"Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days."

That's the new message above the compose-a-comment window.

I just widened the instant posting window from 2 days to 4 days. Enjoy! And thanks for keeping the conversation going.

AND: This post originally had 2 tags: "Althouse comments community" and "the Althouse comments community." This happens from time to time. I discover there are 2 tags for the same thing. It may be hard to believe, but even in this my 23rd year of blogging, I'm devoted to the good order of the archive. I clicked both tags, determined that the one with the "the" had more posts and added a "the" to all the the-less ones. So click on "the Althouse comments community" if you want to see all the old posts on the topic. There are a lot! 

Goodbye to commenter Michael K.

Other commenters mark his passing in the comments to Tuesday night's sunrise post and in this earlier post that day.

This morning I'm seeing Neo's blog post, "RIP commenter 'Mike K'": "RIP Mike K, and all the commenters here who may have died but all we know is that they disappeared never to return."

Yes, I've mourned the unexplained loss of Bissage for 15 years.

Bissage was a dearly beloved commenter on this blog who disappeared one day, when the uncooperative dear became uncooperative. I've tried to call him back: "Come back, Bissage. We're counting oranges again. Remember? 42. 42. 42..." To no avail.

I appreciate hearing the specific news that a commenter has died, like when Gahrie's brother's dropped into a comments thread: "Hello.... This is my brother gahries account, and it appears this post was close to the last thing he read/saw before he passed away Sunday morning sometime after 130am...."

I miss Gahrie and Bissage and Michael K and many others who died or drifted away and even some of those who left in a huff. They, unlike the dead, can drop back in. Why don't they? It's not for me to figure out. The blog, like life itself, can only move forward, and the day will come when we will all be left behind. So thanks to all — except the actual trolls — who walked along this way as far as they did.

An assessment of my cruel neutrality.

Yesterday, I asked "If Election Day were tomorrow, who would Althouse vote for? Who should she vote for?" I took a poll, with 9 combinations and 3 possible votes: Trump, Harris, and the ever-popular "no one."

What I really wanted to see was how I was perceived, that is, what level of neutrality or cover I'm pulling off. The second question gave me some ability to account for bias.

Here are the results:

You, the commenters, talked a lot yesterday about that A.G. Sulzberger column blaming Trump for efforts around the world to censor the press.

I gave you a gift link to read the whole thing in what was my first post of the day: "A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, has an opinion piece in The Washington Post: 'How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America.'"

It was a long piece, and I really did have a lot to say about it myself, but I didn't want to get dragged down dissecting what was so infuriatingly wrong about it. So I appreciated the active comments section.

The #1 thing I didn't say but wanted to say was that contrary to Sulzberger's perverted argument, criticizing the press is not censorship. Criticizing the press is more speech. Trump has been criticizing the press. It is Trump's antagonists who have pursued censorship, for many reasons, including his criticism of the press.

I'm prompted to revisit yesterday's post because I see that Glenn Reynolds is linking to it this morning. He says:

A bunch of comments wrongly shunted into the spam file in the last few days.

I just noticed and let them out. I need to check that more often. Sorry, especially to anyone who spent time wondering what they might have done wrong. The answer is nothing. It was the software finding fault inappropriately.

Thanks for all the great comments!

Goodbye to Gahrie.

From a comment submitted through Gahrie's account, to a post from last Saturday, "In the debate about whether to take the woke version of progressivism seriously as a revolutionary ideology....":

Hello. My name is Thom Kirby. This is my brother gahries account, and it appears this post was close to the last thing he read/saw before he passed away Sunday morning sometime after 130am. I am not sure how much you interacted with him but I know he always read this blog. I can be reached at tfkirby@gmail.com. He was a teacher and they will be creating a scholarship in his name at AB miller high school in fontana ca. I do not knwo this community and his part in it but if people wish they can email me their thoughts on my brother. 

He would want us all to get on with living our best lives.

