You're Fat, Ugly, Slutty And Dumb (And So Am I)
First, a slight meta note: I’m having some back-end issues with the blog, so posting may be a little spotty this week as I try to clear it up. In the meantime, I’ve been sitting on this article that inky sent me while I was out of town; it’s by local writer Violet Blue.
[E]very woman on the Internet gets called slutty and ugly and fat (to put it lightly) no matter what; all we have to be is female… The problem is, with so many women I talk to, the trolling is effective. The number of times I’ve talked down a crying girlfriend after she’s been trolled in her comments about being fat, ugly, skanky, slutty or stupid is higher than I can count (no matter what she writes about).
I’m actually really sad that I haven’t saved some of the excellent troll comments we’ve gotten here, calling me all of the above. And a lesbian. I’ve even gotten some really vitriolic comments, believe it or not, on book reviews. (Speaking of which, I can’t believe Violet Blue left out “you’re just on the rag.” That is a classic.)
She goes on to quote two very wise women, and let me pass on their advice to you. First, Bombshell Betty:
“I don’t think people learn through words, they learn through experience. The best thing to do is get rid of the critics. Turn off the TV when it’s talking about some celebrity’s weight issues. Stop listening to your mother or your friend or your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse when they make comments about your weight. Hang out with people who think you’re hot! What I have always noticed in my own life and when I am watching other people is that ‘when you feel sexy, you are sexy.’ Period. The end.”
Second, Margaret Cho:
In Margaret Cho’s “Beautiful” tour, she talks about recently being on a radio show and having the host ask her point-blank, live, on the air, “What if you woke up one day, and you were beautiful?” When asked, he defined beautiful as blonde, thin, large-breasted, a porno stereotype. Cho says, “Just think of what life is like for this poor guy. There’s beauty all around him in the world, and he can only see the most narrow definition of it.”
The moral of this story is, don’t let the man, or trolls, or John Ridley (who is apparently famously a misogynistic moron) get you down. Surround yourself by people who think you’re hot? That’s here! Outstanding.
(And I’d love to know: have you gotten any entertaining troll comments? If so, tell us about them. I’ll send the person who got trolled in the most amusing way a prize. No kidding. I need the entertainment.)
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Advocacy, Fat Positive, Fatism, Feminism, Meta
I loved that collumn when I first read it. I haven’t gotten troll comments, mostly because my personal site is more person, and I haven’t worked on getting my other blog out there more.
Still, I did get a response to my comment on Ridley’s article that said, basicly, that in order to be successful at losing and keeping off weight you have to make permanent changes to your diet. Wait! This is so novel. I’ve never heard that before!
This kind of makes me glad my blog isn’t very popular. I’ve never gotten any comments like that. I did once get told anonymously, re: my fiction, that I’m an unoriginal, talentless hack, and I think that stung a lot more than any attacks on my womanhood would.
I have been called fat, slutty and a loser by strangers, as well as dudes I’ve dumped who feel the need to make themselves feel better.
I find that if you focus your efforts spending time around people who lift you up, it’s going to resonate with you. There’s no reason to be around people who think what you’re doing isn’t good enough. Who think you’d be beautiful if you just lost a few pounds.
And if you’re around people who make you feel good, you’re going to present yourself in a different light. You will shine.
Great post!
I have gotten called a lesbian more times than I can count. (I have short hair but…. I’m married to a man.) I take it as a complement ;)
I have had my comments dismissed because I’m clearly cranky about not having bigger boobs
I saw a scrawny acquaintance get turned on online by a bunch of women who were making fun of her for having an eating disorder! They were claiming anyone who would succumb to that kind of social pressure clearly had no merit to be taken seriously on any other topic. These were women who were always loudly yelling about body-type acceptance as well… and they were mocking her for being so bony she’d put her boyfriend’s eye out if they cuddled.
Often, we girls can be as cruel if not crueler than the men. I think we know how to hit where it hurts even better than most guys.
I had a troll for a while who complained that all I blogged about was “sex toys and underwear.” So that’s become kind of a catchphrase/inside joke at my blog. The troll went away when I started substituting her real name for whatever name she was using to comment that week.
She never called me fat though. Just slutty. I think I said, “What’s your point?”
I wish I found troll comments entertaining. I don’t find them hurtful, either, though.
