"I pretty much doubt that 'David M. Perry' is the author's real name, and I doubt even more that he's even married, because he looks like a fag."
In May, my daughter received a "best dressed" award during a ceremony at the end of her preschool year. Upset by the emphasis on girls' appearance, I wrote an essay for CNN about gender, parenting, and the pervasive influence of patriarchal culture. Over the next few days, hundreds of thousands of people read it, tens of thousands shared it over various social media, and readers posted more than 1,400 comments.
Many responses were polite and thoughtful, others missed the point of the essay, and some launched ad hominem attacks on me. On a conspiracy-theory Web site, I was accused of being part of the Communist, homosexual, Shariah, and/or Jewish plot to destroy America. Hostile commentators on CNN obsessed over the semiotic value of an earring I've worn in my left ear for 20 years. I was called a bad parent, a liar, an idiot, and, perhaps worst of all, an academic.
It's a strange thing to be reviled on the Internet, where the norms of civil society vanish beneath the haze of pseudo-anonymity. Although the positive comments and interesting spinoff conversations about gender, representation, and privilege far outweighed the number of hostile remarks, just as with a batch of teaching evaluations, I found myself returning again and again to the negatives.