  I force myself to wait between posts, and it’s lost some of the fun.  Oh well.  At least I’m back on.  For now.

Oops!  I got so wrapped up in my FB woes that I forgot to finish my blog being hacked story.  So, the provider supposedly restored everything yesterday, but I still couldn’t get onto my blog.  I gave up and went to bed.  This morning, I didn’t even bother checking my blog because I didn’t want to be frustrated again.  However, when I checked FB, my brother had posted updated statuses on my wall.  The provider didn’t restore my site (for whatever reason), so he did.  He finished it except for the pics (he forgot) which he added later.

So, the fact that you can read this post is all due to my wonderful, sweet, amazingly brilliant tech support, my brother.  Please show him some love in the comments.  Thanks, bro.  I owe you one hell of a dinner.

First, I would like to thank all the little people–what?  What award am I accepting?  Why, the Moonbat award, silly.  I just got called that by a trollie who took exception to my last post.  He (and I am quite sure it’s a he) went into a rambling mess about the soldier who was killed by the converted Muslim extremist.  If you read the thread I linked, people were wondering how long it would be before the right used this against the left.

What the fuck?  asked I.  When the fuck did we become the party responsible for the Muslim fanatics?  Supposedly, because we (the global lefty we) are against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our words provoked this guy to kill the soldier.  Really.  In fact, one site, the Corner (you know the drill, I’m linking to a linker because I don’t want to infect my computer) asked if wasn’t the peace movement responsible for this attack.  Really.  Because, you know, advocating peace is an incitement to kill.  As one person at BJ said, no, Muslim extremism stems from the same root as Christian extremism.  Plus, as Akatabi, a commenter at TBoggs said:

“ Damn that Olberman and his 28 segments on military recruiters saying they have “blood on their hands”. Damn those Quakers, foaming at the mouth, picketing recruiting centers and harassing poor enlistees, posting their home addresses and requiring a buffer zone around the entrances so the poor defenseless military can enter. Damn Bill Ayers, all over the teevee saying “they had it coming to them”. Damn the President sending taped messages to the annual mass rallies of the War Resister’s League and Rosa Luxemburg Brigade. This is different. Extremism in defense of Liberty is a vice. ”

Yup, it’s exactly the same. No, it isn’t. Fuck that shit. I reject the false equivalency argument because it’s argued in bad faith.  I have not heard one of the so-called liberal types say that our troops were murderers or baby-killers and so was anyone who didn’t do anything to stop them.  Words DO mean something, and our words differ greatly from theirs.  

Anyway, back to Mr. Trollie.  He was incensed because I didn’t write about the above and made some other nasty statements with absolutely zero facts to back them up, so I didn’t print it.  However, I will gladly accept the moonbat epithet he hurled at my head since I like the moon and I like bats, and I would rather be a moonbat than a wingnut any day.  So, I am now taking my rightful place in the leftwing of the Democratic party, and I wear my crown with pride.

As for you, Mr. Trollie, you want to know why I hadn’t written about this incident besides the fact that it had just happened?  Because I didn’t.   That was a simple answer, right?  See, when it’s MY blog (it has my name on the top, so it’s mine), then I get to decide what to write.  When it has YOUR name on the top, then you get to decide what to write.  It’s really not that difficult.  To me, this is the funniest part about blogs in general.  I love the commenters who loudly demand that the blogger write about this or that or not write about this or that or he (usually a he) is going away and never, ever coming back.  Yeah, whatever.  Don’t let the door hit your pale ass as you leave.  

My brother was truly puzzled when I told him about the various trolls I’ve gotten.  He said, “Why would someone do that?  Why can’t they be nice?”  I said, “Because they are men with little dicks and even smaller hearts.”  No, I didn’t (this was my brother, remember), but I was thinking it.  It’s really about inferiority and superiority struggling to co-exist.  See, Mr. Trollie is clearly so much better than I am, and he has to let me know that he is so clearly better than I am.   

All kidding aside, I firmly believe there is a subsect of men who simply cannot handle a woman saying what she thinks without her couching it in niceties and apologies.  What?  A woman dares to have an opinion that is contradictory to mine?  She dares to express it?  It’s similar to the more rightwingnutty belief about abortion–a woman does not have the right to decide what to do with her body.   These men are not interest in a honest debate or about truly changing the other person’s mind–no, they just want to bully and intimidate the opposition into submission.  

