Troll-B-Gone!

Above: An artist’s rendering of the men’s rights trolls who populate this feminist blog and others. The jewels in their bellies give them magical powers that blind them to their own privilege!

Regular readers have probably noticed that the comment threads have been overrun as of late with a serious influx of trolls. We’re not sure if it’s just the Palin-related traffic lately, the general election frenzy, or some special link-lovin’ from a men’s rights site. In any case, we’ve noticed. We’re on it.

What is a troll, you ask? A brief definition here.

More specifically, the breed of troll that’s been showing up here lately typically…

• Has a username that’s something vaguely female with some numbers at the end
• Makes racist/sexist/homophobic/generally ignorant comments
• Has a tendency to ask things like, “what about the MENZ?!” and “won’t somebody think of the racism against white people?”

What to do if you spot a troll:

• Do not engage. It’s a waste of your time, and the threads start looking very confusing after we delete the sexist/racist/otherwise ugly comments.
• Let us know. Send us an email with the trolling commenter’s username, along with a link to the comment or thread in question. We are internet obsessives, so usually (sadly?) one of the editors is online at almost all times, but sometimes we leave to go eat dinner or interact with real, live humans or something. But we promise we’ll delete the offending comments and ban the trolls as soon as we notice they’re there.

We really value the comments threads as a place for everyone to engage and discuss and deepen our understanding of issues. Thanks so much for your patience while we work to resolve this. And double-thanks to our secret band of anti-troll vigilante commenters (you know who you are!) who have been so awesome about alerting us to trollishness on the site.