Restaurant Responds to Yelper's Sexist Abortion Joke With Fundraiser
Rebecca Rose
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Rude, inappropriate and grossly sexist comments on the Internet are everywhere. It's impossible to get away from them and it's hard to know exactly what to do when you encounter them. Some people like to ignore them, others like to fight back until the trollsexplode.
Some people, like the awesome owner of East Portland restaurant EastBurn manage to find a truly remarkable way to shut down trolls.
Mike Bender, like many restaurant owners, often checks his Yelp reviews online. We already know that some Yelpers can be kind of shitty and strange when they want to be. But that doesn't mean restaurants have to accept when people post incredibly dumb things in the guise of a review. That's certainly not what Bender wanted to do when he saw this asinine post from Lee M (which has since been deleted):
"My friend and I picked up some hot girls here, but he got his pregnant. But she was Canadian so she went home and got a free abortion so it's all cool now. You can get grilled cheeses here for $5."
Cool story, bro. Bender responded in a truly glorious way. Here's his comment:
"5 stars to you Lee M. for making an example of how this kind of disrespect towards women is shameful and not at all funny. Yes, our grilled cheese is only $5 and was kindly listed as one of the top 25 in the country by Food and Wine Magazine. As a thank you for spotlighting this kind of behavior, all proceeds through August from the sale of EastBurn's Grilled Cheeses will go to the Portland's Women's Crisis Line. - Cheers!"
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Reddit's r/Portland forum picked up on the story a few days ago if you want to check out the conversation going on there. According to The Oregonian, Bender is making good on his promise to raise funds:
Through the month of August, the restaurant will be donating all the proceeds from their grilled cheese sandwiches to the 24-hour resource and support organization for survivors of domestic and sexual violence."It just seemed like a good thing to do," owner Mike Bender said. "We do a lot of benefits here and thought it was a good opportunity to give back...It's especially pervasive in the restaurant industry [disrespect towards women] and it's not cool."
It's good to see more restaurant owners pushing back against this kind of sexist bullshit. For those who think this is just a "dumb joke" Bender is a making "big deal" out of, let this Redditorexplain why it is a big deal:
It's obviously a joke, but something being "a joke" doesn't mean it's not harmful. Racist jokes are still racist, sexist jokes are still sexist. If the butt of the joke is the disenfranchised group, somebody from that group or who cares about that group may call you out as an asshole for making that joke. Which is what happened here.
Could not have said it better myself. Now who wants to grab a grilled cheese?
Image via Shutterstock.
This is awesome.
I'm also embarrassed at how long the grilled cheese picture distracted me from the content.
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