I, on the other hand, don’t give a shit.  On BJ, one anti-choice guy was saying that people who act with such smug superiority (about choice being about a woman’s right to autonomy) aren’t going to win over any doubters.  You know what?  I don’t really care.  See, like the last election, we won this particular debate.  Abortion is legal.  Don’t like it?  Move to a country where it’s illegal.  See how much better the quality of life is in one of those countries.  

So.  Now that I am an official moonbat, let me put on my tinfoil hat and welcome you again to my blog.  I might have to rename it “Moonbat Ebil Hebbin’!” (Same initials).

As for baby-killing, I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned my opinion on abortion in my blog.  Oh, wait.  I think I may have in my letter to the religious right.  Maybe.   Ok.  I checked.  I never explicitly said I was pro-choice, but it can be inferred from some of the things I’ve written.

Let’s back-track.  First troll sent a comment for my tea party post.  He said that I should learn the history of my country and get over my Bitter Liberal Syndrome.  Notice what he didn’t mention WHAT I should research or why he thinks I don’t know the history of my country.  He couldn’t, really, because I know the history of my country pretty damn well.  Since he couldn’t attack me on what I’ve written, he resorted to calling me names.

The second troll wrote in response to my post about Michelle Bachmann.  He starts out trying to sound moderate by saying he was “researching” the web to find out more about M.B.  First of all, is that what they call looking for naughty pictures these days?  Secondly, the fact that he used her initials tipped me off that he wasn’t as moderate as he appeared.  

From that dubious beginning, he went off the rails.  He ranted about me being a hater.  He said why was I so intolerant of the other side’s ideas?  He said especially as I was a baby-killer.  What?  Oh, no, he didn’t!  Oh, yes, he did!  After saying I should learn my facts and not be so full of hate, he then delivers what he no doubt thinks is the coup de grace.  He told me that he hadn’t bothered to spellcheck or proofread his comment because I wasn’t worth it. Then he has the fucking nerve to say  he didn’t hate me–he was just disagreeing with me.  Fine bit of hypocrisy, that.  He finishes by saying that maybe, maybe he’ll be back. 

Gee.  I fucking can’t wait.  

Do you see what’s missing from the second screed?  Let me give you a hint–I was writing about all the bat-shit crazy things Bachmann has said lately and refuting them one by one.  Give up?  Ok, he didn’t correct me on any of my statements.  He didn’t counter that Bachmann didn’t mean what she said or that I had misinterpreted her words.  In other words, he didn’t touch the facts I had presented in my post.  Instead, he called me a hater (while hating on me himself), insulted me by saying that he won’t do what I have requested from my commenters because I’m not worth it, then managed to sound vaguely ominous with his parting salvo.

I have to tell you, I don’t fucking understand why someone feels the need to troll like that.  I have a feeling this guy just put Michele Bachmann into Google (with or without the requisite ‘bat-shit crazy’ appellation) and just ripped off a bunch of mostly-generic spam to send to each site that dissed her.  I also know that there are some guys who simply cannot tolerate a woman speaking up anyway she pleases.  Many of these men troll the internet, looking to figuratively slap down all the uppity bitches who wouldn’t give them the time of day offline.  

Then, there’s the more common practice of commenters of a blog dictating to the blog owner what s/he can say.  This happened today in Balloon Juice.  It’s the Open Thread that starts, Because I care.  John posted a funny review of a pompous professor who was reviewing a book written by a pompous religious dude.  It was pretty fucking funny, and people were joking about religion in general.  Two people got really offended.  One got snippy in saying that all religious questions have been answered.  The other said he didn’t come to the blog for religion-bashing.  It was a politics blog.  If he had a Mormon neighbor who was a good person, he (the poster) wouldn’t bash Mormons in his (the neighbor’s) earshot.  

