A friend whom I share my hate mail with (she tells me it’s okay and soothingly pats me on the inbox and gives me soymilk and cookies) emailed me about this one saying, “I hope you’ll consider putting this email up on Tinynibbles — people need to understand the kind of harassment you get, because, clearly, idiots like the SF Weekly don’t get it.” I got this email in response to my recent pole dancing as a sport column:
—–Original Message—–
From: JvrMusic@aol.com [mailto:JvrMusic@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 9:30 PM
To: violetblue@sfgate.com
Subject: pole dancingYou know, I’ve seen your name and articles pop up on the Chronicle, it’s just pathetic, that a lowly scum of the earth, value-less, pig of a bitch such as yourself, is paid, and allowed to write the garbage you write.
When you have a society in turmoil, people in the Bay Area thirsting for truth, reality, and understanding, we have filthy pigs like yourself, who set back women’s rights 100 years.
Which amoral homo hired you to write this garbage???
Whew, this one just made me laugh. Receiving such twaddle would do that. I would be AMUSED.
But hate, mail or otherwise, does not necessarily come at you so easily. I am a new blogger and find myself attempting to express thoughts, important to me, which will, eventually, garner distaste, distrust, dislike and disdain, possibly most painfully from people I respect. It will not so easily be dismissed.
Your thoughts and respect for the sexuality of women, and the joy of their bodies by themselves and their lovers is encouraging and enlightening. I am glad to see your enthusiasm in the face of hate, whether laughable or not.
The Eroticist
It amazes me how people argue that a woman expressing her sexual freedom and independence is setting back women’s rights. Viewing woman who openly explore there sexuality value-less. –valueless what a horrible use of the word. Values differ from person to person. The fact that your values are different does not make them less genuine. Having the right to speak freely about these differing views is the point of the first amendment. The purpose of the women’s rights movement was to ensure and enforce that women do have this right. Personally, one of my values is to treat everyone with dignity and respect. I find describing someone, you have never met or know nothing about, as pathetic, scum of the earth,…..that to me is valueless.
Miss Violet, with your strong, independent voice teaching women how to safely understand and enjoy there sexuality, you are empowering woman world wide! With your industrial history with SRL you show women that wielding a blow torch is not only something woman can do….It can be sexy! With your knowledge and creative inventiveness you are pushing the boundaries of modern media! Proving how women can be a dominant force in innovation. You are doing more than your fair share of advancing women’s rights and to say otherwise just proves ignorance.
As another woman you have taught to be proud of and comfortable in my own sexual skin,….I Thank You.
A sad state of affairs. I lament the fact daily that some people have lost the capacity for civil discourse.
You probably get a bunch of these crappy messages every week. *Sigh* Keep your chin up!
I just love how these self-appointed ‘moral authorities’ think they have a license say the most evil and disgusting things. It’s the height of irony.
I agree, you do serve as a great inspiration to the blogger community as a whole, and probably convince the aspiring ones who have doubts about being committed to writing, to keep moving forward to a “blogger elitist” status themselves one day.
Thanks for everything you do, and I agree with Helen, people would notice you were gone at this point rather quickly, and with a geographical network as intricate as your fan base, I highly doubt that any freak that god forbid, did do something to you…would make it very far :-) We got your back!
Violet, it may not seem like it, but LOTS of people would notice if [goddess forbid!] anything happened to you – my friends and I will often abuse our work email privileges with “Have you read today’s post yet?”, “Not there yet, hope it’s up soon” and even, when you’ve mentioned you aren’t feeing well, a group discussion of “We hope she’s feeling better!” All of this comes from a place of admiration, respect and being impressed with your fab work.
I think Violet Blue is hot . You remind me of my wife when she was young: white skin, dark hair, green eyes, glasses, and a passionate interest in sex. You do a great job of finding cool sexual stuff of the Web. Keep it up.
My only suggestion is to be more concise both on the Web and in your Chron column. Less is more.
And if JVRMusic can’t take a joke, to blazes with him!
You know, one day we’ll look back on this sort of email hate crap with nostalgia, like the way people look back at the simple times of the 50’s (minus racism/segregation, the KKK and the hysteria of nuclear war). One day when you’re very old and relaxing in an orthopedic leather bodice (which will really help with the back pain when you’re in your 80’s) while surfing for the latest retro-porn of the early millennium in the retirement home for old sex bloggers, you may say, “Sigh! Remember the good old days of Web 2.0 and all the ate email we used to get? Yeah, I don’t miss it either. Thank God people finally got over their sexual repression shit in the 2030’s.”
I honestly don’t know how you tolerate this. I would take this stuff too personally. There’s disagreement, then there’s THIS. Somebody needs to have an orgasm.
