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The Wo’C FAQ For Trolls

1.  Yes, we are liberals and yet we write sarcastic, unkind things (about stuff that we think deserve a little snark).  But you thought that liberals were supposed to be nice and to hold hands and teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, and so this has caused you to rethink everything that you once thought to be true?  Well, sorry to burst your pretty balloon, but as Steve Martin once said after seeing Ann Coulter at a RNC fundraiser, “Comedy is not pretty.” 

2.  You can’t shame us by telling us that we aren’t helping the cause.  We didn’t sign up for the cause.  The cause isn’t our raison d’etre.  We’re not even sure which cause you are referring to.  See, OUR cause is to poke gentle fun at stupid stuff.  If this disappoints, maybe you have us confused with with some other World O’Crap?

3.  We think it’s great that men have feelings (well, feelings other than contempt for women and foreigners, and love for their gun collection).  And we think they probably should feel something when their partner has an abortion — we’re not going to tell them how to feel, but we think this is a significant enough event to warrant some emotion.  However, we don’t think that the use of ”post-abortive men” as a political movement to counter legal abortion is a good thing.  You are free to disagree with us, but please try to do so in an honest manner.  Or, at least be entertaining — no posting of pro-life boilerplate, okay?

 4.  If you say that your feelings have been grievously wounded by all the mean people here, and so you are going away, then you have to leave.  That’s the law.  Thank you.

 5.  We really like D. Sidhe.  We admire her courage, intelligence, and literary skills.  But we feel we should warn you that you had better put a little thought into your replies to her, as she is a pretty sharp cookie, and will have you for lunch if you enter a war of wits with her unarmed.  And several other metaphors.  Just FYI. 

6.  TBD.

Posted by s.z. on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 7:00 pm.

36 Responses to “The Wo’C FAQ For Trolls”

I have always regarded D. Sidhe as the sharpest cookie in the drawer.

Left by Herr Doktor Bimler on January 9th, 2008

6. There is NO rule 6!

Left by Dorothy on January 9th, 2008

1. yes

2. yes

3. yes

4. yes. I can’t emphasize this enough

5. Oh, man. If they’re talking to you, you just have no idea. As profoundly amusing as I (poor fallen soul that I am) would feel some vague liberal guilt for finding it if you ignored this instruction, the better angels of my nature suggest that you listen to the nice bloggers.

Granted, you’re not going to listen to me because I’m a liberal, but that’s me off the hook right there.

5) Whatevs.

Left by julia on January 9th, 2008

*snort* Thank you. Can I be a snickerdoodle?

My first thought: Man, I must have really gotten my ass handed to me by the trolls to have earned a front page defense. But I suspect my self-esteem is just low after the doctor referred to me as “staggeringly dense”.

Left by D. Sidhe on January 9th, 2008

I luvs me some D. Sidhe anyday anytime.

Left by kate on January 9th, 2008

D. Sidhe: you can get pretty sharp snickerdoodles but they tend not to hold an edge very well. Now a ginger snap will slice up a whole army of trolls and you’d still be able to shave with it.

Left by fardels bear on January 9th, 2008

I love d. sidhe, and I love you all. Except the trolls. I don’t love them.

Left by jnfr on January 9th, 2008

Ya know, there really is such a multitude of extremely erudite bloggers here at the WOC, that I mostly lurk in the background and enjoy everyones snark because joining in is usually too intimidating for me. BUT, D. Sidhe is a true heroine and I will never be able to read her without thinking of gingersnaps. Kudos to fardel bear for the perfect cookie match!

Left by Gappy on January 9th, 2008

Love you, D., as you know, and I’d never hit a Send button if it weren’t for you.

And what kind of troll leaves out “the aptly named World O’Crap”, anyway?

Left by Doghouse Riley on January 10th, 2008

#6: If you can’t stand the heat, you shouldn’t have burned the bridges behind you.

Dense yet sharp-edged baked products. Hmm. Dwarf bread?

Left by Herr Doktor Bimler on January 10th, 2008

I’ve been W’OC homesick for quite a while, and this post reminds me of why.