I pointed out to the latter guy that he didn’t have to visit the blog.  John posted lots of stuff cracking on bloviating fools of every ilk.  I also said the analogy wasn’t comparable because nobody was forcing anyone to read John’s blog.  The poster conceded it, but he said it was like if he invited the Mormon back to his home and then bashed Mormonism in front of him.  It would be rude.  The poster then went on to lecture about why we shouldn’t bash people who believe in god.  I also said that given how much damage the religious right has done to this country, it has damn well crossed into politics.  He conceded that, but said the post went further.

I didn’t respond, but I wanted to tell him that his analogy was still shitty.   A better one would be that the blog is like a bar.  Let’s say that John is the owner of said bar.  Every night, he has a strip show.  Let’s say that one night, he has men stripping instead of women.  In that case, the guy who objects can take his business elsewhere and come back at a later date to see if things are back to his liking.  Or, he can leave for good and never come back.  What he most likely wouldn’t do is bitch to John about how John should only have women stripping because he (the poster) wasn’t comfortable with men stripping in front of him.

It amazes me when people expect blogs to cater to them.  I have always been firmly in the camp of the blogger, especially ones that are free to the public.  This poster seemed to think he had the right to visit and not have people make fun of religion.  By the way, why is religion off-limits for questioning in this culture?  That’s a question for another time, however.  I’m running long as it is.

This guy’s religion is so delicate that he can’t bear to hear anyone speak negatively of god.  He got mad because we were joking about Zeus not being real, and I said you can’t take Zeus away from me.  I’m sorry, but if you really believe in GOD, don’t you think GOD would be a bit more thick-skinned than that?  I bet GOD has a sense of humor–GOD allowed W. to be president, after all.  Which proves that GOD has a motherfucking sick sense of humor.

Anyway, back to entitlement and trolls.  The commenter I mentioned above is most emphatically not a troll, but he’s actually on the same continuum.  He expects other to adhere to his standards.  If he doesn’t like it, then he should have the right not to read it.  It’s like a parent who wants to ban books from the library because the parent doesn’t want his or her kid to read the book.   

You know, I’ve visited websites where I don’t like a post or the content.  You know what I do?  I skip that post or go to a completely different website.  It’s not really that hard.  I mean, there are so many fucking websites out there, I’m sure you can find one that caters to your particular tastes.  Actually, I’m not.  It’s true that in any group, you’ll like some of the people, hate some of the people, and be indifferent to the rest.  The same is true of any particular website.  I highly doubt you’ll find a website that will be 100% compatible with your beliefs–unless you control the website yourself.

Back to my trolls.  I know this shit is common and that I can expect more of it.  The thing is, it fucking sucks.  Part of the reason I write this blog is because it’s fun for me.  Quite frankly, it’s not fun to cringe when I receive notification that I have a new commenter to my blog.  Thus far, I am pretty lucky that my trolls have been fairly tame.  I don’t expect that to last.  

Back to my first paragraph.  I’m starting to feel a bit inhibited by the trolls.  I started a few posts, and then I put them on the shelf.   Quite frankly, I just didn’t want to deal with the shitty responses again.  This, in turn, angers me because that’s their fucking point.  They want me to shut the fuck up or learn how to play nicely with others.  Because they are for the most part impotent in their real lives, they take their powers where they can get them.  I’m not ready to concede that power, my power to anyone.   I have never been one to share my toys, and I’m not fucking ready to make nice.

Update:  After re-reading this entry, I realized that I was even more disjointed than I had thought.  I added a segue paragraph in the middle.

This is a continuation of the last post.   There is something I’ve noticed about being female that has really come to fruition with the advent of the inter-webs.  See, society doesn’t like uppity women.  I can get into a whole diatribe about how the pressure for women to look like twelve-year old boys is a way to keep women from banding together and dismantling the patriarchy which has given us the Wall Street fiasco and Mike Doogan outing AKM.

Focus, Minna, focus.  Ok.  Society doesn’t like uppity women.  That was my thesis, and I am going to support it in a totally subjective, personal way.  If you want to throw facts at me, go ahead.  I will then be forced to throw facts back at you, and I really don’t want to have to do that.  So, let’s accept the premise that this blog entry is not empirical, but that it can be verified to a certain extent if need be.  Ok?  Ok!

