Giving Feminism a Bad Name

A Googler known as Ashley Hogins posted something with which I basically agree, in a way Doug Giles found annoying enough to e-mail around. Here it's been edited for formerly-unprintable words, but left annoying so you can see what the hate and anger were all about:


"I am sick and tired of seeing people show sympathy over this!
There is bravery, and then there is REAL bravery a woman who walks the street alone.
There are more women who are traumatized from street harassment than men who go to war.
War is nothing an an exaggerated event, the only reason we see it as a big thing is because of society.
War has been exaggerated so many times feminism even made a quote which is " It doesn't matter if you went to war or suffered for 10 years as a man, that's nothing compared to being a woman #Womenrights"
You think going to war makes you tough? You wouldn't last a second being a woman.
I don't see what's so hard about walking around and shooting a gun, yet we make a big deal about it when we are not focusing on serious problems that traumatize women everyday. What is it? Street harassment, sexual assualt (sic), etc.
How often do we have war?
Now tell me how often do we have street harassment. Thought so, it's because of people like you feminism is still alive."


My comment was:


"A word to conservatives who were steered over here by Doug Giles. First, it does not help any cause to act like trolls. Please tell me the people who've posted really hateful comments were not steered here by Doug Giles.

Second, the trauma of street harassment is real. I rise above it, yes--because I'm a woman you don't meet every day. I live in a town full of blinkered, mindbound females, most of whom are either clinically malnourished or in need of a "Wide Load" sign to hang on their backs, because they're afraid that putting up with street harassment will make them less respectable and/or incite the street terrorists to real violence. (Which, once in a while, it does, and yes I have had to fight back. Yea though I walk through the valley of the terrorist cult of rape I fear no evil'cos I'm the meanest Daughter of Jael in the valley, and all that.)

Third, where women get harassed, men get beaten and maimed and murdered. I think this post needs a sense of proportion about that.

And, fourth, if you don't like harassment, Ashley, why are you inviting and inciting trolls by throwing in gratuitous sneers at veterans? Some people were traumatized by the hate spewed at themselves or their husbands/brothers/fathers/sons forty years ago, and you, unfortunately, have chosen to trigger their emotional problems. What was the point?"


And yes, after all these years...I do still experience walking to work as an act of war. Granted, most of the people who say annoying things to me on the street, or cower inside and then say incredibly stupid and annoying things to me inside buildings, are not armed with anything worse than bad manners; and I have a cell phone and a knife. But then again, most of the time nobody's actually shooting at our troops, either. And they carry on. As do I. Private citizens who walk the streets in much of these United States are defending our American rights and freedom, too.