Just in terms of Gabby's examples,
What do we want? Short of promoting violence, I CAN'T tell people NOT to say things. If that's what we want, I can't do it.
I understand how the language we are talking about here nourishes the potential for violence, against women in this case, but if I say, "No matter what I wear, no matter where I go, yes means yes and no means no" that means that men are responsible for their own behavior, no matter what kind of language they are exposed to, right? How can we require them to be honest & responsible if the environment in which that is to occur is not authentic, because their, and consequently our own, language has been sterilized? To me, that's like saying "Conservatives are bad for people and you are prohibited from ever confronting them directly in their own terms." There would never be any opportunities for DIRECT PERSONAL engagement and may the best person/case win. We are, thus, ever held in infantile status in the nursery, instead of becoming true warriors for women.
Something from Gabby's cartoon strikes me; it appears that the problem isn't that women are wrong, but that not enough people recognize that compared to how many support whatever men are saying in response to feminism, so even if you do have the best case and you are the best person in that situation to bring it, it doesn't matter, because what is REALLY going on is more about cliques than it is about truth.
What do do?
My own approach to these kinds of rhetorical situations is to try to fracture whatever the cliques are built around. In this case, that appears to be sexist language. What's the best way to do that? Perhaps you are familiar with how being attacked and coerced and mandated to do this or that usually causes you to build bulwarks with anyone available on your "side" of the issue. The more you are attacked, the more obdurate those bulwarks become and, then, the WHOLE dynamic from that point forward becomes about those walls and why they were built in the first place: a perceived power grab, a perceived authoritarian assault against the perceived "individual's" perceived right to be "right" or "wrong."
As I said, I have not been following the development of feminism currently, closely enough to really know what's going on, but the dynamic sketched in my paragraph just previous to this one is my strongest concern about it. I do NOT want to be side tracked from what NEEDS to be talked about by BOTH sides and IN DEPTH, by "He said, she said . . . (a naughty, politically incorrect, word)." It is my personal opinion that the only way we are going to get at the most fundamental issues is to, again short of the promotion of violence, allow all or most language onto the field and then, NOT defend, but attack the language itself, NOT their right to say whatever. Keep the focus on empiricism rather than attacking anyone's right to say anything that isn't violent (and if the words do imply violence make that observation, but don't lose sight of fundamental facts, all of them).
My point is similar to losing sight of the forest for the trees, but worse, in that it may in some specific dyads, be more like losing sight of a specific tree for one leaf on that tree. There IS indeed a point to be made about that leaf, more about that tree, and even more about the forest, if we want to get at the real truth. The questions are about HOW best to do all of that and I personally think life-or-death struggles over words are so much the lowest-common-denominator that they do INDEED attract mobs, like those Gabby describes, because it's such a SIMPLE thing to cling to when men are frightened and confused and, then, as Gabby also observes, especially on the internet, those mobs obscure the more complete truths, because the cliques/mobs becomes the point instead of the truth.
None of that means that women can't talk about sexist language (remember I said I CAN'T tell people NOT to say things), only that the reactionary POWER struggle (from both sides) about language should not be the only, nor necessarily the main, thing that's going on. Short of violence, neither side should be able to order/coerce the other what not to say, doing so will only interfere with what NEEDS to be done.
I personally long for the day when men can say whatever and be met by women who meet them head-on, strength for strength, with principled empirical strength on ALL of the issues and with fearlessness (i.e. not tooooo fearful about the reactions of their own feminist cliques), in an ongoing maximum strength struggle to be a feminist part of a dynamic that reveals the truth and, thus, frees themselves and men from too much obsession with their power over one another.
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These observations are a result of my own experiences and if you'd like more orientation in terms of the over-all discourse, I have found that in the works of people like Paolo Freire and John Dewey, because ALL of life is a life-long learning PROCESS.
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