Anyway, this isn’t just about uppity women; this is about men and entitlement.  Especially older white men.  Which, if you’ve noticed, Mike Doogan is.  As I said in my last post, Gryphen from The Immoral Minority (I don’t want to over-link so just re-read the last post) pretty much hit the nail on the head when he said that Doogan was jealous of AKM because she had achieved a world-wide fame as a writer that he could only dream about while deep in REM sleep.  Apparently, he was a journalist once upon a time, and he is now a mystery writer (that’s one mystery writer whom I will never read), and he is worried about the disappearance of traditional media with the emergence of blogs.

Gryphen’s entry is excellent (go read it already), but it’s incomplete.   See, what he doesn’t address is the fact that Doogan, as an older, white male who has presumably never known what it’s like to feel less than, even though he’s a Democrat in Alaska.  He is like the AIG execs in that he operates on a different level of reality than do I.  I have blogged about this several times, but it’s worth reiterating.  I have never expected to be treated as an equal.  I have been fully aware since my early twenties that for many reasons, I am considered less than.  Therefore, I have to do twice as well to be  considered half as good–kind of like our new prez.

Someone like Doogan expects to be treated as an equal.  From what I’ve read by him and of him, he expects to be treated deferentially.  He has a sense of entitlement that many white men, especially those of his generation have.  The fact that some whippersnapper would use his own words to demonstrate his deficiencies enraged him beyond belief.  He became obsessed with ferreting out the person known as AKM.

Now, here is where the other side of the equation enters the picture.  If men consider themselves to be the standard by which all is to be measured, then to be challenged by a mere woman has to be even more galling.  Now, Doogan may not have known that AKM was a woman when he first started stalking her, but I would hazard a guess that he thought she was a woman all along.

My tai chi teacher told me that female bloggers can expect to be harrassed, and I have found that to be true.  My own little experience with it is that I posted a review I had written years ago of a movie containing my favorite actor, Alan Rickman.  It was a thousand-word entry explaining what I liked and didn’t like about the film.  I used approximately two hundred of those words to applaud equal opportunity fully-frontal nakedness.  I write it that way because I do not want to start the skirmish all over again.  Anyway, I simply said that one thing I liked about British films is that they didn’t shy away from showing a penis when the situation warranted.

Innocuous, right?  No.  This review is what garnered me my first comment by someone I didn’t know.  This guy went off about how there have been sooo many penii (yes, not a word, but still funny) in mainstream media in the past year.  He went on to say that if I were really concerned about the issue, I should be concerned about the overexposure of the penii (ha!).  He then added that since I was a woman, I probably didn’t care since women only cared about equality when it suited them.

I posted his comment and replied.  Friends jumped in with their two cents’ worth.  That was that, I thought.  A few weeks later, I got a post from another guy (I have to approve the first comment by someone before it gets posted to my blog) who went off the rails on the evils of teh vagina and how we were demon spawn (basically).  He demanded, too, that women help out men.  I didn’t post his comment because he was fucking crazy.  First guy posted again, twice, and I let it go at that.

It bothered me that these guys wanted to dictate what I can and can’t write about and that they wanted to excoriate all women on my blog.  They demanded that I help out the poor men with their overexposed penii (not my agenda in the first place) and claimed that I was selfish if I didn’t want to help them with their causes.

See what happened there?  It’s the same thing that happened over Prop. 8.  Many LGBT folk were furious with blacks for voting for Prop. 8, but I highly doubt that these same LGBT folk (white men for the most part) have done anything to help black people.  In addition, as I have mentioned ad nauseam, “my people” (Asians) were the group to vote against Prop. 8 in the highest numbers, but no one mentioned that.

People in the minority are expected to cater to the whims of the majority.  In the case of the blogosphere, women are the minority–especially uppity women.  In the political arena, the overwhelming number of political blogs are run by men.  As for sex, well, women are still not supposed to talk or write about it, apparently.   So, when a woman dares to enter into the sacred male arenas, they must be punished.  When a woman like AKM rises to such lofty heights, she has to be taken down.

One of the male bloggers who did an entry about AKM  (again, I can’t remember which one) touched on the fact that females are more conscious of the dangers associated with blogging under their own names.  Celtic Diva can certainly attest to what happens to female bloggers who dare to get uppity.  So can Amanda Terkel from Think Progress.  I know O’Reilly has ambushed other people, but there is something particularly sick about him sending his henchmen to follow her for two hours across state lines in response to her calling him out on his remarks on rape victims.