Thanks for writing, Thom. And thanks to Gahrie for being part of the Althouse comments community. Thanks to everyone who has participated in this community, including those who may slip away some morning without a way to let us know you have gone. 

"Then the Comments section of your blog became taken over by a far-Right cabal which was just as offputting as any conceivable Far Left gang of assholes might have become."

I received this email from Todd Grimson which begins with a compliment about this post that I put up yesterday and continues with some less-than-complimentary stuff:

Exceptional piece. I liked your blog early on, then became annoyed when it seemed like you kept taking shots at novels and fiction in general -- as this was/is my chosen field, the highest calling in my view, where I excel. I thought you were perhaps demonstrating some misgivings about how the writing of blogs might be viewed in the future (where, as Criswell reminds us at the beginning of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, we all shall one day reside); also, listening to some actor's performance on an audiobook does not equal the actual reading experience, end of fucking story (to invoke TRAINSPOTTING's Irvine Welsh). 

Then the Comments section of your blog became taken over by a far-Right cabal which was just as offputting as any conceivable Far Left gang of assholes might have become. You came to realize this, it seems, but it took you a long time. 

I brought your attention recently to the Netflix series based on my book just as a friendly gesture and I suppose because of the friendly feeling engendered by years of reading your blog. The show has become a phenomenon.

Grimson gave me permission to publish that. The Nexflix show is "Brand New Cherry Flavor":

And here's Criswell: 

A "cabal" is "A small body of persons engaged in secret or private machination or intrigue; a junto, clique, côterie, party, faction" (OED). So have at it, cabalists.

At the Sunrise Café...

 ... the sun rises on the first café since Easter. 

Easter began a new approach to comments for reasons discussed in this post and in the comments there.

Today, I began what I called "A new era of comments on this blog." Everything is still moderated and I'm maintaining the stricter standards, but you can write the comments in the comments box. With that change, I'm able to do an open thread at the end of the day again — a "café" post.

I'm continuing the tradition of putting up a photograph of the sunrise, part of my ritual of running to witness the arrival of the new day.

Today, is also the arrival of a new season, as I mark the seasons. I put the solstice/equinox in the center of the season and count out 6.5 weeks in either direction. Today, we begin the approach to the fall equinox. I love the seasons of more equal balance between light and darkness, and that's what's starting today. 

Enjoy the café. You can talk about anything, but to make it through moderation, it will need to be something I think readers will enjoy.

Artisanal comments.

A reader, John Henry, emails:

I was a prolific commenter, probably too prolific, previously. I was really upset when you stopped allowing comments. But now that I am getting over my withdrawal symptoms, I am kind of liking it, especially now that you are bringing back curated, artisanal, commenting via email.

"Could you clarify the purpose of this kind of post?"

David emails:

Your blog post today: about a NYT article contained: 

• A pull quote from the article
• A link to the article 
• No content from you. 

Since you disabled comments on your blog, I have been trying to understand how you view the blog's purpose.

This particular post, which contained no original content from you, is the kind of thing you used to post in order to elicit discussion. But because that is no longer possible, I do not understand your intent. Do you now see yourself as an unpaid advertiser for the NYT? I hardly think they need your support, and simply reposting NYT content seems pretty weak.

Could you clarify the purpose of this kind of post? Maybe a post explaining it would be helpful.

My emailed response:

"Could you clarify the purpose of this kind of post?"

No. 

Think your own thoughts.

ADDED: I hope you remember that I got rid of the comments because of a round-the-clock problem with some very destructive trolls. I could not handle the work. Otherwise, I'd have left the comments on. But there is a type of comment I feel much better off without, and that is people who'd say — over and over — things like: Why do you read the NYT? She's still reading the NYT. What do you expect, it's the NYT? When are you going to stop reading the NYT?

