mtuni, a commenter here, recently made an observation on some comments mostly in response to my recent Alamo Theater post. She spotted something that has not happened here before — “hit and run trolling” type of rant. She observes…

…”what is it with the ‘hit-and run’ trolling lately? I just spotted two of them in the comments section in another post and now I see this ‘Liz’ person making completely unfounded accusations -and no attempts made to back up her ‘point’, of course (hence the ‘hit-and-run’ expression).”

Liz wrote, “I’m all for being childfree, but militant people like Laura make the childless sound bitter about not being able to have kids or something. It’s called ‘live and let live,’ people. Being so judgmental against people who have kids just make the childfree appear bitter and washed up. This isn’t the right way to go about your cause.”

I then wrote, “The last thing I want to do is be militant about those without children by choice or to sound bitter! Please tell me where this shows up–I try very hard to be a site where childfree issues can be discussed with respect.”

No response back. Well, I am serious about the tone here at La Vie CF. If you sense there is any truth to what Liz is saying here on this site, I want the feedback and now.  I truly want it to be a place of respectful discussion, not one laden with one-sided judgment or bitterness, for that matter.

Also with the Alamo post, for the first time since this blog started, I chose not to post some comments because the rant levels were far from meeting the respectful discussion standard.  They were outright mean. Here is one I did not approve that gets at the vibe of others I also did not approve for viewing:

“Wow, have all of you baby/children haters suffered child abuse in the past? What has made you so angry and disgruntled towards something as natural as having children? Are your eggs dried up? Does your sperm count have low motility? Did your parents hate you?…baby/children haters do have their place in society–to keep from recycling their bigoted ideals in the gene pool. Someone unrelated to you had to listen to your whining self at one point. I know of many adults that speak at their loudest while on cell phones or after that second glass of pinot noir. Get a life.”

This kind of commenting has me shaking my head. What gets in to people to communicate like this? As I wrote in the post “And the Rant Goes on,” in my experience, ranters are in the minority. Most childfree are not militant or anti-kids. Most parents are not staunch anti-childfree. Even if it is mostly the minority, rant’s place in the online world is a phenomenon that needs to be understood better.

Here are my questions to you:

What do you think inspires people to do the mean rant, in particular?
What do you think is at the heart of why people who do the hit and run rant?

One thing for sure, I don’t want it here. Another–ranting just results in continued clash between parents and the childfree, and does nothing to help them understand and respect each other.

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