Sexism is still rampant in certain aspects of our society, and the internet enables this virulent strain to flourish.  It’s easy to let your frustrations out on a female blogger because, ironically, you can post anonymously.  All the shit that makes a man fear women can be focused on one particular female blogger.  She becomes a stand-in for all the women he thinks have fucked him over.  It’s much easier to cyber-stalk than to really stalk.   Of course, all it takes is one person posting the blogger’s personal info on the ‘net, and it’s a hop, skip, jump from cyber-stalking to real-life stalking.  This is just one of the reasons why it’s safer for a woman to blog with a pseudonym or anonymous than to use her own name.

Oh, and I think if women were to rule the world, we’d be just as fucked because it’s the system that needs to be changed.  For a woman to make it to a position of power, she has to be twice as corrupt, venal, and abhorrent as any man.  Just look at Sarah Palin.

In conclusion of this second rambling entry, I leave you with my favorite Margaret Cho video.  I have posted it before, but it is pertinent to today’s topic.  Start about five minutes in.

P.S.  The picture is of Ida Tarbell, our foremother in muckraking.

First, the good news.  AKM has posted!  I knew that she would eventually, but I just wasn’t sure when.  AKM is pushing on, and we will all be right there, flanking her.  I’ll even wear black and sunglasses and fold my arms sternly across my chest.  Hey, I got the tats and the glare to back it up.  

What?  Why did I use my pseudonym in the title of this piece?  Well, to make a point.  Here it is.  Oh, wait.  First, read this post by pseudonym, Gryphen, who writes a blog called The Immoral Minority.  It explains why he, Gryphen, thinks he, Doogan, did what he did.  It pretty much parallels what I believe Doogan’s motives to be, and I’ll touch more on that later.

Anyway, back to why I used my pseudonym on this entry.   Sit back and pop open a beer because the explanation will take a while–as is my wont.  I have used asiangrrl or some variation thereof as my on-line handle ever since I was exposed to the world-wide webs.  So, when I stumbled upon the ‘flats, the first political blog upon which I commented, it was natural for me to use that particular nomenclature.  I threw on an MN to give a shout-out to my home state.  

I dove in one day, and I didn’t look back.  I was accepted into the community, and I soon grew to care about the community as a whole, and several of the commentors as individuals.  It didn’t matter if I knew their given names or not, because even if I did, they would still be their on-line names to me.  I got to the point where I could read certain comments and KNOW who had posted them, without looking at the usernames that accompanied said posts.  

I didn’t need to know the name of any of these people to know which ones I would like in real life and which ones I might not like quite as much.  In fact, I would say it’s a bit ludicrous to be braying about someone using a pseudonym on the web because we can’t see anyone on the other side of the computer, anyway.  One of the blogs I read had a good point (don’t ask me which.  They’ve all run together at this point).  If AKM had called herself Zelda Tucker instead, this whole fiasco would never had happened.  We would have addressed our comments to Zelda instead of AKM, but it wouldn’t have changed the essence of the dialogues that occur on the ‘flats.  

There have been incidents on the net when a blogger has been proven to be, well, made up.  In other words, someone took the time to create an on-line persona which had nothing to do with his or her own life and faithfully carried out this persona to the extreme degree.  It’s as if this person is acting in a play that only s/he knows exists.  When the person is inevitably discovered to be a fake, there is always an outcry of anger by the people who had been duped.  While that is understandable, it’s also a bit silly given that anyone can lie on the internet.

Back to the case of the ‘flats.  If I found out that AKM lived in Manhattan and was a Wall Street banker who was secretly laughing at her readers, I would feel betrayed.  Her whole persona of AKM would have been a lie, and in that case, I would have supported outing her.  In this case, though, she didn’t deserve to be outed because SHE wasn’t a lie.  As I wrote on her blog entry, I didn’t have to know her name because I knew the person.  