ALSO: Why did David think I had to explain my purpose when elsewhere he assumed he knew my purpose? He wrote, "This... is the kind of thing you used to post in order to elicit discussion." If you could read my mind then, why not read my mind now? A lateral-thinking guess is that he was never really interested in my purpose only in whether my posts worked the way he liked. If a post prompts people to comment, then it also prompts people to think, and each person's thinking takes place whether they get to share their thoughts in writing or not. That's why I said "Think your own thoughts." 

Do you get better thoughts if you have to do your own thinking and cannot immediately scan other people's instant reactions? 

Here's another idea: Read the post out loud to your companion and have a conversation about it in your real-life space. That's something we here at Meadhouse do all the time.  

AND: "That's something we here at Meadhouse do all the time." It's also something people did in the old days, when there was only one copy of the paper newspaper. I remember my paternal grandfather, Pop, reading the paper in his living room, mostly silently, but now and then reading something out loud. You can still do that!  

Some snippets of comments — emailed in and added to various posts over the last few days.

These are snippets, not necessarily comprehensible without clicking through. I'm just showing you where to go to read comments! 

1. "What ticks me off... is that now if people start hearing the female voices... pop up in their feeds, they'll assume this is a cloying 'eat-your-vegetables' directive and resent women vocalists." 

2. "I've spent some time watching bartenders up close and I think bartending should be a prerequisite to being NYC mayor." 

3. "Welcome to the real world Joe, or whoever your ventriloquist is." 

4. "So who hires these cops? Who trains them? Who disciplines them? Who provides their rules of engagement? It’s Democrats all the way down." 

5. "And yet, when assessing the Court-created right of an individual of the same age to seek an abortion, Members of this Court take pains to emphasize a 'young woman’s' right to choose." 

6. "Who would have thought that I could have gotten written up in New Scientist for it though?" 

7. "And I associate lilacs with my mother (who turns 74 in a couple weeks) – who had a lilac tree in the backyard of the house we grew up in." 

8. "I think DiAngelo is deeply, profoundly wrong, and it is my sincere hope that the Al Sharpton view will become (return?) to the predominant view...." 

9. "[I]t is easy to see that modern men and women need at least a balance between the vita activa and the vita contemplative, the active and the contemplative life, if they are not to atrophy spiritually." 

10. "Mike sends this apt bit from George Carlin...." 

11. "I am struck by the complaint 'They allowed him to win awards' by one of the plaintiffs." 

12. "[A]t that time, the talk of gayness was so pervasive, so unrelenting, and so over the top that I was just tired of it." 

13. "[I]n my experience in writing novels, writing was not treated as work by the people around me and my time spent writing was not respected unless I protected it." 

14. "After about a month of this, the first girlfriend put the second girlfriend's clothes in an old bathtub in the back yard and set them on fire." 

15. "But you can't say any of this in public anymore. If you do, you are a privileged jerk...." 

16. "It's always best to stay out of other people's divorces.... And their civil wars." 

17. "Just listening to traveling types describe their plans, designed with near military precision to fit it all in, is annoying."

It's the new comments snippets post.

Thanks to all who have emailed in comments. This post is here to point you to posts in the last few days that have comments. The quotes are snippets chosen for amusement value and to give me something to put a link on:

1. "I'm weirdly interested in the fact that you're planting wheat and barley."

2. "It's funny that the article didn't mention Neal Stephenson's 1992 novel, Snowcrash...."

3. "I'm getting a lot of email saying that's not a bobcat, but a regular house cat, but I can't believe this man would put up the video if it were because he grabs the beast and hurls it hard into the ground."

4. "More than once I was called into chambers in the principal's office and point blank asked if I was a 'racist.' Me!"

5. "These boxes are not Habitats for Humans but a kind of litter."

6. "I presume your assertion near the end of your post was meant to be facetious; it would be profoundly racist to presume...."

7. "Looks like the Times needed another article on the shooting, so they published one before they had figured out a clear story."

