Zoey Freedman, a student at UCLA recently wrote an article for her university's newspaper, arguing why tampons and other feminine sanitary products should be free.
They're an essential product, Freedman pointed out, which seems like a perfectly reasonable point.
Not, however, according to the masses who descended on the article to troll the student reporter.
Student Zoey Freedman was bombarded with reams of misogynistic messages
Posting underneath the piece, Freedman was told:
"You won't be using the nice Tampax you (or your parents, who are probably still funding you) buy now, you will get cheap crap made by the lowest bidder. Is that what you want to put in your body? Toxic shock much? Grow up."
"The younger generation is making me ashamed of my own gender. I've never seen such whining, passive "woe is me" victims - and they think they're strong women? Ha!"
"Are you on the rag now? What a sad little crybaby you are, whining about biological differences. Do you want men to cut open a vein once a month, just to equalize the situtation?"
"Is there ANYTHING the world doesn't owe you? You know, just so I can get a baseline of where my responsibility for your bodily functions starts and ends?"
"Someone once told me "Never believe something that bleeds for a week and lives to tell about it"."
Undeterred by the sexism she encountered, Freedman wrote a follow-up article, which tackled the responses to her post.
"I was particularly impressed by how many men focused their insults on my gender, obviously missing my point – or maybe proving my point – about the gender inequality still present in such basic areas," she wrote.
Freedman's original piece
"I voiced my opinion on equal health care and I was told to get a hysterectomy or to get married so a man could take care of my needs. I was told to drop out of school because it seemed apparent that I wasn’t learning anything anyway. I was called a colorful array of degrading names aimed directly at being a woman. My opinion was even stated by some to be great supporting evidence to the reason for the income gap between genders."
The student adds: "An opinion, whether written or spoken, is meant to start a discussion. But women shouldn’t ever have to think twice about voicing an opinion and we definitely shouldn’t have to expect the worst after doing so, just for being a woman."