True. I never quite got the concept of "microaggressions" until feeling myself how modest disapproval can become a fucking burden if voiced regularly by someone you can't avoid. You go from having interests that someone doesn't happen to share to feeling that everything you care about is invalid and you've failed at life.
It doesn't help the discussion that a behavior can be perfectly fine normally but can be hurtful to specific people because of specific things that happened to them. So this is a nuanced problem, which already doesn't bode well for reasonable public discourse. And then we have have assholes who deliberately don't want the discussion to happen because psychologically vulnerable people are a minority and minorities getting harmed is a desired outcome for them.
I think that Cheryl should just take a can of paint and spray those spikes. A rough spray paint job feels appropriate for the style.