Wednesday Essay: Just for Laughs. Hate Mail!

I don’t get a whole lot of hate mail. I get much more love mail. Much more love, overall. Speaking of which, if you are reading this column and like anything specifically, please click that heart or, better yet, comment.

Sometimes I feel like I might be writing into a void. Today I asked JJ’s therapist, Gary Field, a trans man, if he had been reading my Substack.

He said, “Yes, of course. I’ve been enjoying it!” 

Of this, however, I was unaware. Because Gary never clicks the *heart* or comments.

When in fact, he’s been a supporter from Day One. I even conferred with him on my decision as to whether or not I would employ a pseudonym for writing this column.

I value Gary beyond words, beyond money, and I’m not on here to make money.

I’m here to make meaning. Which is a long-winded way of asking:

Please click the hearts if you like something!

For today’s column, I am going to share some exchanges I’ve had with folx who took issue with the initial Gender Defiant essays I published with The Bollard.      

Here are three examples of HATE MAIL, all of them copied and pasted directly      with no alternations.

The LETTERS are as follows:

1. DISGRUNTLED HUMAN: I did not respond. Still, it is curious to see what his beef is.
2. FIERCE O’BRIAN: I engaged with this individual and hoped to find common ground. Eventually, I felt that his anger was obstructing his ability to listen to me and so I made the decision to end communication.
3. SO-CALLED “REALITY-BASED PARENTING”: This is a lengthy correspondence because RBP is so wordy you might be tempted to think the author of these letters is more than one person. In fact, they signed one of their letters as "The team at Reality Based Parenting."

One thing that became obvious to me after communicating with both Fierce O’Neill and Reality-Based Parenting is that their communications are the product of mass assembly. They endlessly regurgitate their talking points in their missives, with so much repetition it's like rereading the same three opinion-based, devoid-of-factual-statements paragraphs about eighteen times.

In other words, there’s not a whole lot of original thought going on with these folks.

READERS! I would love to know what you think about these exchanges. Please let me know in the comments.