I haven’t paid any attention to this blog for about a year and a half. That’s what being a department chair does to you. I was inspired yesterday to write about the Apple vs. the FBI controversy and so logged on for the first time in a long while. I have my comments set up so that I have to approve them before they get posted to the blog. I was surprised to discover that I had one comment waiting for approval. It was posted to my About the Author page on February 2, 2016, by an anonymous poster. I don’t allow anonymous comments but this person made up a name (“Mother”) and an email address that even has a made up domain name.

Here’s what “Mother” says in the comment: “Just read your Prometheus ‘review’ – Bottom line. Everything to you is Misogynistic.”

I wrote my review of the movie Prometheus in June, 2012, and titled it “Prometheus or Misogyny on a Space Ship.” I’m so curious about what brought “Mother” to a review on a fairly defunct blog more than three and a half years after the movie’s release. I have no idea what that’s about. I’m also curious about the reasons for “Mother” choosing to place his (almost surely “his”) comment on the About the Author page rather than on the movie review post itself. I would guess that “Mother” meant his comment to be directed at me as a person rather than engaging with the ideas that I presented in the actual review. Finally, I’m curious about the decision by “Mother” to post the comment anonymously with a made up email address. Clearly, “Mother” doesn’t want to engage in any real conversation about the merits of the movie.

Despite the fact that “Mother” doesn’t want to engage with me, I will respond to him by saying this: your statement is demonstrably false. Do a search for “misogyny” on my blog and you will see that this is the only post that uses the word. I discuss many movies throughout my blog and have not identified any others as misogynistic. For example, I also didn’t like the movie Disgrace but my reasons for that dislike have nothing to do with seeing the movie as misogynistic. There is a huge difference between identifying one movie as being misogynistic and identifying “everything” as misogynistic.

Do you really not see this difference? If you don’t see the difference, you aren’t very smart. If you do see the difference, I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. Especially when you behave like a coward and don’t identify yourself.