Give a little criticism; get a little hate mail

I received a lovely little note today! Here's the abridged version:

X-Sieve: cmu-sieve 1.3
[snip some headers]
SUBJECT: die bitch
Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 11:39:46 -0700

you go to hell and die
you go to hell and die
you go to hell and die
you go to hell and die
you go to hell and die
you go to hell and die
you go to hell and die
you go to hell and die
you go to hell and die
[There are 240 or so of these]

I take it that someone is offended, though, of course, it's quite the open question whether I gave offense. Presumably, this note was in response to something I've written about the Republican National Convention protests in Philadelphia (my hometown). Aside from some media analysis in the Churn today, and the call for calls against the mistreatment of jailed activists last night on this page, the only little bit I've written was in response to some anti-protester garbage. Perhaps that sparked this bit of witless ire.

Alas, I have a tendency to try to make sense of the senseless: I keep wondering whether it's worse to go to hell first and then die or the reverse. If I recall correctly (and I'll have to wait for Kendall the Religious Studies guy to confirm or deny this), a living person going to Hell would be rather a shocking thing. Perhaps the hate-mailer meant to compare me with Dante, who, after all, went to hell and then died.

Also, why "bitch"? Is it that the hate-mailer thinks I'm female? Or is this part of the standard derogating move to attack by feminizing? That "woman" is a derogatory term in many situtations speaks volumes about the sexism of our society. Lastly, the repetition of the main abusive phrase seems both too much and too little. It's not enough to be a mail bomb: I routinely write and receive longer messages! I suppose I see the point of making the message long enough to scroll, I guess. Maybe. But what size screen does the perpetrator think I have such that it needs 240 lines to be sure of scrolling?

Hmm. I suspect I've put more thought into this than the hatemailer has, but that would seem to be typical of each of our respective lives.