I have mixed feelings about promoting GGR and growing it bigger.  At its former peak right around the Dickwolves bullshit, it had a relatively active commentariat, hundreds of hits a week and the podcast was doing just as well.  Hell, I got a call from the Oprah show for a piece I did for the California chapter of NOW.

And I want to grow it. I want to be less dependent on dayjobs that sap my will to live.

But I also know that with increased visibility comes more harassment.

Incredibly gendered harassment.

Now, no one is claiming that men don’t get harassed on the internet.  Just that it’s different.  I have posted the types of comments that I get on the regular in forums talking to male-identified bloggers and podcasters, and without exception not a single one of them has received a rape threat.  They are almost never called whores, sluts, or any number of other charming words.

I’ve received hundreds of these comments over the years.  Mostly in the year and a half after the Dickwolves saga.

Oddly enough, also, none of the guys get told they shouldn’t sound so angry and that they are much more pleasant to listen to when they talk about happy things.  They are never told they talk too much.  They are rarely cred-checked.

I waffled like hell about posting this here, but people kept liking it and commenting on a rough draft of it on G+.  It obviously struck a chord with many women, and several men.

Would trading the stress of a dayjob for the stress of dealing with the bullshit INSTEAD of doing both simultaneously help?  Maybe.

Is belligerence enough?

Can I overcome the demons in my own head and not self-sabotage?

Are the steps I’ve taken to obscure my physical location enough?

Am I going to have to carry something that can be a weapon at all times again?  Ok, I already do, but will it become imperative instead of a quirk of personality?

I don’t fucking know.

What I do know is when I see dudes ostensibly on my side saying nothing when someone is harassing women it makes it that much harder to keep going.

I know that when I get passed over for something because I’m not ‘professional’ enough, and then a dude with less experience and knowledge gets tapped, it hurts and makes it that much harder to keep going.

I know that watching women all around me zealously moderate all of their social interactions with social media, winnowing down the number of people they truly trust to teeny circles and lists because they HAVE to to get or keep jobs (and their sanity) makes it that much harder to keep going.

When people call someone a moderate because he’s never used the word cunt (where they could hear it) in his “criticism” of women in my subcultures, and that is literally the only difference between him and the Gamergaters, it makes it that much harder to keep going.

It’s hard.  As much as I love blogging and podcasting and even doing the video blogs, it takes energy to put yourself out there and say, “Here, please like my stuff enough to pay me for it!”

It takes more energy to know that the rape and death threats, and the gendered insults, and cries of “Fat ugly prude slut!” are ever just around the corner.  It takes more energy to respond with guarded care to someone who might be a douche, or just a clueless kid, but you don’t know yet.  Because some dogwhistles are kind of diffuse and you can’t always tell right away.

Doing this blog takes a lot more energy than people think, even myself.  Because I love doing it, and I don’t always see when the attacks start to sap my energy levels.

But disregarding all of that, I am going to keep going and I do have plans, which I will elaborate upon as we go along.

Thanks for reading!  You guys are the best!

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