This One Is For The Haters

I love this woman's blog. She makes cool things and is witty and edgy. I mostly like her because she posts stuff about hate mail. So does Dooce and many other bloggers, seeing as blogging kind of opens you up to the hate, makes you susceptible to it, etc. I will admit that once, when I was a cyberspace novice, I posted "hate" mail on someone's comment board. It was really more like "exasperation" mail, but it made her VERY angry with me. If anyone else with half a brain would have read her nonsense about feminism being shitty because, after all, "men made things like washing machines and vacuums to cut down on the time women had to spend doing their god-given chores, therefore allowing women to WATCH MORE SOAP OPERAS" (I'm so not kidding) they would have written her a bit o' hatred too. I mostly just gave her links to historical sites concerning who actually invented these appliances and also to some reputable feminist scholarly work. She, I'm assuming, didn't read it.

I, on the other hand have read a particular piece of hate mail quite a few times. I had made the HUGE and apparently DEADLY mistake of emailing a group of former comrades a link to an article concerning a particular matter of concern. This matter of concern is definitely not some self-proclaimed area of expertise for me, I just find it interesting. When some responses refuting the article I had sent out began FLOWING in, I decided that before I wrote back, I would do more research. Thus, it took only 3 or 4 days before someone had decided that I was a coward and was never going to write back. The thing is, I'm married. I had a full-time job and was going to school at the time. My brother was sick. My husband's father was sick. I was busy. My life was not such that I could spend every evening playing video games and talking shit about people I don't really know, as this particular hater had the privilege of doing. Below is the email he sent me, a portion of it.

I was going to wait for you to respond to J's post, but it's clear that your "source" and I used that term loosely has been proven wrong, and you're not going to respond.

I look over your "source" and I wondered two things:

1) Who is this guy and why should I believe him?

2) Why is there no links, sources, or anything that remotely looks like evidence?

This is why I take everything you say with a BAG of salt. That's like the opposite of the scientific method.

1) I have a conclusion (Microsoft is an evil multi-national corp, with greedy executives)

2) I look for "evidence" to support my conclusion.

3) I dismiss all evidence no matter how factual that disagrees with me.

4) I tell the world that I'm right using my BS sources and if you disagree, you're probably racist, sexist, greedy, or something else bad.

Liberal Logic.....the anti-logic

J furnished you with a source, and gave you the insight of a business owner........but he disagrees with you, so he must be wrong........don't you go to College. I think he meant to put a question mark here.

Maybe you need to grow up a little. I have had many political talks with J and when I'm wrong, I admit it, and he does the same. And at no time do we get so butt hurt that we avoid each other.

To paraphrase from your BLOG:

How many political discussion have you got in and had your feelings hurt: To many to count.

How many people don't get to hang out with your husband anymore because of their political views: At least 3 from my count.

I found your blog and it's cute, but maybe you should be honest with yourself.

I guess that is a good way to be right in your own mind all the time.......Divorce and or push away people if they don't think the same way you do.

The End.

Yeah, he must be right. I mean, don't you all seek scientific journals as conversation starters in your circle of friends? The truth is, I had about 16 or 17 "sources" with this matter of concern in it. I chose one, literally at random. This is a mistake when the male version of Ann Coulter is on the other end of your email. The funniest thing, at least to me, is that I honestly don't know this person well enough to write a huge email about the nature of their evilness. Why he thought he knew me that well has been explained to me (a little bird used him as a complaints-about-Tawny receptor), but seeing as he GOES TO COLLEGE (which is the ultimate test of intellectual rigor, obviously) he should've known, heresy isn't reliable. Especially when the little bird is a drama queen. If he had waited a few more days (after I had had a meeting with a professor whose specialty is this certain matter of concern, done more of my own research, and found someone who could decipher the ambiguous "source" that had been sent to me by J), he would have gotten a lengthy response. The moral of this story? This is what an adult would have written:

Hey Tawny, I was waiting for your response to J's email. Were you going to respond?

See? Now, wasn't that easy? that's what grown-ups do, they wait patiently and don't flip out because they have nothing better to do with themselves.

Why write about this almost 1 year after the acquisition of this email o' hate? Its cheaper than therapy and easier on the eyes than actually looking at the hater.