The Best Response to Haters: How To Deal with Trolls

Why I won’t waste another minute educating men who want me silent.

Sometime last year I wrote a newsletter for LinkedIn about my grandmother Elsie — a woman who lost her voice and her right to self-determination at the hands of her husband — and I received an abusive comment from a man named Mike.

His comment wasn’t curious. It wasn’t thoughtful. It was a judgmental and misogynistic tirade from someone who knows absolutely nothing about the journey I’ve been on to research and honour Elsie’s story.

Sadly, it was just a little taste of what many women who dare to raise their voices and tell their truths experience far too often. If his intention was to upset or silence me, then yes — it worked. Briefly.

Last week it happened again, this time on my Substack note:

That post exploded — with more than 2.5K comments and just as many restacks. The support has been overwhelming and I’ve been trawling through all the responses, grateful and stunned by the resonance. But with all that support came another flood — a familiar, ugly tide of pushback.

While plenty of people (mostly men) didn’t agree with me — and that’s fine, that’s free speech — what stood out was those who were abusive and aggressive as well. Again, mostly men. Again, mostly aimed at shutting me down.

And so I’ve been sitting with the question: what’s the best way for women to deal with trolls, haters and unsolicited attacks online?

There’s a saying that silence is complicity.

To be honest, a part of me wanted to attack them back. To throw their words back in their faces and say, how dare you. Because it felt like an assault. Not just on my own voice but on every woman who’s ever dared to speak their truth and been abused for it.

But then I reminded myself that I’ve got a novel to write. And it won’t get written if I spend my precious energy explaining basic human decency to ignorant men.

Women are exhausted. We are drop-dead tired of male trolls, haters and the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways the toxic patriarchy keeps trying to mute us. There will always be men like Mike in the world. We can either waste time trying to change them — or we can ignore them and change the culture with our stories instead.

I’m not famous. I have fewer than 1,000 Substack subscribers. And still, the trolls find me. I can only imagine the abuse women with huge platforms receive daily — the emotional labour they carry, just for daring to speak.

So, how should I respond?

Do I leave the comments up, visible for all to see and ignore them?

Do I respond and risk being dragged into endless arguments?

Or do I delete, block and move on?

With LinkedIn and Mike, I chose to delete the comment and block him. It was just one nasty comment and easy to deal with. Fast and painless.

But with Substack, with so many comments to deal with, I’ve made a different choice: I don’t even bother to block and report them. Why? Because even that takes up time and emotional energy. Time I’d rather spend on writing.

And because I know their energy runs out. Their attention span wanes. And maybe, just maybe, someone else on the feed will feel compelled to challenge them — and that might make them think twice.

It’s not my battle to fight. And honestly, it shouldn’t be yours either.

The best response is to keep creating, to keep telling our stories, to write the truth louder than they can shout it down. The best response is to write unapologetically, fiercely and free, to publish as many powerfully feminist stories as we all can.

Because our voices — and our right to self-determination — matter.
And together, we’re unstoppable.

Be bold. Be brave. Just write.

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