8. "Perhaps 'eye raising' now means something so attention-grabbing that it causes someone to look up from their phone."

9. "A well-fitting corset is far superior in support to a bra...."

10. "The powers that be just did not bother to let the rest of us know this until after the 'they killed a cop' narrative was firmly rooted in the public mind."

11. "Somehow she has moved from 'afraid to die' to 'afraid to live.'"

12. "It really doesn't make business sense to keep a program open when students don't want to enroll."

Let me give you some snippets of comments added to posts from the last 2 days.

These are taken out of context, possibly to amuse you as is, but really to give me something to put a link on, so you can click back and read. 

1. "He strikes me as a recognisable type: the 19th century equivalent of a trust fund socialist." 

2. "For every 100 people who fly, 100 could die in an airplane crash." 

3. "That's like promising to put a mouse turd into a double batch of oatmeal cookies." 

4. "Of course for the media more riots would be beneficial, more clicks, more exciting footage of burning and looting." 

5. "In our country's current woke status, viewers at home who publicly tolerate homosexuality may be turned off by it in privacy." 

6. "Having lived my entire 62 years in New York, I have been waiting patiently for my turn to be insulted over my ethnicity, and now I finally have gotten my chance. Thank you!" 

7. "If you tell people they can't smoke and, on top of that, decrease the acceptable level of alcohol to a point that if they have more than a beer or two they risk a DUI, they stay home." 

8. "I think having comments resulted in your being more interested in starting a conversation and less likely to give an opinion, and it's that opinion I prefer to read." 

9. "I remember one piece that had Maria Callas appearing on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand with the in-studio teen audience obliviously boogying to Callas’s aria." 

10. "My mother did pro bono work for the ACLU getting restrictive covenants removed in Tompkins County.... I don’t recall Hindus or Chinese ever coming up." 

11. "A fancy restaurant has a level of expected hospitality that is far above that of a cheap diner or a hotdog stand." 

12. "As with abortion, both sides can raise prodigious amounts of money off the threat of Court-packing." 

13. "But if Scranton Joe can point back to his relatively impoverished roots, Vance can make an even better claim."  

14. "Modern man is profoundly out of synch with created order, having seized control of his fertility, sexuality, gender, and genetic material."

"Ann: Used to be a frequent reader. But, it has become a waste of time trying to understand what you are attempting to cryptically express in your blog posts these days."

"I wish to stay informed, not play clever head games. If you have something to say, just say it. I'm too busy to play your silly exercises. Otherwise, find a more productive use of your and my time. As judge and jury and former reader, I find you in Contempt. Case dismissed. Goodbye!"

Someone wrote that and emailed it to me. It's not a name I recognize, just an email address that's a stray collection of numbers and letters.  

I laughed out loud at "I wish to stay informed, not play clever head games." People read this blog to "stay informed"? That seems ill-informed. And as for that "judge and jury" and "Contempt/Case dismissed" business — that can't be a lawyer. Must just be someone cranked up about my being a (former) law professor and thinking I'm vulnerable to criticisms containing legalistic lingo. 

But you need a specific charge if you want to find me guilty, and what is it? Failure to keep you informed?  Not having something to say and just saying it? The crime of playing clever head games? The infliction of silly exercises? Cryptic expression?

Oh, there I go, asking questions when I don't allow comments. Oddly enough, the complaint you see above never mentions the abolition of comments. Is it possible the person thinks the blog "has become a waste of time" because there are no comments anymore — that the comments used to help him understand what I was cryptically expressing? Ha ha — I can't understand what the emailer is cryptically expressing. And now here I am imposing it on you!

FROM THE EMAIL: Mary writes: 

Snippets of comments — received via email — that can be found on recent posts.

Let me nudge you to some posts that have comments emailed in by readers. These lines — ripped out of context — are here to hold a link so you can see where to go. And I want you to know that I've been receiving some great contributions from readers. I like to think the new approach — sorry, I had to do it — is working really well. Thanks to all who've emailed in comments.

