When I was in high school about 10 years ago, I wrote an essay for English about how society has unreasonable expectations for girls and how a lot of them buy into it perpetuating the problem.
My English teacher convinced me to send it to the newspaper to be published in a weekly community section. Trouble is the paper decided to squish it down to fit the size they wanted without consulting me.
This virtually eliminated the thesis and turned the now article into a piece that kind of implied all the girls in my school were sluts. Anybody who read it (key word there) would have seen the larger issues.
Librarian gets super stoked for me and posts the article in front of the library for two hours the morning it comes out. During this time a dozen or so people skimmed it and had a take away that I was calling all the girls sluts.
People start getting really angry, word of mouth spreads in a telephone fashion. Librarian is quickly asked to take the article down. Next thing I know at lunch I'm getting called down to administration. Unbeknownst to me people had been making threats all morning loud enough and boisterous enough to get the attention of teachers. Now the principal is offering to bring in a bodyguard for.
The remainder of that day was a massive climax of misplaced and misunderstood anger. I couldn't walk through halls alone. By the next day I had received three phone calls the night before (home phone and yellow pages era) threatening violence, one note in my locker, one note on my car, and three confrontations that all had to be broken up by teachers.
End of the week, things are blowing over when I get cornered by a group of five. They "are here to curb stomp me" for what I said about their girls. I tried to explain things but you know how immaturity gets. Somehow I managed to get out of being pinned down and managed to make it onto a bus that was near by where the driver let me circle the loop for free so I could go back to get my car.
There is something about being almost pinned down and your brains turned into mush that changes you.