Let me start by saying that I appreciate Kirsten Anderberg's writing and am disgusted with the trolls who attack her. Her articles are thorough, well-written, and thought-provoking. The trolls' responses are mean and generally irrelevant.

Having said all this, I do not agree with Kirsten's generalizations about men. She doesn't present any evidence -- other than a few vocabulary words -- to support her conclusion that "Most trolls ... are male", that "This is a gender issue", and that men are "trying to ruin radical women writers". Trolls can be male or female, and they do strike at both male and female writers.

The Saturn Cafe incident seems innocent to me. Talking about food in "sinful" terms is part of normal social discourse these days. Either we want to limit "carbs" and calories or we want to congratulate ourselves for indulging in foods that are tasty but unhealthy. The Saturn menu itself talks in these terms. For example, Saturn offers a dessert called Chocolate Madness, and you can choose a "Mini Madness", with only "half the yum".

How on earth could a Saturn employee, whose job it is to sell foods, many of which are unhealthy (Saturn is a fast food restaurant, and vegetarian fast food is still fast food), be expected to guess that he was talking to a person in the early stages of recovering from an eating disorder? Why does it matter that the employee was male and the manager, female? Why congratulate the manager for "reprimand[ing] the male cashier in front of my friend"? It sounds as though the employee made a remark that was part of normal social discourse in the year 2004, without knowing that the recipient suffered from an eating disorder.

Men aren't perfect, but I really resent these broad brush strokes, that paint us as evil. Your generalizations are, frankly, hurtful. I am not a woman and so cannot claim to have the same experience as a woman, but I am black, and I am gay, and I do try, within the limits of my experience, to be sensitive to "women's issues". (I use quotes because I hate the term. I prefer "people's issues".)

Side Note: I do wish that we, as a society, could change the way we talk about food. Julia Child, the famous and very down-to-earth chef who died recently, had commented that people were becoming afraid of their food (I am still searching for the exact quote, which I read in a newspaper obituary). Change here has to come from everyone, not from individuals. Even the Bagelry is on the "low-carb" bandwagon now!