Stephanie! I agree with everything you said here. I write about my authentic beliefs, opinions, and experiences, whether acquired from life or from books, now totalling over a thousand articles on this platform and others (plus some books), and I write under my real name with my real photograph. This is my life's work. My behavior isn't equivalent to that of random strangers who make brief, illogical, aggressive comments based on no expertise (personal, professional, academic, or otherwise) whose only agenda is to undermine my credibility and legitimacy (they don't know me) without even taking the effort to type their real name. It's pretty clear when someone is making the effort to ask a real question that is conceptually related to the article I wrote that advances our mutual understanding in some way (even if we have some disagreement) and when someone is, well, maybe not even a human but more likely an aggression-bot that's been programmed to make transphobic word salad to waste my time and confuse or frighten my readers.

There are indeed tools we can use! "Hide response" so no one else has to see it or waste their time engaging with something I've already taken a moment to assess as unproductive. "Report" if something doesn't seem right—the user is malicious or plots insincere foolery and maybe shouldn't be on this platform (Medium staff will decide). Or just "block" if they're not exactly violating basic expectations of the public square, and yet, for my own personal reasons, I don't want to see or engage with them again nor allow them to see or contact me. No one is entitled to anyone else's time, especially when they're being hateful.

You are absolutely allowed to hide someone's response on your article! If they really want to say something free from your editorial control, they'll publish their own article. Why do they insist on leaving the comment on your article? Because they do want to play with (or against, or off) your editorial control. Messing with other people is the point of their game. And so you can jump directly to using your power buttons. You are providing them the opportunity to write their own article or else give up and go away 🙂