I had something very similar happen the other day. I could see from my notifications that it was a man who didn’t have a profile picture. That typically spells trouble, and I steeled myself to read it, but it turned out to be a very nice comment.

I respect those who don’t have the time or inclination to read comments, but for me, that’s a part of the Medium experience — to interact with my readers, and most of the time that is pretty positive. But there are a some bad apples out there who just have to affirm themselves by being nasty to someone else and there are enough of them that I also sometime brace myself before reading. It’s sad that this is the case for so many female writers.