Winnipegger flooded with Twitter abuse for complaining about bar's sexist poster

Ben Wickstrom thought a poster showing a naked woman bending over to grab a man a beer was sexist, so he brought it to the attention of The Pint, a new bar in downtown Winnipeg, over Twitter.

The bar responded, agreed the picture wasn't appropriate, apologized and thanked him for helping them "get better." Case closed, right?

Not quite. Wickstrom quickly became the target of a torrent of vulgar abuse and name-calling, with one particularly thoughtful person tweeting he's "no better than Al-Qaeda" for suggesting a poster objectifying a woman, whether for humour or otherwise, shouldn't be posted in a bar.

We've collected some of the more egregious insults flung at Wickstrom below, as well as the support he received from both women and men thanking him for asking the poster be removed.

Wickstrom retweeted much of the abuse, and several Winnipeggers came to his defence. By the end of the day on Monday, he stopped responding to the insults and tried to put a positive spin on the story.

Wickstrom told Yahoo Canada News that he wasn't entirely surprised by the vicious response he receieved. "I've seen the kinds of unbelievable garbage that gets directed at women who speak out on sexism, and it's so much worse than this. So I'm not surprised to see this kind of pathetic abuse sent my way.

"It always boggles my mind to see people say these kinds of things to strangers. It's not how I was raised."