Bitch, Ph.D. wrote an open letter to Markos of the Daily Kos, on his recent comments about the proposed blogger code of conduct. And while Bitch agreed with Kos that they were in fact asinine, she called him out on his failure to recognize the fact that women face a different kind of harassment online.

I clicked over to her site just moments after calming myself down after a reading a series of comments in a thread I’d been participating in. A regular, well known, pain in the ass, responded to my benign post about time stamping a document, with a several very personal, very sexist & homophobic remarks that made me feel threatened.

I can’t respond, I did once and rather than silencing him, he came back with more venom, and I know that responding to him again makes it worse. I know that people who read his comments will know that he is the asshole.

And yet, I still want some man to come in and defend my honor. I feel like I need someone with more “authority” to call him on it. That desire pisses me off just as much as his comments did.