Women Who Just Wanted to Sell Some Freaking Cupcakes Got Rape, Death Threats

When Madeline Price decided to throw a Gender Pay Gap Bake Sale during Feminist Week at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia she thought it was just a fun way to educate people about the wage disparity while also allowing everyone to eat delicious baked goods. She had no idea that some men would threaten to harm her over it. 

Price wrote on The Guardian that the original idea behind the bake sale was to have anyone who identified as a man pay full price ($1) for a cupcake, while a woman would pay 83 cents, and "a woman of colour in the legal profession" would only pay 55 cents, and so forth, in relation to their local wage gap rates. Unfortunately, the simple and brilliant idea brought about threats of sexual and physical violence from internet commenters on the public event page as well as personal email accounts and Facebook accounts. 

Price says that after people saw the comments saying things like, "Kill all women," and "I want to rape these feminist cunts with their fucking baked goods," several students who previously thought their idea for the wage gap bake sale was silly came to purchase cupcakes and tell them they "didn't believe feminism was still needed until reading the comments posted online."

UQ student Mike Wood told BuzzFeed News says he had no problem with their pricing and actually went to the cupcake stand to see if any of the "keyboard warriors" would show up to throw a fit in real life, which of course they didn't. 

While Price says she's happy that so many people were supportive of the bake sale, the hateful views that were exposed as a result only further reinforce that "the threat to the safety and lives of women, the silencing of women in public spaces, and the wage disparity around the world are still very real issues that impact upon women and other marginalised groups in everyday life."