Mostly just tedious. I don’t get them on my journal entries–it’s more forum and comment flame wars I run into.
I was informed that I obviously needed to shave once (I’m guessing that was a hairy-pitted lesbian comment). I very sweetly informed him that no I didn’t need to shave, I wax.
Any time I blog about FA, I get a HUGE chorus of concern trolls with a side-dish of “You’re just fooling yourself.”
I get a lot of, “Leave my country if you don’t like it you stupid, gringa,” comments. It bothers me because I’ve put a lot of time and effort into fitting in in this country and I get rejected every day. So even getting rejected on my blog is like jeez. I guess there really isn’t anything I can do…
A few times I’ve gotten troll comments too but those don’t really piss me off. I know I’m hot. One guy emailed specifically to tell me that he thought I was “kinda cute.” It cracked me up that he thought his opinion was so important that he MUST share it with me.
I’ve been called everything but a republican pedophile by trolls. Just today I was called a “faggot” by someone who apparently didn’t pass high school English.
I usually just mark em all as spam and delete them without letting them bother me. I did receive quite an offensive one once, after posting about my eating disorder relapse. Some ignorant troll told me to “get my fat ass to the gym.”
Other trolls are kind of funny: During my Dan Savage debacle, I received lots of trolls who apparently are unfamiliar that my blog is an eating disorders blog or that I lost 175 pounds in a year via an eating disorder. I had some well-intentioned trolls tell me their “success” stories on how they lost 20 pounds and if I just diet and exercise, I could too. I wanted to scream, “Umm.. hello! I lost almost 10 times the weight you lost and don’t need any lectures on how to effectively lose weight, thanks.” But I just marked them as spam and went on.
Anyone who visits my blog will eventually hear all about my BFF, who is my life and my heart and my twin and my heterosexual life partner all rolled into one. I’ve only ever gotten one truly nasty troll (because no one reads my blog heh) and this troll took it upon herself to ridicule our friendship, call us cowardly closeted lesbians who are really only BFFs because no guys will date us. And other very hurtful things.
Of course, our militant dyke roommate fired right back and told her what’s the what. Troll only commented a few more times before slinking away into the void o’ the internets.
I’ve had trolls, of course, but I can’t think of any really entertaining comments. (many annoying ones, but no truly entertaining ones…)
Once, in the early days of online dating, I politely declined a request from a guy who was very clearly looking for a random hookup. He called my race into question (my family is Italian, and I have a fairly mediterranean complexion) saying that I “looked like I just got off the Taco Bell boat.”
At that, I rolled my eyes and blocked him. ;)
It happened on a friend’s blog and not my own but I was told that I must really want to be a man because 1. of my name 2. I do martial arts and 3. because I like to go to the range and shoot. GASP! Apparently us wimmin’ folk aren’t supposed to do that kind of stuff. Pardon me while I go barefoot into the kitchen to cook up some vittles.
I’m apparently a threat to free speech. And also a “flammer” who “flammes” people. If by “flamme” you mean point out that sexism and racism exist, then yes, I guess I am. I thought about changing my blog title to “flammer”, but decided that was too much effort. So I just keep to being a threat to free speech.
All y’all who are patiently (and funnily) explaining why these jerks are wrong (you wax, you’re hetero, you can lose weight better) are just playing their game. The point is not to let trolls define the conversation– they don’t get to make you defend your grooming, explain your sexuality, whatever. Because as long as you’re answering them as if they have the right to ask that stuff or say that stuff to you, we all lose.
I’m a fat lesbian.
My skin has been leatherized from years of name-calling. Weirdly enough, my biggest sin has been not being attrctive enough to stiffen the dicks of most of the het male population. It’s not that I don’t *care* that gets people, but that I refuse to try.
On my blog, way back almost 3 years ago, my ex-boyfriend and ex-best-guy-friend (they’re two of a kind) were trolling a post regarding needing to go to the emergency room overnight, because I’d had some bizarre gastro-intestinal explosion and it was like heartburn on speed. One part of the post said, “They gave me an ultrasound, and I could see my insides.” Ex-best-guy-friend decided to comfort my ex-boyfriend (who realized that dumping me didn’t help his life) by saying, “I bet all she found was Twinkies and missing children.”
That is pretty ridiculous.