Let me tie this in with my placement of my pseudonym in the title of this piece.  Those of you who have found me through the ‘flats have known me as asiangrrlMN.  At various times, I have added “that one” and “Hussein” to my name.  My gravatar is a picture of Margaret Cho.  In other words, I was pretty much in the same position as AKM.  Now, you know my name.  I wrote it on the ‘flats in solidarity of AKM when she was outed, and I blog in my name.  

If you know me from the ‘flats, you probably aren’t all that surprised by how I write.  I am obviously more vulgar at times here than I am on the ‘flats, but the basic personality is the same.  If you read one of my entries here, you most likely ‘hear’ my voice from the ‘flats.  Since I have been fairly faithful representing myself on AKM’s site, my writing shouldn’t hit you out of the blue.  So, now that you have a name to go with my persona, am I immediately more credible?  Given the fact that you most likely don’t know me in real life, I would hazard a guess of…no.  In fact, you most likely find my blog more credible because you knew me from the ‘flats, even if you didn’t know my name.

I want to cite (again) Whabs’ blog entry on pseudonyms vs. anonymous.   She manages to be a tad more coherent than I in discussing this issue.  It’s the lack of sleep, I tell you.

I struggled long and hard before deciding to blog under my name.  My family is Christian, and I am anything-but.  In the end, I decided that I had to use my name, for personal reasons.  I have to emphasize that it was my choice.  No one should take that choice away from someone.  

Regardless, today is a better day than yesterday.  AKM has posted; she will continue to post; she will always be AKM to me.

P.S.  In a few minutes, I will be doing a second post on the hazards of being a female blogger.  Stay tuned.

Update:  I am changing anonymous to ‘using a pseudonym’ where appropriate.  Whabs has an excellent blog entry as to the difference.  I will be exploring more on this issue in today’s entry.

The Mudflats site was a sanctuary for me during the last silly season.  I had no idea who the fuck Sarah Palin was, so I let my fingers do the walking, and I found the ‘flats.  I found the blogger to be informative, thoughtful, articulate, well-informed, intelligent, and funny.  AKM chose to use a pseudonym, and that was fine by me.  It became quickly evident that AKM was a female, but I had little desire to ferret out anything further about the blogger behind the mask. 

Well, that choice was taken away from AKM as she was outed by Mike Doogan.  Who is Mike Doogan, you ask?  One of Sarah Palin’s rabid fans?  Maybe another staunch Republican who was unhappy with the way AKM systematically dissected the mockery that was La Palina?  Another blogger who was jealous of how popular AKM had become?  No.  Mike Doogan is a DEMOCRATIC representative in Alaska who got upset because AKM took him to task over his disgusting behavior towards emailers who wanted to hold Palin accountable for “Harrass My Ex-Brother-in-Law Gate”.  He didn’t like it, and he became obsessed with finding out who AKM really was.  In a letter to another blogger, Doogan asked who AKM was while simultaneously deriding all bloggers.  Apparently, Doogan used to be a journalist, and he is mad that traditional papers are folding.  He doesn’t think anyone has the right to anonymity if that person is going to criticize–well, anyone, really.  

I am not going to delve into the legal issues because I am not at all qualified to comment on that.   Other bloggers and their commentors have weighed in on that issue.  My only take on the legal aspect is that Doogan did a lot of this shit on state time, with state equipment.  In other words, with taxpayers’ money.  I have an issue with this, obviously, as I think it speaks lowly of a person who uses his position of power in order to intimidate a citizen of his state.  From all the emails Doogan has fired off, it’s clear that he sees himself as some kind of hero, unmasking the dastardly blogger.  In addition, it’s clear that it’s more about his ego and pettiness than about any ethical thing he can spout.  AKM used his own words to show what an asshole he is, and he couldn’t take it.  It’s the same thing that got Amanda Terkel from Think Progress in trouble with Bill O’Reilly.  An aside:  I didn’t know she was a sister!  You go, grrl!  The ones in charge get discomfited by the uppity bloggers and decide to put them in their places so they (the bloggers) won’t blog any more.

Bob Poe, who is running for govenor, penned this epistle on the ‘Flats, trying to explain the mindset behind what Doogan did.  While I take issue with him saying that AKM will thank Doogan some day, I think he provides some insight into the mind of Doogan.  By the way, every pic of Doogan shows him holding an alcoholic drink.  His emails are full of rage and dismissiveness.  Man needsl help.  I know our elected officials are human beings like the rest of us, but they are supposed to be leading us–not acting like five year olds.  He is defensive and hostile, and he doesn’t see what he did wrong.  

