Memes that showed abuse against women were used on the Feminist Week facebook page. UQ Union Gender and Sexuality vice president Madeline Price helped organise the event and said she had been on the receiving end of more than a dozen vicious emails and private messages since the bake sale announcement. "A lot of them were 'I am going to rape the feminist c---s who show up to this event'," she said. "We had quite a few memes posted, we had someone say 'The best thing that would happen would be if a bomb went off and no men were there', things like that." Ms Price said a lot of the attacks came from outside the university and were personal attacks against herself and other organisers of the event, along with other women who commented on the Feminist Week events page.

Online abuse is a common occurence for feminist Madeline Price. "A couple of attacks came from local high school students, that was a bit disheartening to see," she said. "They predominately focused on personal attacks against women who were commenting and personal attacks against the organisers. Online abuse filled the Feminist Week events page on Facebook. "Instead of discussing the validity of the wage gap, people just wanted to attack the people organising the event.

"It also spread out to general members of the Women's Collective, so it wasn't even people organising, they were just women engaged in some form who were also hit by this sort of abuse." Ms Price, who is a "noted feminist online", said the attacks were "not anything new" to her but said it was hard on the younger students who had never faced such "vile" abuse online before. "It was surprising it didn't come to us sooner to be perfectly honest, posting a feminist event, but for a lot of the other students who were targets to this it was completely new to them, especially the younger students who have only got involved this year," she said. "It is disappointing from the perspective of other students who want to be involved but are then targeted just because they are involved. "I know that at our next meeting on Monday this is going to be one of the big discussion topics, how do you deal with this sort of thing online, what coping strategies are there and what can we do to put a stop it."

Ms Price said a question asked at the Men in Feminism panel held on Tuesday night, one of the events held for Feminist Week, showed the inherent biases that still exist in society. "One of Women's Collective members asked the panellists 'You are prominent men in the feminist sphere, you talk about these issues online, have you ever faced this sort of online backlash?' and they said 'Nope, we haven't had anything like that'," she said. "They will get backlash but it will be discussion based on what they are talking about, it won't be a personal attack. "It is a really interesting situation where two people can say exactly the same thing online and will get completely different responses based on their gender and that has to come down to how we are treating people in society, it comes down to gender bias." Ms Price said the outrage over the gender pay gap bake sale and the "vile" online attacks served to highlight just how far gender equality still needed to go.

"There are still inherent biases against women, there is still inherent inequality within society and especially within an online spheres, this is just really maximised to its fullest extent," she said. The gender pay gap bake sale was a success, with more than 200 baked goods sold in just over an hour. Stay informed. Like Brisbane Times on Facebook