I was harassed on the internet.

twice in the past week.

Something that hadn’t happened since I was on Xanga and I had commented on a guy friend’s blog. It was a girl who attacked me. I don’t remember exactly what about but I remember feeling betrayed that my friend hadn’t stood up for me.

Given the way our friendship ended I am not surprised that he hadn’t.

I learned that the girl who attacked me liked my friend. He was ambivalent about her. Called her crazy.

Men are always quick to call a woman crazy.

Last weekend I went to Comic Con. A friend of mine on twitter has a huge nerdy, geeky, account and he was re-tweeting my cosplay tweets. A mutual follower, a girl that I found to be a little strange and seemingly obsessive with my friend started tweeting about how she found cosplay weird and cringeworthy.

I figured she was talking about me. It seemed like anytime I tweeted something that she didn’t like or agree with she would then tweet something snarky in response.

I asked her simply why she thought cosplay was weird. I don’t remember what she said, but I left it at that. I found she had blocked me.

I got a little upset.

She spent the next day talking about how she had blocked me because I was a crazy person and just insane.

It all started with a guy and some cosplay pics.

He also did not defend me.

The other day I had tweeted that I didn’t like when men who never interacted with me private messaged me to compliment my pictures.

I take a lot of selfies and am unapologetic about them.

A few people commented about them confused.Compliments are nice, aren’t they?

They are. I appreciate them, but I’ve found that men that like to compliment me in private spend most of their time tweeting at other, hotter, sexier, more under dressed women. You can tweet at them? You can tweet at me too. You do not need to take this into private.

Is it embarrassing to tell someone like me they’re pretty?

Possibly.

A guy I follow tweeted at me, “I wonder, woman. 😉 ”

I suppose his girlfriend didn’t like the small the allusion to me being a Wonder Woman cosplayer? Or maybe alluding to me being pretty? I don’t know, but she then spent several hours calling me a vain bubblehead, who wanted tons of nobodies to lavish her with attention. And didn’t want anything to do with intimate private messages.

She also said, “you know you don’t have to post pictures of yourself on Twitter.”

What if I fucking feel like it?

Let’s go back to the first girl. She seems obsessed with hating women who post selfies.

She made a poll asking why the reader thought people posted selfies, three out of four of the response options were negative.

Attention seeking.

Vain.

Insecure.

For fun.

Then she spent the whole day bumping it trying to get people to have the same opinion as her.

My initial, angry, response was to be like, “you don’t like selfies because you’re ugly and jealous that people feel attractive and confident enough to post their face and their body.”

But because I don’t actually like being cruel to people I just watched how it played out.

Which leads me to wonder, why do you care so much? And why do you want to make people who post the dreaded selfie, feel badly?

Let’s go back to the first girl. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know my history. She doesn’t know that every man that I’ve been with has treated me like a secret, an embarrassment, someone not fit to be with in public.

I have my own emotional baggage. I feel constantly that I am someone to be ashamed to like.

Which is why for me private messages, instead of replies to the actual post bother me. She said turn off my DM option. Why? I have friends I like to have long conversations with. These men are not my friends. Their compliments are not kind, they are the starting point for what they hope will be me being pathetic enough to show them more of myself in private. I know because that’s what always happens.

Let’s go back to the selfies. I am in a place where generally the only part of my body I’m happy with is my face. It is a sad fact. So I feel pretty or want to feel pretty. I’ll take a picture of myself when I look my best and remind myself that I am not as ugly and horrible as my brain likes to remind me every day. Every hour.

So if I want to take a fucking selfie and post it, then I’m going to take a fucking selfie and people can just ignore it or unfollow me.

I think that we as women need to stop tearing each other down for finding ourselves attractive. You want to call a woman who posts pictures of herself insecure and vain? which one is it?

Who doesn’t have trouble with insecurities?

Stop hating other women for trying to love themselves.

I’m done.