PSA: What really happened to Molly Saves The Day

There's been quite a bit of consternation re. the sudden demise of a well-known feminist blog this fall. Molly Saves The Day is just...gone. One day she was posting and the next day the blog had been deleted.

Several bloggers have concluded that Molly quit after too many troll attacks (and, perhaps, even threats of violence, as many other feminist bloggers have experienced).

However, there was no such evidence on her blog - no particularly nasty comments or exchanges that would indicate such a thing.

I did a little digging around to find out what exactly had happened, and I was able to track down one blogger (who is welcome to reveal his/her identity) who knew the answer - and it wasn't what anyone thought had happened:

She had blog security problems; a malicious hacker took her blog offline. After that happened Molly decided to take a break from blogging so she can concentrate more on real-world projects (such as moving). Molly is planning to return to blogging, but probably under a different name.

Speaking for lots of us, I look forward to seeing Molly back.

Speaking, perhaps, for just myself - when a blogger stops blogging, she should follow a certain protocol to let us know what happened. There's nothing more frustrating than looking for a favorite blog and finding only this.

So anyway - that's what happened to Molly, apparently, and while the hacker in this case may have been motivated by misogyny, it is at least not a death threat. I suppose, given that such threats are fairly common - that the anonymity of the internet makes it so easy for people to threaten rape, torture, and murder, particularly toward women - we should be grateful that this didn't happen* in Molly's case.

That I should need to feel *grateful* that someone else didn't receive a death threat makes me extremely depressed.

*As far as I know. It's entirely possible that she received threats in the past, even if they didn't motivate her blog's demise.

UPDATE: Another feminist blogger, The Happy Feminist, seems to have disappeared, and after she stopping blogging, she (or, more likely, someone claiming to be her) posted a very weird post in her comments:

I'm still here, just a little depressed and confused. I may delete this blog, as I continue to evolve past what I'm starting to see as a harmful path in life. I'm tired of fighting, or whining, and am not even sure I was on the right side anymore...

Anyhow, regardless, all I can say is get a life, people. Men are not as bad as we think in real life, in fact, I have to admit they are far better than I could ever deserve...

Interestingly, prior to this comment, someone with the name "The Sad Feminist" posted this comment:

I have a confession to make...I've been deluding myself for my whole life. I have to admit that some of these comments here, along with some recent realizations in my own life, have finally started to hit home.

My perception changed at that moment. This is so sick, but I saw him for the first time today as a fellow human being, as my partner. Not as my enemy. To those of you who have been trying and trying to tell me that I saw him as my enemy, you were absolutely, unequivocally, 100% right. Everything we said or did was part of the conflict, the ongoing war that has been the last 18 years. It is truly amazing that we made it this far. I owe that man an apology.

Why am I fighting my own hubby? Why have I been treating him like "the enemy?" Who taught me to hate people based upon their gender? Why do I still hate men, when everyone I've been with has bent over backwards spoiling me like a queen?

Why am I so miserable and never happy?

I think I'm finally starting to figure out why...feminism.

Regular readers have been remarking that these posts - um, to put it mildly - do not sound like The Happy Feminist. So what could cause Happy to abandon her blog and not respond to emails? (One poster claims she knows Happy's secret identity and is certain nothing horrible has happened to her.)

In short: I smell a hacker. Because, really? I know so many feminists, people. I spent 14 years of schooling studying feminism. I teach Women's Studies. I inherited feminism from my mother and my father. And the vast majority of people who really believe that feminists hate men or see them as the enemy? They're not feminists. They're simply people who hate women.