How is this article extreme?

To clarify: it seems to me that you're using the term "ultra-feminist" to belittle and to trample the points being made.

How about judging this article by what it says?

As an aside, Twitter's new-ish mute feature solves that problem. If someone you don't like is being retweeted by someone that you do, you can mute the person being retweeted without affecting the other content from the person you follow.

The article itself mentions disliking engaging with moderate voices as an attempt to silence more strident voices, and I get where that's coming from, but some of the people with more strident voices are hate-filled hypocrites.

I see no harm in promoting the thoughtful stuff (like this article) and ignoring the angry noise.

For the record (Twitter was a poor medium for explaining this) I also have no beef with you - I just unfollowed because practically, seeing Shanley's tweets in my feed just makes my life less good by rubbing in my face that such people exist and have influence in the world. I can't do anything about the fact that people choose to follow anger, hatred and fear - but I can at least opt out of seeing those followers across my path.

The mute feature isn't quite enough for this, since naturally people who follow Shanley will tend to retweet other related topics that have the same tenor. So unfortunately the best thing for my blood pressure is to simply unfollow people who have joined this movement.

Which is all a big shame, because I am a fervent believer in equality (gender or otherwise), and am just as violently opposed to people who discriminate against or insult women just because they're women as Shanley is. However, I am equally hostile to people who discriminate against or insult men just because they're men.

Funny, I live with a college-age daughter who is an outspoken and studious third-wave feminist, and has been politically active since she was ten years old. She doesn't talk about radfem at all, or anything close to the "ultra-feminist" caricature. The third wave feminism I listen to constantly is about correcting the limitations of second wave feminism (Gloria Steinem style) and expanding our awareness and acceptance of more fluid gender roles in today's society. Nothing radical about it.

Radfem is more closely aligned ideologically with second wave.

You're misinformed. "Radical" in "radical feminism" doesn't mean, has nothing to do with, "ultra"; it means a very specific strain of ideas, far from third-wave feminism.

Yeah, and every time someone like you objects to them, moderate feminists spring forward to insist that they're "straw feminists", that you imagined the whole thing, and that even thinking such feminists exist proves you really just have an axe to grind against feminism. I've even been accused of attacking a straw feminist for (accurately) criticising the views of someone who was incredibly popular amongst that group of feminists for exactly those views. Even if only a small proportion of feminists hold fucked up views, almost all of them are part of the problem by shielding those extremists from criticism.