1. "If gender is purely subjective, how can being what us oldies would call 'feminine' be incongruent with a male gender identity?" 

2. "Too many of us, and I clearly include me in this, strongly suspect a massive foul play — a coup — took place on November 3."

3. "The ADL is a D operation and a long standing embarrassment to Jews.... a D organization wearing the clothes of a former Jewish group."

4. "I was shocked that NBC identified some as 'Antifa,' since they're only an idea." 

5. "To distort their expressions into happy school kid smiles dishonors the dead and the horror they faced. It’s bad art too." 

6. "Watch the guy trying to cuff Daunte." 

7. "They were dressed in pistachio-coloured shirts and khaki shorts into which their huge bottoms were crammed so tightly that you could study every dimple." 

8. "I'm impressed by the shoes." 

9. "I cannot imagine surviving childhood without daydreaming." 

10. "My husband told a pollster in 2020 he was going to vote for Joe Biden, and then laughed about it for 3 days." 

11. "As a former soldier and S2 (intelligence staff officer) I am disturbed about the use of the words 'soldiers mindset.'" (There are 9 comments at that link.)

Snippets of comments — received via email — that can be found on recent posts.

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. That (or something like that) has appeared at the end of most posts for the past week. If you're just reading the posts and not looking back to see the things that have come in via email, you're missing some good stuff, so I'll just highlight some lines from the email and give you links in case you want to click back and read:

1. "Every male on the floor below turned to her, looking like they were hoping she was calling to them."

 2. "Things that were on the fringes start to overtake the daily pattern of life. And soon they are no longer a talking point, or cute, or 'quirky.'"

3. "20 year old students were for the most part immature children in 2015 and fledgling adults in 1980."

4. "A scientist does selective breeding to make a smarter sheepdog and is able to breed one (Sirius) with Human-level intelligence."

5. "It’s a guy thing. When a woman asks a question we think we have to come up with an answer."

6. "And she pointed out a key, monumental truth of our faith." 

7. "This video confirms that the decision was correct. I hate to think of my daughter being in that poor boy’s situation."

8. "That document says that there is no need to get parental consent because they are not teaching human sexuality, but instead teaching about discrimination. Let that sink in."

9. "[A]nother coworker who is one of the most outgoing people I’ve met and who can’t stay focused at the office, who constantly has her ears up for any stray conversation to join, seems to be thriving at home."

10. "The consiglieres of two warring dynasties unite and plot together after years of conflict to hold on to their waning power as they age and die."

11. "You are correct to not open comments on this one. It would be a bloodbath. No one likes a bloodbath in the morning."

"You might be getting tired of hearing about the Great Comments Decision of 2021 but here are my two cents after thinking about it for the past few days."

Writes a reader named Chris.

I’ve been following your blog for a long time having come over from Instapundit probably in the early 2000’s. I’m not a commenting kind of person but I do read a lot of them. I love it when people who are knowledgeable about the article or post weigh in and add value to the discussion. That is what a great comments section can do.

Lately I’ve been seeing both in your comment section and others something I came to recognize back in the 1990’s.

I used to watch the old PBS MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour show. They would do a 10 or 15 minute news summary and then dig deeper into three or four issues with experts or panel discussions. After many years of watching I got bored with the show and after thinking about it realized it was because they had the same cast of experts on the panels year after year. I now could predict almost perfectly what I was going to hear on any issue once I knew who was on the panel. I stopped watching after that happened.

Your comments section was in the same place. The same list of characters who repeated the same arguments. I found myself scrolling by many comments once I recognized the names because I knew what they were going to say. This dynamic, far more than any right/left political considerations, is what was greatly reducing the value of the comments for me.

The main value I was still seeing in the discussions was when people from across the country reported their experiences. I will miss that. It was a great way to understand a bit more about what was happening in other parts of America.

