I actually agree that in context, the passage is every-so-slightly better. But it's still an extremely offensive thing to say! If you were a woman in the bay area, and the man responsible for your performance reviews had written that "most women in the bay area" are "useless baggage you'd trade for a box of shotgun shells", would you expect to get a fair evaluation?

There are other situations—Teen Vogue, for instance—where I think the world greatly overreacts, but this doesn't strike me as one of those cases.