I have no doubt that Mari has no shortage of personal courage as a reporter, but her reasoning here is deeply flawed, symptomatic of the kind of retrograde, conservative reasoning you'll find in tech, finance and other industries where women struggle to find a seat at the table and an voice equal to their male peers. Whatever Coghlan wrote, vicious, sexist attacks should not be normalized as a "rite of passage." They should be spotlighted and shamed. Being labeled a bitch, whore and/or cunt shouldn't be treated as the normal price of doing business for women in media. To do so, at the very least, shows a lack of imagination for what online discourse can be. At worst, it damages efforts to reform an admittedly sexist society by blaming its ugliest aspects on the very women who endure them. I hope Megan Coghlan and others read this letter and disregards its bad advice. There is a better way.
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