Your tone is so hostile and raw! And you jump to so many conclusions not borne out by my post! Why?

I actually rarely get hostile replies on Twitter or my blogs. The couple of times I’ve been able to engage the other person in dialogue, it all turned out great! We got through it and became better friends. One time the other person unfollowed me and that was the end of dialogue. This is a systemic problem among women, imo–they get their feelings hurt much more readily than men do, and I think it’s an important feminist issue.

I feel like making the argument, “It’s not about you,” is a cop out. It’s refusal to take responsibility for your own offensive statements, which are more than likely a miscommunication on your part rather than misunderstanding on theirs. No one is responsible for what you say but you, and if you misrepresent your beliefs or opinions in a way that is insulting to someone else, you can’t blame them because they took your word at face value. I recommend that rather than blaming those who misunderstood you for your own inability to properly communicate your thoughts, you think about how you could have stated your opinions more clearly and made a more positive impact on readers.

I don’t follow you on twitter, so I can’t really speak to the subject any more specifically than this, but as a person who maintains a blog and a twitter and does frequently address controversial issues, I know that when someone takes offense to something I’ve said, particularly if I’ve made a blanket statement, I consider it MY responsibility to clear up the misunderstanding, usually by clarifying the blanket statement. It’s not their responsibility to read between the lines when I make a statement that very bluntly criticizes something they do or think and decide whether or not I mean them. And if I actually am critical of something they do or think, I will not shy away from telling them so just because they are someone I like or because I want to avoid confrontation.

Honestly, if you are getting enough criticism from people on this that you feel the need to write a blog post about it, perhaps you should consider whether they are the ones with a problem of understanding or you are the one with a problem of communicating. Assuming everyone else has a problem when you are the common cause for that problem? Sounds like you’ve got your own “unintegrated issues” to address.