Hurtful because he was a former friend and…well, come ON.
Ridiculous because, the man’s technically quite a genius, AND fat, and that’s all he can come up with?!
My first post here got a few beauties.
…actually, the second post had more troll droppings than the first. It’s just that the first two comments on that first post had me laughing hysterically.
One day a group of my friends were walking around school and my friend Bella was talking trash behind the back of my overweight friend Lily. Very skinny Bella said “I hate her and I want to just kick her ass!” And my very thin friend Aurora, Lily’s BF, said “Wellll, YOU CAN’T MISS IT!”
I like the phrase “troll droppings”. It makes me giggle.
Okay, I found one of the posts from when my troll was at her peak. Her handle was “Lilith” at this point but she’s changed it so often that it’s almost quaint to see this: Linkadoodledoo.
Wish I could find something funnier but she was more annoying than funny. I’m still looking for her comment about my content.
I also briefly had a guy who was trolling my blog who was forever asking me to post photos of myself in certain items, including a Borat-esque swimsuit. Here’s one time when he showed up. He eventually got angry b/c I was posting pics of my kids and not my underwear for Project 365. So I took a photo of the contents of my underwear drawer and posted that. Never heard from him again. But I have 2274 hits on the photo at Flickr.
I have had someone start their own anonymous blog devoted to talking crap about me!
Wow, Bri. That means you hit the big time (so to speak).
So I joined OKCupid, which is a silly, fun dating site. They ask you questions and if you’d like you can do a little journal post on the question. One of the questions was, “Would you ever date a highschool dropout?” My answer was yes and it’s because I’m a highschool droput (with a college degree) and I’m proud of it! This was the response one person left:
“As you are responding to a fairly indifferent question, I’m going to make the gross assumption that you are desiring attention- the negative kind. So here goes. Rather then pitter patter with eloquent verbose language, I’m just going to get right to it. As opposed to getting upset with a ‘question’ that wasn’t even directed at you, I’d suggest worrying about your morbid obesity. You’re the worst type of fat: small head and no breasts. With your education, I recommend pursuing a career with a Spanish fitness magazine. Hasta Luego gordo y chica!”
I ended up making a journal post out of his comment and the post ended up getting around 200 comments, good and bad. I stopped trying to make sense of it about 50 comments into the thing, but people were arguing back and forth for a good while until I made the post private. It’s just silly, you know?
Most recently a troll went through several of my posts in a way that suggested they were playing Fat Hat Bingo.
There were all of the typical comments as well as the suggestion that I ought to hang myself, except, oops, no rope would hold my fat ass.
I honestly haven’t heard that one since middle school so it made me burst out laughing.
I know it’s a typo, but “Fat Hat Bingo” just cracked me up for about a minute straight. Hee. “You have a fat hat!!!”
No trolls thank goodness. Only because my LJ is locked to friends only. If it were public and someone got a whiff of my posts on my weight, weight discrimination and what not I’m sure a few trolls would have wandered past. But I have witnessed mass trolling over at the fatfashionista LJ community. >_<
I think Bri wins the prize here!
Alas, I have no fat blog. I’d love to start one. I even have a title for it: Night of the Living Fat. I’m sure if I posted pics of myself on it, the trolls would flock to it like Lindsay Lohan flocks to leggings.
I don’t remember all of the things I’ve been called, but I’ve undergone years of therapy. :-P Being married to a kind, generous, affectionate man who finds me drop-dead sexy has done wonders for my self-esteem. I don’t even remember any of the mean things trolls said to me during high school and college; I just know that I’m much freer about describing my body.
The worst thing I’ve ever been called is “a Scottish Bridget Jones”. Which may have been intended as a compliment. I must be boring and inoffensive!
I think my blog would need readers before it gets trolls. I’m not there yet.
I have a YouTube channel that I’m using for a weird videoart/fiction thing (that desperately needs updating). Anyway, my favorite troll comments so far: “You’d lose some weight if you’d switch to diet soda” (completely unsolicited advice, AND I’m obviously drinking a goddamn diet soda in that very vid, which is part of the vid’s “punchline,” so WTF?), and “You are the ugliest piece of nerd shit I’ve ever seen,” which actually made me laugh because, hey, it was at least a little inventive.
Still, Bri wins this one!