Though I still think that you’re using too many big words and far too gentle a tone when reprimanding the under-bridge-dwelling fucktards, S.Z. I know, I know, you’re always so much nicer about those rock-sucking inbreds than I could ever be, but still. Unleash those brilliantly-sharp talons once in a while, wouldjaplease?

Even if you never speak to me again after all…

Left by Anntichrist S. Coulter on January 10th, 2008

Okay, so I can’t be a snickerdoodle? My fallback choice is a Grasshopper. And I may have to read some of this to my partner, who has spent the last day and a half expanding upon my doctor’s opinion of me.

Really, thank you. I thought I was being an unbearable asshole in that thread, I was prepared to blame the toothache.

Left by D. Sidhe on January 10th, 2008

Delurking to say “Hell, yeah!” to #5. D. has provided me with many moments of forehead-smacking clarity over the years. Often, when I’m dancing around a subject trying to get my thoughts straight on why it is pissing me off, she steps in and elegantly skewers the heart of the matter with a well-considered paragraph. I guess that makes me a D. Sidhe dittohead.

Left by Thorlac on January 10th, 2008

6. TBD.

tick-borne diseases?
Taco Bell dog?

Left by J— on January 10th, 2008

As an intimidated lurker, I’d just like to add: “what Tholac said” and “what Grappy said.”

Left by punkinsmom on January 10th, 2008

J–: ‘To Be Determined’, if you’re not joking.

Left by Djur on January 10th, 2008

A Grasshopper? When is this, the 1920s? That’s a girl’s drink! What are ya, some kind of -

Oh. Right. Sorry.

Carry on!

Left by Thursday on January 10th, 2008

Thursday, I think you might know the cookie called “grasshopper” as a thin mint.

Left by punkinsmom on January 11th, 2008

I have to agree with Grappy, Thorlac, and punkinsmom here. Most days I can’t bring myself to enter a battle of wits that makes me feel very clearly unarmed, even when I’m often on the same side. But I’m very happy to know that D. is out there kicking butt where I would fail.

Left by Tracy on January 11th, 2008

And I misspelled Gappy. See? Totally unarmed.

Left by Tracy on January 11th, 2008

Raisin…raison…Raisin dee what?

Left by LACJ on January 11th, 2008

D. Sidhe! D. Sidhe! D. Sidhe! D. Sidhe!

Left by actor212 on January 11th, 2008

Hell, a place where we all could be an unbearable asshole is why Al Gore invented the Internet.

I love when posts blow out into crazy troll threads. Doesn’t happen often here (best ever remains TBogg’s crescent of death) but I think the exchange is a pretty good capsulization of why the abortion debate can’t really be solved. People can never agree because they come from positions that are fundamentally irreconcilable.

Someone who sees the fetus as a baby and thinks that therefore the baby has a right not to be harmed (as would an actual outside-the-womb baby), whether religiously motivated or not, from that perspective how would they ever understand the argument from our side? I really don’t believe that most of them understand it as we do, as an issue of them (men) trying to control women. I don’t think they can because the baby issue is paramount and they dismiss consideration of what that means.

But good on you for standing tall.

Left by David E. on January 11th, 2008

David,

I disagree, to a point.

I think there is common ground between the left and the right about abortion: no one really wants one.

Every abortion I’ve had even tangential involvement with has ended up with enormous guilt and anger coming out in the wash. Who’d want to go through that.

None of this is to in anyway say “no abortions”. I fully and unequivocally support a woman’s right to choose.

But I don’t know anyone who has said to me, “Hm. Well, if I do get pregnant, I’ll just abort the baby.”

It’s a tough and ultimately tragic decision. This is the part of “compassionate conservatism” that gets lost in the raging.

So there’s a sliver of hope, as Big Dog Clinton put it, to make abortions “safe, legal and rare”. This includes, then, education, contraception, access to abortions if necessary, better laws to encourage adoptions, and so on.

When the right winger right-to-lifers rail on about aborting 30 million babies, I like to stop their tirades by asking them “Why is the birth rate in America as high as its been in the past fifty years?”

They usually ain’t ready for that one, but the answer is simple: for every abortion, there’s another baby born to that same woman at a time when she is more emotionally and financially ready to have one.

