I wrote a viral op-ed about my daughter’s gender identity. Then Twitter unleashed the trolls.

At first I couldn’t look. Not at Twitter, anyway.

I had written an opinion piece for The New York Times about my daughter, describing her as a self-identified tomboy whom adults mistake for, and sometimes insist is, transgender. In an attempt to be more sensitive to the gender spectrum, they had ended up having narrower visions of what boys and girls could look like and do. I thought I had made this complex point without upsetting anyone.

Email was a different story. Not five minutes after my piece hit the Times’ homepage, the thank-you notes began to flood my inbox from grateful parents who had children like mine, as well as from grown-up tomboys who felt I’d captured their experience and felt empowered by what I wrote.

On Facebook, it seemed the piece was largely embraced, though admittedly, I could see only within my own silo. Debates began to spring up in my friends’ feeds, some heated, but that was good: The point was to spark discussion.

On Twitter, though, something else was brewing. For one thing, someone had suggested that people keep watch on the “events” section of my website, show up to my next reading and shame me or wrest my child from me, or find out what neighborhood we live in and accost us.

Having written many personal essays, several about my child, I had learned not to read comments, especially when covering controversial topics like sleep training or breastfeeding. But these weren’t comments, Facebook posts, or emails. These were very public tweets, directed straight at me but for the world to see. I had never been the subject of a Twitter hate storm and didn’t realize how little of it translated into the physical world.

So I shut it down. I reported the threats to Twitter, blocked a particularly aggressive tweeter, and turned off notifications. But there was a problem: I didn’t know what people were upset about exactly, or what they were planning. Occasionally I’d get a note from a friend saying, “They’re really going after you on Twitter,” but I didn’t know what that meant. After a while, hiding behind the digital wall seemed more menacing than climbing over it.

I turned notifications back on.

“He is a boy. You have a son. If you don’t accept it, you condemn your son to a lifetime of suffering because of dysphoria.”

That was one. There was also the accusation of “vile transphobia on your part.”

And: “She’s abusing her child.” “Your article horrifies me.” “You’re a cisnormative ass.” “This little boy is more in touch with himself than I am at 34…and this mother is killing a piece of him slowly.”

Part—most, I think—of the brouhaha sprung from a piece I had written four years earlier for Parenting magazine about my kid’s first forays into dressing differently (neckties and blazers instead of dresses), and her inquiries about gender and biology like “Why can’t a girl have a penis?” Back then, I took these questions, these desires to look a certain way, as an indication that she might be trans. In that piece I had done what I criticized other people for doing in my Times op-ed—confusing the way a kid looks or plays with how male or female she is.

Mostly, in the essay I now consider ill advised, I reacted to what I thought of as her de-cute-ing of herself: the sloppy clothes, the short hair. I meditated on what it meant for me, how I wanted a girl who didn’t need male approval but could get it if she wanted (this seems disgusting to me now, admittedly), how I wanted her to both be exceptional and fit in—all of the complex, sometimes contradictory feelings parents have.

I had actually forgotten about that piece. It had gone up the day before Parenting went under, received no editing, and was given the misleading headline “My Daughter Wants to Be a Boy!” I would not have written those words today, not with how much I have learned in these past four years about my own kid and about transgender issues. But the Internet is forever. Which was even scarier now that people were compiling dossiers on me, reading through everything I’d written to find discrepancies, making Storify pieces about what they saw as my lies and deceit.

And yet I was terrified to respond and explain myself. For one thing, I felt I’d been caught. And another—more important—thing: People were being scary assholes. I’d had no experience with online bullying and didn’t know how much of it translated to real life. It did not feel safe to engage.

Then I thought about something I had learned through years of therapy: running away from feelings only intensifies them. If you’re in pain and you turn to drugs or sex or cutting yourself or eating entire sleeves of Oreos in the bathroom during a party (or, hey, perhaps some combination of all of those), you never get to address the pain, and it grows. When I came back to New York City in 2003 from graduate school in Arizona, where I had hit bottom, burning bridges as quickly as I walked, hovering above suicidal and so lonely that it felt like a thousand bee stings, I made myself sit at my dining room table and do nothing. I decided not to retreat from the loneliness, which is to me the most unbearable of emotions. And something amazing happened: It stopped stinging. Even more amazing was that as it flitted away it left in its wake a burst of creativity. Instead of medicating my pain, I transformed it into art. Amazing things can happen when we face our fears, our demons, ourselves.

Of course, that was one of only about seven times I’d been able to muster that kind of emotional strength, but here I was again, scared of the haters, embarrassed about my four-year-old essay, and stung all over again, not with loneliness but with that barrage of ill will.

So I decided to face the rest of the Twitter maelstrom. I sat at my dining room table once again and read through the hate tweets. In the quiet, something else happened: I could see that some of my detractors made good points. Just because people were angry, quick to react, unable or unwilling to read carefully and digest nuanced arguments, didn’t mean that I shouldn’t consider what they said.

The old piece they objected to did contradict some of my recent pronouncements, and they were right about many things. It was ridiculous that I’d once asked my three-year-old daughter to wear dresses once a week; I’d never do that now. I probably should stop writing about my kid. I am “cisnormative”—my gender identity does align with my sex assigned at birth—and my piece was rooted in or skewed by that perspective. Some people objected to my language, more than my point, and I vowed to work on using more respectful, informed language in the future.

But I could also see the emptiness of some objections, their utter lack of fuel. I don’t have a son—not for now, anyway. I’m not a child abuser. I’m not a transphobe. Those accusations were ab, and once I faced them, they melted away like the Wicked Witch in a rainstorm.

After that, I could finally read the myriad appreciative tweets, the ones that said things like “Thank you! Could you time warp this back and pin it to my shirt on my first day of school in 1971? cc my grandparents too.” And this one, from—swoon—Martina Navratilova: “Right on, Lisa—this was me, spot on.”

I wish I’d had the courage to respond directly to the haters. So far, I still haven’t, except for once when someone complained that a New Zealand radio show had interviewed me. “Why oh why interview @LisaSelinDavis ??” someone calling herself Stef Animal wrote. “There are plenty of really smart people to discuss gender/parenting with. Sad.”

I’m not sure if the Donald Trump reference was intentional, but she did have a point. There are plenty of really smart people to discuss gender/parenting with (including me, if I do say so myself.) I interviewed some recently for another piece, in fact.

I wrote back: “I agree there are many smart people to discuss gender with—I've talked to some and hope you do, too.” I never heard back.

For now, responding directly to critics is something for a more self-actualized person than I, someone who can do more than sit with critiques, but who can walk confidently into a shit storm of them. Maybe next time.