I have cringed when I’ve seen you write about Medium being a safe place, because that is not my experience. But who am I to deny you your experience? I figured, if Fierce Force 💃🏼 has found it to be so, more power to her. Maybe it’s her Force Fields.

I’ll grant you unconditional love exists here, but so do irrational hate and most every emotion between them. There’s also plenty of plain old misunderstanding (deliberate or not) and crossed signals.

Writing is a great way to process life experiences and to turn pain into art. Putting that kind of personal work out on Medium is a way to be heard, have your experience validated and connect with people who have similar experiences, thoughts and beliefs.

But, exposing your belly has it’s risks. I would never recommend to people that they post anything on here they are not prepared to read blowback about. It’s almost guaranteed that the more personal and traumatic, the more likely you’ll receive comments which invalidate or criticize.

I don’t think “troll” applies to everyone who disagrees. It’s more the manner in which they disagree that constitutes a troll for me. It’s when people make disagreement personal or they appear to be using their response for soapboxing to their peeps that my red flag goes up.

I thought your response to the trolling you received was very compassionate but firm, which is why I applauded.

I really don’t have a solution other than this: if someone’s response seems trollish, check out their profile. Do they write original stuff? Do they sometimes engage in quality conversations? Or are they all about sniping? If they are all about the negative, either don’t respond or, if you do, see if you can descern what kind of rabbit hole they want to drag you down and don’t go there.

That’s all from here, except you did mention dick-pics. Luckily, I have never had the displeasure, but I have always wondered why any guy would think this was a winning move. To me, that’s right up there with sending a photo of your bung hole. Some body parts are simply not at their best when viewed in isolation. 🤣