And by taking away abortion, you take that later baby’s soul off the books. Jesus wouldn’t like that very much, either, all those babies’ souls lined up in baby heaven…

Left by actor212 on January 11th, 2008

It’s ‘k Tracy….Grappy rhymes with crappy which is how I feel alot of times.

Left by Gappy on January 11th, 2008

Ha ha thanks actor212, I got it now.

Raisin D. Sidhe

Left by LACJ on January 12th, 2008

LOL!

No, it’s Raisin Detre, who worked the firepole at Roxy’s Strip Club in Barstow.

Left by actor212 on January 13th, 2008

I really didn’t want to get pregnant. When I did get pregnant anyway, I really wanted an abortion. After I had the abortion, I was really glad I did. I’ve never been not glad. The end. Really. No PTSD. Well, not from that.

In other news, I must add how much I adore D.Sidhe. We must invent a cookie worthy of her.

Oh! I also have to add that I recently read that there is going to be some lame white supremacists’ confab in Jenna, LA. Like soonish. This made me remember that at one similar demonstration a while back, a bunch of other people dressed in clown suits joined in, shouting stupid, over-the-top things in bright cheerful voices. Actually, I think they might have been demonstrating in support of White Powder. At the time, I thought, Ooh, how perfect.

If I didn’t live so far away, I might go to Jenna in support of White Powder – oh shut up, I mean like white baby powder, but not talcum, the kind made with cornstarch. (I’m allowed to buy it even though I had an abortion. This is some great country, yes?)

I might have a fever. Seriously. But I do love you all.

Left by larkspur on January 13th, 2008

It’s a tough and ultimately tragic decision.

I would be careful there — I’ve read many accounts of women who did not find it to be a difficult decision and felt relief afterward. In fact most of the accounts I’ve read are along those lines.

Left by annejumps on January 14th, 2008

It’s a tough and ultimately tragic decision.

I felt relief. Overwhelming, second-chance, release from terrible burden-type relief. I’ve had a child, I’ve had a miscarriage, and I’ve had an abortion. The abortion was by far and away the least traumatic of the three events. I’m glad I have my son, but it was a terrible time in my life – my mom died when I was five months pregnant and I almost became homeless, and the pregnancy itself very nearly killed me as my blood pressure shot up really high – and I had horrible post-partum depression. I was sad about the miscarriage because at the time I thought I wanted to be pregnant, although in retrospect it was not a good time for me to have a child and was truly for the best. The abortion was absolutely the right choice, for my health, both mental and physical, and for financial reasons. As larkspur said, The End. No depression.

Left by Candy on January 14th, 2008

The lifer wingers come at it from a very narrow perspective, because I think for them it’s the only perspective that makes any difference: it’s an actual baby, it should live, the mother can be “inconvenienced” for the 9 months it’ll take and then give it up for adoption. Add in the whole mix about the fetus having a soul, and the concept of its innocence (in conscious or unconscious counterpart to the sinfulness of the woman who had sex) and the (again, conscious or unconscious) likening of all babies/fetuses to the Baby Jesus, and you’ve got someone who’s quite clearly not going to be willing to see this from a different light.

Where the lifer/wingers can’t go is what their position then means. It’s why they have no answer for why the mother shouldn’t be punished for murder or at least accessory, if abortion is to be outlawed. Only the doctor. It’s why they can’t conceive that some may feel that the autonomy of a woman to manage her own medical care morally outweighs what they perceive as a right for what they perceive as a baby to live.

There’s actually an interesting point to this on the letters page of this week’s Nation. It’s responding to an editorial about Ron Paul, where the editorial writer had indicated he was for “forced pregnancy,” which of course is the pro choice’s current framing for anti-abortion. The letter writer laughed it off, thinking it was meant literally (or more probably thinking it meant “forced conception”).

But think about it. Could a lifer/winger ever understand that that is what making abortion illegal means? That it makes women submit, be forced by the state, to stay pregnant despite the physical, financial and social complications?

No, they can’t. It’s a baby. Innocent and perfect. There’s room for agreement on the margins, perhaps, but not on this fundamental approach to what it’s about.

Left by David E. on January 14th, 2008

I would be careful there — I’ve read many accounts of women who did not find it to be a difficult decision and felt relief afterward. In fact most of the accounts I’ve read are along those lines.

