"All of that garbage is bolstered by the fact that we don’t talk frankly about abortion. It has this fog around it; people are just mystified. That makes it easy for people who want to shut it down to do that, if they get to just say what abortion is whatever they want, 'Oh yeah, abortion is hairy feminazis chopping up babies.’ That’s why the next wave of abortion advocacy is destigmatization, talking frankly, and dismantling some of these lies that have gotten into the water supply.""When it comes to fat people, there are a lot of thin people who have some skin in the game when it comes to keeping fatness stigmatized, because it’s really flattering. If you’re a thin person — if you live in a world where fatness is coded as a moral failing, where we believe that fat people are lazy and stupid and dirty, and immoral — then that’s a pretty great ego boost. People don’t consciously articulate it like that. But it’s a hard fiction to let go of I think, for a lot of people, though not everyone, of course. I understand why [fat-shaming] is appealing, because our culture is so aggressive about forcing the feeling of obligation of losing weight on people."There's this constant barrage of weight loss programs and diet programs and diet foods, all kinds of different ways to spend your money and make your body smaller. We live in a century where everyone around is dumping money and time and agony into making their body smaller or keeping their bodies small. And so to say: Hey, actually that is meaningless, and you don’t have to do that, and you are worth the same amount no matter what size your body and you have the right to be happy, no matter what size your body — that is alarming to a lot of people. I imagine it feels like, 'Oh my god, what did I just waste my life doing if this currency isn’t valid anymore?'"And so, I think people have a lot tied up in figuring out ways to dig their heels in and not listen — to not believe and internalize these experiences.""Yes, it is.""On the other side, I had a lot of good people who are not trolls contact me and say, 'I had no idea it was this bad' — mostly men, obviously. I think, to some extent, a lot of trolls were at least scared? But I don't think I heard from anyone [else] who changed their ways after that. After that piece aired, they immediately went into high gear. I had truthers, which I forgot to put in the book: a whole Lindy West troll truther movement.""I am tired of writing about this. I don’t want this to be my beat. I used to be a film critic. My job used to be fun. And now my beat is internet trolls, and it has really taken away from me getting to actually work on the things that I care about, which is part of its function — part of the function of internet trolling. I don’t get death threats every day, I don’t get scary explicit rape threats every day. But I do get a constant stream of people just needling me and insulting me and calling me fat. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them all the time, it just absorbs my attention, my brain space."And it works. It takes me away from the things I actually want to do with my life and my career — my potential to affect the world around me. I think women have so much potential and so much power, and we end up spending so much time dealing with essentially busy work. And that’s not to downplay the emotional labor and trauma of being constantly degraded, which is really exhausting.""What’s been on my mind lately is that this should not be women’s problem to solve. The vast majority of trolls who harass people online are men, and I would like men to pick up some slack and solve this problem. I am tired. I am tired of working on it, I am tired of pouring my energy into it. And not just like: 'Oh, talk to your friends and find out if your friends are trolls and scold them' — I don't know if that would help. What we need to do is start working on changing the culture that teaches people that women are not toys to be fucked with."Shrill: Notes From A Loud Woman by Lindy West comes out on May 17, 2016.