But it would be easy to make the case that the negatives in the comments vastly outweighed this particular positive. It is kind of sad that I see people who want to blame the closure of your comments on their political enemies on the “right” or the “left.” Not everything has to be political and not everything you dislike is caused by the other side.

I grew up in a time when people could disagree politically and still be friends and neighbors. We had better figure out how to do that again and remember we are all Americans or we are headed for some very dangerous places. I intend to keep reading your blog as long as you are interested in writing it. Not because I agree with everything you write, but because you offer something I don’t see in the media or other blogs. And rather than try to define what that is I’ll just call it cruel neutrality.

Thanks, Chris. 

If you have comments on this (or another post), you can email me here. I love the way the email approach is working, and I hope you like the many updates on today's posts: here, here, here, here, and here.

Chris says he loves the comments "when people who are knowledgeable about the article or post weigh in and add value to the discussion." That might be exactly the kind of thing that readers will submit by email. I have high hopes that this email approach will make everything better. I'm feeling very positive about the response in the email. I stop and read email when it's good for me, and the quality of what I'm receiving is very high.

"Greetings, Ms. Althouse. I've just shown up to your blog to discover you've stopped comments. And while my opinion is, like most, certainly meaningless..."

"... I thought I'd drop you a note just in case. I haven't even scrolled down further to see how long ago you made this change or why. To be honest, I was coming here less and less. And I do believe that is because of the comments. I am one of your left-leaning readers. And to be honest, I would try to slog through the comments because I think it is good for us to hear the opinions of the other side. This seemed a somewhat 'safer' way to do that rather than engaging my right-leaning parents or friends. I do not of course want to end up in an argument with them. This was like eavesdropping on someone else's family political argument. But sadly-- the number of higher quality, sober and informed comments/ opinions had seemed to plummet. And it had become a complete drag. I certainly could just choose to NOT read the comments. But I must say-- I was disturbed by the people you seemed to attract. Which I suppose is just to say that I'm disturbed by the level of our society all around. So-- all this to say, I will likely visit MORE often without the comments. You lean more to the right than I, and so I believe I will still get that 'other side' benefit. And while it would be nice if more of your followers were as interesting as you, we're just not! And while we all, including you, benefit from the interactions some times... I'm certain all this was a FAR bigger drag for you. So I agree with your lawlizard commenter-- please yo self! And thank you!"

Email from Andrea.

"Long-time reader, first time commenter. I love the café style blog you created and have spent way too many hours reading you and your commenters over the past eleven years."

Writes a reader who calls herself lawlizard. The email continues: 

I was sad to see that you ended comments, but having had some time to think about it, I would offer the following. I think the comment section had become less of a café to offer freewheeling conversation and thoughtful opinions and was more like a bar.

For the regulars, everybody knows their name, but they also had gotten boring. I could read your post and often it would spark interesting ideas and then read the comments and too often they were just rehashing the same opinion, but tied to the latest topic.

Oh look, there’s the guy who thinks all women are ninnies; there’s the guy who thinks everyone should move to Nevada from California; there’s the guy who hates Trump; there’s the guy who loves Trump; there’s the guy who think America is collapsing; there’s the communist who think they are all uni-party.

And there’s the incessant need to convince you that you, the hostess, the blogress, the free speech advocate needs to think just like them or you are not worthy, needs to find the same things interesting, needs to be on their team. And then every once in a while, some drunk shows up and has to be shown to the door and it’s your job, not theirs. They sit there and rile someone up for fun, because you have to clean up the mess.

Why couldn’t they just appreciate you for who you are instead of trying to turn you into another mindless drone? Why couldn’t they take twenty minutes to engage with the ideas and say something interesting instead of reflexively spitting out the same opinion they had yesterday?

Sometimes I had something interesting to say 2 or 3 days later and it was too late to say it. I did get a lot out of the comments, so I don't want to knock them too hard. It is very hard to be consistently interesting and surprising and deep.

