This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day.

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

Wendy Sachs at CNN: Working women, know your value.

The privilege in this piece is off the charts, right from its opening paragraph in which Sachs compares herself to a sex worker, and its definition of "working women" clearly meaning women in what are commonly (and otheringly) referred to as "professional" jobs, thus writing out of the phrase "working women" every woman who works (professionally, ahem) in service professions—retail, food service, cleaning, etc.

(There is also an enormous amount of privilege underwriting the belief that we all earn what we "deserve" in the first place.)

But even if there had been some effort to clearly define the specific (privileged, disproportionately white) women about whom this article is actually speaking, this discussion is incomplete, to put it mildly, without meaningful exploration of the culture that greets "working women" who "work hard and go after what you deserve" with rank hostility.

Sometimes that hostility is passive. Many years ago, I started work at a firm as a receptionist. In six years, I was promoted five times, and by the end of my time there, I was running a department and had a private office a long way from the receptionist desk. My salary increases had not, however, kept up with the pace of my advancement within the company.

When I asked to be paid a salary commensurate with my position, providing information about industry standards in our region for the same position (nearly twice what I was making), I was met with indignation: "Your salary has doubled since you started!"

Which was accurate. My salary was indeed twice what I had made as a receptionist, with no other job responsibilities besides answering the phone and getting coffee. But, after years of working 13-hour days proving my mettle and after multiple promotions, asking for the salary they would have to pay anyone they hired externally to fill my position was considered uppity, demanding, and unreasonable.

This is a common problem for a lot of women in corporate work, because female college graduates are more likely to be hired into entry-level administrative positions (precisely as I was) than male college graduates, who are more likely to be hired into entry-level "professional" positions.

Sometimes that hostility is aggressive. Here is an example of a comment left in this space during last month's fundraising reminder: "Greedy cunt! Will you ever stop guilting your readers into sending you the moonies? Probably not, because you are a gaping vagina!"

That comment, and many others like it, are deemed an acceptable response to a woman asking to be paid for full-time work. I don't even put a specific value on my work by charging a minimum subscription to every visitor; I merely assert that my work has value. And I am called a greedy cunt for it.

So, too, the countless other women who are routinely expected to provide free labor in a variety of industries, from creative work to child- and elder care.

Sometimes that hostility is vindictive. I have never been fired, or threatened to be fired, for asking to be paid what I'm worth, but I have been privy to executive conversations at former places of employment in which women (and only women) were targeted for termination because they were perceived as "too pushy" (or whatever variation thereof) about their salaries, their benefits, flex-time, family leave, etc.

Irrespective of whether they were entitled to these things by law.

Many "working women"—and the less powerful the position, the more vulnerable the woman holding it—are keenly aware that being perceived as "too pushy" may result in professional marginalization or even termination.

It's colossally unfair to elide the careful threading of that needle most "working women" have to do, in order to blame all of us for simply being too meek to correctly value ourselves and demand we are compensated accordingly.