Ok.  That is a fairly dispassionate  narration of what has happened thus far.  Now, it’s off the rails for me.  I don’t comment on the ‘flats much any more, but I still read it daily.  I considered it the must-read when it came to dealing with the lying, two-faced, bat-shit crazy Sarah Palin.  Through all the changes the ‘flats went through, one thing remained consistent:  AKM.  Some people argue that because s/he used a pseudonym, s/he didn’t have as much credibility as those who blogged under their names.  However, I politely call bullshit.  Rush Limbaugh is not more credible because we know his name–nor is Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin, Matt Drudge, Erick Erickson, or any of their ilk.  Conversely, Hilzoy and Digby are very respected bloggers with pseudonyms.  Yes, the latter was outed, but that did not add (or subtract, for that matter) any credibility to Digby’s posts.  To me, what matters is the truth behind the words.  Every post had sources to back up the story.  Every accusation was documented thoroughly.  In addition, there were wonderful stories about the Wicked Witch, as well as Mt. Redoubt offering its rebuttal to Bobby Jindal’s asinine ridicule of volcano monitoring.  There were pictures of Mudstock gatherings as well as of Brian and Brenda Moose.  I got the flavor of life in Alaska, all from one well-written blog.   One thing I loved about AKM was that it could be anybody.  It could have been me!  Now, I have a name to go with that pseudonym, but it doesn’t add to my enjoyment of the blog.  I am not going to look up the person because it doesn’t matter.  AKM’s words–they are what matters.  

When I read the post yesterday, I was angry.  I was face-flushed, tears-in-the-eyes angry.  What Doogan did was betray the trust of thousands if not millions of people around the world.  We could have found out who AKM was at any time if we really wanted to investigate, but we didn’t.  In fact, we did everything we could to protect AKM’s identity.  To have some asshole rip away that protection for his own petty ego is almost beyond belief.  I blog in my own name, but I assign pseudonyms to all the people in my life.  Others post with a pseudonym, while others post anonymously. I chose to blog in my own name because much of what I write is relevant to me as a person.  In addition, I wanted to put myself out there as a bi Taiwanese American woman.  My fucking choice.  There are several valid reasons for a person to blog anonymously–especially as a minority voice in a state that has many avid supporters of the status quo–and the guns to back up their beliefs.  It should be each person’s choice whether s/he wants to place him/herself (and family) in that position.  No one has the right to make that decision for an individual.  I don’t have kids or a partner, so any risk I take in blogging is strictly undertaken by me.  

AKM is taking some time to decide where to go from here.  I stand by AKM no matter what, but I want Doogan to know that his act of petty vengeance has hurt a person and a community that did not deserve it.  I have no doubt that the ‘flats will survive in one form or another, and I personally vow that I will be in your face to make sure you never get elected to another office for as long as you live.  I think you should be thrown out now, but I have little faith that this will happen.  You are a vile, petty, small man who has proven that the need for AKM’s beacon of light still exists.  No matter what AKM does, Alaskan politics are changed forever.  

Right now, I am still mad, but there is a part of me that is grieving as well.  This should not have happened.  I feel it in my very core.  It is wrong.  I have nothing else to say at this time.  Here is one of the forum moderators blogging about it on her own blog, mamadance.  She has a running tally of all the blogs writing about this issue.  I have nothing pithy to say to sum up all the emotions swarming in me at this time.  

Yup.  Still mad.  Long live AKM.

P.S.  Add Hilzoy from Washington Monthly as one more blogger with a pseudonym adding her voice.  Look for Outing AKMuckraker.

When I first got on ‘the nets’ more than a decade ago, I had a free AOL credit thing, so I used it.   I logged in as Asiangrrl (yes, I stick to a name once I pick one), and in one of the chat rooms, this irate woman (I’m assuming by her name) started ranting at me about how sly Chinks are.  I left that room to go to another room, and she followed me, telling me I couldn’t get away from her.  Well, yeah, I could–I logged off.

