Image: CupcakesAs part of Feminism Week at University of Queensland, student Madeline Price came up with a delicious idea for demonstrating the the gender wage gap. She organized a bake sale and offered men cupcakes for one dollar and women cupcakes for 83 cents, a price difference designed to demonstrate the wage gap in Australia and reflect the proportion of the dollar each bake sale patron earns comparative to men. That might seem like a pretty painless way of illustrating a depressing subject—but men were pissed.
Many men responded to the bake sale by calling the organizers hypocrites, declaring allegiance to Trump, and generally trolling the Women’s Collective. Price says the organizers even received comments like “kill all women,” “I’d punch a chick if she winked at me at the bake sale,” “females are fucking scum,” and “I want to rape these feminist cunts with their fucking baked goods.” She explains over on The Guardian,
These comments were posted on the public event page, on subsequent posts about feminist week and sent directly to the email accounts, personal Facebook accounts and, in one case, via voicemail, of the organisers of feminist week, general members of the UQ Union Women’s Collective and to staff members who spoke out in support of the event.
Image: Facebook comment saying “Fuck Feminists,” Facebook comment with a meme about domestic abuse
Thankfully, the abuse wound up backfiring. Price writes,
Far from simply starting a discussion about wage disparity in Australia, the online backlash over the Gender Pay Gap Bake Sale brought to light hundreds of other issues of gender inequality, from sexual violence and threats against women, to why we still need feminism in the 21st century. This bake sale did its job and more.
We had students who had previously dismissed the idea of feminism approach us at the bake sale, purchase an item and explain that they “didn’t believe feminism was still needed until reading the comments posted online.”
Time for an extension of Lewis’ Law, I guess: Comments about any feminist bake sale justify feminism.
(via The Cut, images via Shutterstock and Facebook)
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.
Follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google+.
