yonmei

04:25 pm: How to talk to a troll
...except, of course, that I have just resolved to make more use of my new icon.

ginmar posts a list of 45 standard troll-comments, with appropriate replies.

The 46th, or perhaps the first, is "Bah!" combined with a Dogbertian paw-wave.

For anyone who wonders, this is not actually anything much connected with the recent tempest in the teapot on edinburgers: it's much more to do with a quite appalling post of theferrett's recently, which... well, here's ginmar's first reaction, which is much more eloquent than mine. And her second reaction. And her third. And her fourth. And her fifth. And I'm linking them all because, well...

What theferrett said was really bloody offensive. But it was phrased in a happy joky all-guys-together of-course-you-girls-agree kind of way. It's a tone of voice that I've heard before - it invites you to complicity, to laugh along with him, to agree that it's really kind of amusing to think of a man constantly harrassing a woman to have sex with him and just not stopping or taking no for an answer, because he's learned that he can, that eventually, she'll give in. And then it won't be rape, because rape is what men commit by actual physical violence and is clearly bad - and by these means to again carefully separate "the rapists" (who are bad) from these nice, friendly, joky, cheerful men ... who see nothing much wrong with non-stop sexual harassment, if it gets a man what he wants.

No. Just... no. I'm not going to devote five posts to it, as ginmar did, but I am going to say, here and now: No.