That was my introduction to the wonderful world of internet trolls, but it did not deter me from soldering on.

In the beginning, I only frequented sites to get news.  I rarely read comments because, quite frankly, most of them were written poorly and showed a lack of thought.  This was before I had discovered any political blogs, let me add, so it’s not even like I had to deal with any fundies.  Whenever I did delve into the comments, however, I noticed that there was always one or two people who made incendiary comments which would get everyone else on the site upset.  This is so common, there’s a term for it:  flaming.  It seems that’s what trolls do–flame.

I ignored them for the most part because that’s what you do with trolls.  Ignore them, deprive them of their fun, and they most likely will move on.  It’s pretty clear-cut when someone is simply trying to ignite passions.  That person isn’t worth a mention, so ignoring him/her is your best bet.

However, once I actually started visiting forums and political blogs, I realized that there are several different kinds of trolls, and it’s not always easy to differentiate them from regular commenters.  For example, there was one person on one of the queer political blogs I read who kept defending the Catholic church.  At first blush, it seemed like the commenter was simply a devout Catholic and a bit misguided.  The more s/he posted, however, it was clear that s/he was simultaneously trying to slam queers and defend the Catholic hierarchy at the same time.  I have no idea if this poster was queer, but I soon stopped reading anything s/he posted, and I didn’t respond. 

Then, there is the person who goes on a blog simply to deride the people who are reading it.  Again, this happens commonly on political blogs.  While ninety-five percent of the posters will have thoughtful comments, there’s always the idiot who says something like, “You are all commie-fascist pinkies who want to make us a Muslim country!”  Or, “All you do on this site is talk about how bad W. was.  He’s gone.  Why can’t you get over it?”

Now, while it might be tempting to respond to these idiots, it’s pointless.  Their ingrained sense of righteousness wrapped around their unending need for attention will only continue to grow if they get a response.  Again, it’s better to pretend they aren’t even there, but it’s not easy to do.  It’s amazing how one or two of these commenters can really drag a forum down.  In that way, I actually approve of sites that say straight out, we will ban you if we think you are a troll.   It’s often best to lance these boils in order to get rid of the poison.

The next type of troll is a bit more complicated.  I have actually come across this dilemma in my blog.  Why?  I posted a movie review, and I lauded the equal-opportunity male full-frontal nudity.  It was a throw-away paragraph, but a guy had issue with it.  He maintained that there was more full-frontal nudity of males than females in mainstream media.  He also said that if I were a woman, I probably didn’t care.  I am paraphrasing, of course, but you can read it for yourself here.  Why did I post his comment?  Well after I thought about it, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.  I posted a reply, some of my friends posted as well, and I thought that was all there was to it.

Unfortunately, no.  Another guy wrote in to rant about how life is so unfair to men.  He started with the same topic, but he quickly veered into ‘women are teh evil’ and ‘beware of teh vagina’ terrority.  Still, I hesitated because he had one semi-tangential valid point.  In the end, though, it wasn’t enough to redeem his rant, and it really had nothing to do with the topic at hand.  So, I deleted the comment.

Was the latter guy a troll in the pure sense of the word?  Maybe, maybe not.  However, trollish-ness is in the eye of the beholder, and he was trollish enough that I didn’t want to post his comment.  As for the original guy, he just responded again tonight.  His post was more civil in tone, and he made some interesting hypotheses.  So, it seems, he was not a troll after all.  Or rather, he’s a tolerable troll.  His intent may have been to stir me up and get attention, or he may really have wanted to authentically debate the issues.   I still find it interesting that he chose to fight over 119 words out of a review that contains 1070 words, a paragraph that was, at best, tangential to the review, and that’s why I think there are gray areas to the whole troll business.  Even if this guy is not a troll, his first comment was trollish, and he showed a desire to tell me what I can and can’t write on MY blog. 

In the end, I probably will err on the side of posting comments that I am not sure are troll-free rather than simply delete them, but I have a hunch this may change in time.  Part of the reason I blog is because it’s fun for me.  It’s not fun to feed the trolls.  No more words for you!

P.S.  I was going to write  a whole other section about how Rush Limbaugh is the ultimate troll, but I don’t feel like it.