I don't think I've ever been called quiet in my life.  Seriously.  Anyone who has spent even an hour of time with me will tell you I am not a quiet woman.  I'm loud and a little pushy, especially when it comes to a real (or I'll admit) perceived injustice.  It's how I was raised and the lessons stuck and the reason I'm a lawyer, teacher and a writer.  None of those professions (in my opinion) lend themselves to the quiet.  And have you read my blog?  Not quiet.  Which is what makes the rest of this so strange.

I ended 2010 complicit in my own silencing.  There.  I said it. 

See, I have a troll.  A particularly nasty troll who, for whatever reason, does not like me and has taken to the internet, and my own blog, to make that fact clear.  What does he find so offensive?  Well, I'm apparently a dogmatic feminist-victim who will not tolerate dissent.  Oh, and I'm a bad writer and when I write about my own personal-is-political on my personal blog I'm a narcissist.  So yeah.

For a while I put up with the abuse and laughed it off.  After all, I'm not that important, so the idea that some dude is getting SOWORKEDUP by my very existence is kinda funny.  But then it started to change.  The more I ignored the troll and laughed it off the more vitriolic and screeching his attacks became.  I noticed that my stomach would turn a little whenever there was a comments notification on Hegemommy.  When I saw his name show up I cringed but felt compelled to read the frothing impotence launched my way.  I even published some of them.

But not all.  Two comments in particular were so nasty, so inappropriate and aimed at me, another reader and my children that I refuse to publish.  Screw that.  Hate on me all you want but you leave my kids and the two or three other people who happen to enjoy my site out of it.  Suck it, troll.

I also stopped writing.  Or had stopped writing.  Until now.

See two things happened.  One was the amazing #MooreandMe campaign and the other was this theme.  Angry or Quiet.  I blogged about Doyle's campaign over at Care2 and was considering how I was going to approach this topic here.  And it got me thinking about the fact that the internet seems like the last place where openly and viciously attacking women is tolerated and where silencing campaigns are tolerated as normal and where, as a feminist, it is my job to push back against those and not be quiet, especially when those doing the silencing are purportedly my allies.

Lightbulb.

There it was.  The universe giving me the equivalent of the "DUH JESSICA!  You've stopped writing.  On your own blog.  Because you got tired of getting attacked for talking about your dead mother, your struggles breast feeding and your admiration for Elizabeth Edwards.  The attacks were always positioned as his reasonable-centrist liberalism versus your strident, shrieking dogmatism.  He called you hysterical and a silencer of dissent.  He shut you up."

Or at least he tried.

So to answer the question, are you an angry woman or a quiet woman I'm going to have to go with angry.  And loud once again.