According to a report by The Federalist, small business owner Elizabeth Poe received more than 1,000 phone calls, many involving threats, because she refused to sell yarn for the purpose of making “p***y hats” that were popularized by the Women’s March on Jan. 21.
Poe owns a small yarn store in Franklin, Tennessee, servicing more than 3,000 customers from her own town and others. After some of her customers asked for pink yarn in order to make “p-hats,” Poe posted a message on her shop’s Facebook page asking those customers to shop elsewhere.
Poe, as a Christian woman, said that she disagrees with the vulgarity surrounding the women’s march, and doesn’t believe that it was truly helping women. She supported Donald Trump in the presidential election.
By the following day, Poe had received an enormous amount of feedback and over 200 phone calls. According to Poe, she was threatened and yelled at numerous times during many of these calls. The local TV network also entered her shop to ask for comment.
In total, Poe received thousands of calls, some threatening her with rape and physical violence.
In what may seem to be a surprising turn of events, once Poe’s story was heard, she began to receive an abnormally large amount of orders, even some from the UK and Hong Kong, in support for her position.
Poe also received a large amount of letters, 60 percent of which was hate, according to her, and 40 percent in support, sometimes with a donation to her shop inside the envelope.