There will always be haters and I think it’s a good idea that you posted this, just in case.
This may not be much solace, but I believe that negativity begets negativity.
What an enlightened fellow. FWIW, you seriously rock. The number of lives you’ve improved with your work is probably immeasurable — I know mine is WAY better thanks to your writing and your blog. “Value-less” indeed.
Violet here in admin mode — I blinked twice at the ‘amoral homo’ bit as well. especially because this is the answer to their question — dear random hater, that would be *this* amoral homo:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/bronstein/detail?blogid=47&entry_id=29412
this is the man who hired me, fought for me, stood by me and my words and stood up for me *every day* until readership numbers growth (climbing like crazy) and pageviews proved my ground, and then Eve Batey put on her Golden Gloves. and trust me — I know many, many actual homos who would lop off a treasured body part for PB to be anywhere near homo, amoral or not, even for just five minutes.
@ MichaelK — I wonder that myself all the time. this time I decided my friend was right. part of me wants to ignore them and let their crap go off and out into the ether; but then again, I *should* have posted Ben Burch’s threatening email long ago, before he went to town on the Wikipedia page about me and on other websites. just so people knew, you know? I also feel like when someone says scary shit to me privately and directly like this, a) I don’t want to go through it alone, and b) if something awful *did* happen, at least friends/police would have an idea where to look. I have no family to notice anything wrong or if I went missing (except for chosen family), so it’s such a fine line.
Nuts to these internet toughguys!
Heh.
Re: Thanatos “…It’s amazing how narrow-minded people are at sharing their opinions…”
Actually, it’s amazing how OPEN people are about sharing their narrow-minded opionions!
It’s a perceived lack of any sort of social accountability that lets these whackjobs spew forth this sort of thing into the aether.
Should they be posted publicly more often to encourage mockery, or is that just giving them the attention the want?
Whoa- I’m not interested in responding to this comment as much as I’m curious as to who could craft such an uneducated (do your research), malicious (insert soap in mouth) and absolutely inappropriate comment with regards to ANY audience. Certainly in the minority and soon to be a Darwinian casualty.
Gotta watch out for those amoral homos wanting garbage in the papers. They’ll, like, bring down society and ruin something like, marriage.
Chin up!
xx
– Fi
So, they wondered which “amoral homo” hired you to write a column for the San Francisco Chronicle? Wow… I would have thought that was an easy thing to determine.
I loved the article, it was well written and researched. The only thing I found missing was a mention of a friend of mines business. But since she is in Seattle, the research might have been a bit harder.
thank heavens for amoral homos!
Damned trolls.
It’s sad that while the internet has been a force for good in a lot of ways, it’s also lowered a lot of human discourse down to the level of 13 year olds, sniping at each other during recess. I think this every time I make the mistake of reading comments on Youtube. Or anywhere, for that matter.
I’m surprised this genius didn’t also go for the “Your a fag” bomb.
And why would pole dancing invoke such vitriol? I mean, come on, it’s *pole dancing*. The most offensive thing about it is how bloody hard it is to do. I had bruises for a week after my one and only attempt at it.
Keep up the good work Violet.
“When you have a society in turmoil, people in the Bay Area thirsting for truth, reality, and understanding”
wtf? san francisco – a city in turmoil?? thirsting for truth?
On a side note, well done for inventing another new word for something we already had a word for :) thirsting, lol.
Anyway, ignore douchbags like this, the same people would find something to hate in an article about cuddling puppies, this idiot isn’t bothered about women’s rights, they just need something to beat on to make themselves feel smart (‘cos they aren’t)
WE LOVE YOU VIOLET!!
I agree with the sentiments above. It’s amazing how narrow-minded people are at sharing their opinions, especially those that differ from others. When you give away your power like that, and then internalize everything that differs from you through the lens of fear it really is a waste of a life. Keep up the sex positive support to our community as it is quite needed.
It’s a shame that some people can’t exercise their 1st amendment rights and utilize a little intelligence at the same time.
as the man said’ “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” or something like that.
Keep up the good fight, V.
ah they are just jealous.
I raise a glass of chocolate soy milk to you!!
Keep it rollin’ Violet.
Is it wrong that this bit-
“Which amoral homo hired you to write this garbage?”
Made me giggle/snort really hard? I don’t know why. Statements like that always give me the giggles.
I like how they combined their righteous concern for the cause of women’s rights with their knee-jerk scapegoating of “amoral homos”.
Way to think outside the box.
Hmm, last I checked we were a free country. Don’t like this ignorant person bring you down! Keep up the good work, we love you.