Left by annejumps

I’d find that hard to believe. I suspect the accounts you’ve read are by women who’ve had the courage to come out and talk about it, and that’s the tip of the iceberg.

I could be wrong, but my sense is many women who need abortions have them not because it’s convenient or easy, but because it’s the lesser of two evils for them: have and explain the baby (thus getting into the reasons behind the kid) or get rid of the problem.

I’d even suspect that those who found it easy (and no disrespect, Candy. I don’t know you so I’m not saying this as a certainty) are being a bit superficial and if pushed to examine it more closely, would find themselves a lot more affected than they claim.

Left by actor212 on January 14th, 2008

Actor212: I would say that the fact that the abortion was necessary and beneficial is what produced the sense of relief and the lack of guilt. If there had been any positive aspects about bringing a child to term I’m sure I would have had issues. As there were none, and I would have been facing the ruination of my life and health, and that of the child I already had, there were no negative repercussions. As D. Sidhe said, women often feel bad about abortions because they are told they should. When you have an early abortion, which is NOT A BABY, but a tiny collection of cells, there is nothing to feel guilty about. And if you think there was anything superficial about what I said, then you didn’t read what I said very carefully.

Planned Parenthood will tell you, in fact, that the majority of women who have abortions primarily feel a profound sense of relief. Contrary to what the anti-choicers would have you believe.

Left by Candy on January 14th, 2008

I suspect the problem you’re getting here is that you’re assuming that since abortion is not fun, and no one wants one in the way that they want a million dollars, that it is a bad thing. Which is true enough, as far as it goes, but where you’re going wrong is to place any emphasis on abortion as something women especially don’t want. That’s not actually always–or often, if the women I know are anything to go by–the case. For most of us, it appears to be simply another medical procedure, sometimes preventable and sometimes not, that is necessary. Often there’s not even really any choice involved in the sense of having lots of equally workable solutions to a problem. Often it’s the only choice that allows us to have any semblance of the life we’d been working for. But the same is true of a kidney transplant that keeps you off dialysis for the rest of your life, or for a filling that means you can finally drink coffee again. It’s not, in my case at least, different from that.

No guilt. No, really. No guilt at all. Not even less-than-enormous guilt. And I was raised Catholic. Still, no guilt. I felt more guilt over the gall bladder removal because I was ruining my partner’s Christmas and I’d been told it was something that happens to fat women, except that in my case that had nothing to do with it because my cholesterol is lower than that of women half my weight and gall stones run in my family, even the skinny ones.

It’s not something I’d do for fun, but the same applies to root canals and CAT scans.

Seriously, no guilt. I don’t know any women who felt particularly guilty over their abortions, either. I know one who felt guilty that she let a guy talk her into not using a condom when she was off the pill for a while for other medical reasons, but it wasn’t a OMG!Ikilledababy! kind of guilt, it was a “Man, listening to him was dumb” thing.

In my experience, what women generally feel is relief. The same relief people feel after they get their wisdom teeth or appendix out.

I grant you no one normal wants an abortion in the sense of wanting to get pregnant to require one. In that sense, it is indeed the best of bad choices. But no one normal wants a liver transplant enough to go drink theirs into failure, either. And sometimes, for reasons avoidable or not, they are necessary whether anyone involved wants to do it, and it is better to be able to than not.

I’m not kidding, btw. I really do wonder how much of the post-abortion guilt people see is the result of women saying they feel guilty because they think they’re supposed to, or women feeling guilty for not feeling guilty and transferring it to a more socially acceptable cause, or women actually feeling guilty because they’ve been told they should so often they simply believe it. I seriously do wonder how many women would feel guilty if society didn’t consider abortion at least somewhat shameful. I suspect it’d be similar to the number of people who feel guilty for needing heart bypass surgery.

Left by D. Sidhe on January 14th, 2008

I never felt guilty either but I really never knew that I would be in such large company who felt that way also. What I really was relieved about was that abortions had become legal because of Roe. vs Wade. THAT was a relief.

Left by Gappy on January 14th, 2008

I noted recently that the RTLers have their own version of the Three Laws of Robotics. The first, which they do not share with outsiders, seems to be “Make the Hussy Pay.” Other considerations are secondary.

Left by Kip W on January 26th, 2008

Something to say?