Then the AI Big Tech people start hassling you to parse every single word and moderate them. Any appreciation for that, no, no no. They decided this is your job, not that you are the artist entertaining them daily for free with amazing content. And their excuses are weak-she should have hired an administrator, she should have changed her tech platform, she should allow co-bloggers — elevate the commenters to your status.

Did they ever ask you what you want, what you wanted to see? I will miss DBQ, Freeman Hunt, Mockturtle, I will miss the tangents. I missed Laslo and Betamax when they moved on. I missed Chip Ahoy. I was trying to think of a constructive solution and thought what if you tried a kind of “open-line Friday.”

Take a break from the drama. Open comments, one day a week. More importantly, I would say, do what you want. Maybe after your break you’ll miss it. If the comments did not spark your interest and your creativity and improve your thinking, then let them go.

I greatly appreciate you and your art. I respect your refusal to prostitute yourself to either the woke or the deplorable and to remain a true liberal in the original sense of the world. I’m humbled to even be writing to you and to think you will read and value my opinion. Thank you and I will keep reading. Feel free to share my comments. You can call me lawlizard.

ADDED: Another emailer: 

Ma'am: 

I miss the comments in general, though perhaps not all of them. 

I particularly do not miss the sometimes all too numerous comments in which people feel the need to explain at length why other commenters were idiots - even when I sometimes agree, as I do not see much point to picking fights in a venue like this. 

Still the comments were at times informative and even sometimes witty, so I miss that. 

Of course, it being your sandbox, you are entitled to handle it in whatever way you see fit. 

Thank you for your work on this. While I do not necessarily always agree with what I understand to be your take on things, you have the great virtue of not being boring, and your choice of topics and items to point out is frequently quite enjoyable. 

In any case, please know that I am, 

Respectfully Yours, 

William....

"The comments section had become very man-centered.... Most posts contained a slur against you, particularly as a woman."

After I added an emailed comment to yesterday's post — "The thing that's complicated about the body positive movement..." — I received email from a woman who does not want to be named:

The person you chose to quote yesterday, Mary, wrote something similar to what I was thinking and considered emailing you about. Th[at] post strikes me as a woman's topic -- aging and acceptance as beauty fades -- and I began to wonder if your blog would become more of a woman's space.

I'm one of the 77 who voted to stop comments and change to email.

She's referring to the poll, the results of which you can see here.

The comments section had become very man-centered. Every post contained someone, often the same someone, disparaging women and how they think. Most posts contained a slur against you, particularly as a woman.

I was considering just not reading the comments anymore when you proposed your change. I restricted my interaction with your blog because I was intimidated by the men. I would not want this comment quoted on your blog. Too soon.

I wrote back — saying she was putting into words something I had been thinking — and she did give me permission.

I wanted to write as a show of support for the change you've made, and also to let you know that I'm curious to see what the blog becomes when some of the toxic interactions are removed.

I'm curious too!

I know you're indomitable....

That's just a public persona. One reason to do the blog is to push myself into the practice of something like indomitability. I actually looked up the word in the OED so I could reflect on whether I possess this quality. It means: "That cannot be overcome or subdued by labour, difficulties, or opposition; unyielding; stubbornly persistent or resolute. Usually approbative."

... but did that constant drip of misogyny impact your blogging? We shall see.

I always thought the misogyny was its own argument against itself, and it could not touch me. That I allowed it meant, to me, that I was strong and didn't need or even care to exclude it. It's reprehensible, but reprehensible on its face. So why not allow it to show its face? I don't think it changed what I wrote, but then again, it could have affected me to see so many comments saying things like "Who cares?" whenever I put up posts like the "body positivity" one you and Mary responded to. And if women, particularly, feel intimidated — your word — about mixing with the men in the comments, then everything is skewed. 

So, yes, we shall see. And thanks for the email!