Inspired By My Haters - Part 1

When I teach my Blogging Workshop, I provide a mini-lesson on how to respond to “trolls.”  Thanks to the Internet, anybody can put their opinions out there for anyone to see.  It was how I started building my second career around writing about singlehood/Singles Studies/singles advocacy.  And, of course, when you put your opinions out there, people will respond.  In fact, that tendency is part of human nature, pre-Internet.  In the 1994 comedy, The Paper, Randy Quaid’s columnist spends half the money dodging a reader who literally wants to put a bullet in his head just because said reader didn’t like what he wrote.

Thankfully, I haven’t had to deal with that – yet.  But, I have had some hate responses trickle in.  Bella posted reprinted of hers in Single at Heart, and when I heard the “Ooooh, That’s Interesting” episode from Lucy Meggeson's Thrive Solo podcast in which she read some of her hate mail from “listeners,” I knew I had to publish something.

A few years ago, I wrote a piece for Writer’s Digest called “How to Write a Character Who is Single: 4 Cliches and Tropes to Avoid When Writing Single Characters.”  Apparently, it was one of the publication’s most popular pieces.  It even got some love from The Fussy Librarian.
However, one person did not love it: someone named The Romance Mystic apparently thinks those single stereotypes aren’t “stereotypes,” and that every non-married person she knows is miserable.  You can read the full content at the end of my article.
Recently, I was in the position of critiquing a piece by Michal Leibowitz from the New York Times in which she suggested that more people aren’t having kids due to a result of too much therapy; of course, this argument was built on the presupposition that not having kids is a bad thing.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear my letter to the editor was considered worthy of publication in this prestigious periodical.  A few days later, as a 47th birthday present, I got an email telling me the following:
The state of being "happy" can mean merely being comfortable.  Neurotics maintain a state of comfort by avoiding what they truly need and gravitating toward poor substitutes.
 
I recommend depth psychotherapy for you.  Work on your childhood, especially your relationship with your parents in early life.
 
Good luck.

Sharon Kass
Washington, DC
 
It took me about a minute of Googling to learn that Ms. Kass is a well-known anti-LGBTQ+ activist. 
There were a lot of thoughts going on.  First, I believe when you get hate mail, that’s a sign that you’re really doing your job.  I’m guessing Ms. Kass typed my name into a Google search engine and learned all about the writing I do for the single and childfree communities.
 
But Lucy said something interesting about these people who actually took the time to write hate mail in which they said, “you’re selling people a lie that being single and not having kids is the way to go.”  In some cases, they probably took the time to listen to a whole podcast episode.

As someone who has written some pretty scathing critiques of matrimaniacal material, I can say that I’m in a fairly emotional state when I generate those ideas (I was when I wrote that letter to the New York Times).  Writing has always been my primary outlet, and it’s needed to get that message out there.  Perhaps that’s what both of my respondents were feeling.  But my question is: why do they hate that message so much?  Why do they care about people who live lives that have nothing to do with them?  I have my own theories (which I articulated in a very nice unsent letter), and Lucy discussed hers, but I’d love to hear from you.  I may post a follow-up in another piece with a combination of my ideas and yours.