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redqueen

(115,096 posts)
Thu Apr 18, 2013, 02:58 PM Apr 2013

Facebook's big misogyny problem

Last edited Thu Apr 18, 2013, 03:34 PM - Edit history (1)

Last week, Laura Bates, of the Everyday Sexism Project, tweeted a message to FinnAir, asking the company if it knew its advertising appeared on a Facebook page endorsing violence against women. The company responded:

....

I doubt that most advertisers are aware of how regularly this situation occurs. For example, this morning, a Duracell battery ad is visible on a group page called "I kill bitches like you;" Sexy Arab Girls, "join our page for more porn videos," was sponsored by the Wilberforce Dinner "Honoring Cardinal Timothy Dolan," and the now-removed page, "Domestic Violence: Don't Make Me Tell You Twice," populated by photos of women beaten, bruised and bleeding, was the platform for Vistaprint.

...

When I spoke to Facebook representatives, they responded quickly and were forthcoming about their policies. Guidelines are clear about harassment, bullying and hate speech – which is why this problem is not about constraining people's "free speech". It's about how mainstream misogynistic norms are embedded, not only in Facebook's interpretations of "free speech", "safety", "humor" and "credible threats", but in the very way their review process is structured.

First, what is notable about cases like Rapebook co-founder Trista Hendren's is the comfort and speed with which opponents resort to violent rape and death threats using misogynistic language. Facebook's guidelines prohibit hate speech, even though hate speech is, in fact, protected in the US by the first amendment. Users comfortable with denigrating women manipulate a review process that does not recognize sex-based hate speech and is not set up to consider context. Specifically, Facebook has no reporting mechanism for considering how a hostile environment (treating rape and violence against women literally as a joke or ignoring content that is viscerally threatening) might affect its female users.

Second, what people like Hendren are protesting is not easily mocked hurt feelings, but systemically tolerated hate, degradation, objectification and marginalization of girls and women, behind which loiters actual violence. Women, acculturated to a world where one in three women will be sexually assaulted (in the US, that number is one in five; for men, one in 77), cannot separate this reality from their online experiences. Domestic violence statistics reflect a similar epidemic. The vast majority of perpetrators in either case are men. This dynamic is reflected in online misogyny.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/18/facebook-big-misogyny-problem


I love Soraya Chemaly.
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Facebook's big misogyny problem (Original Post) redqueen Apr 2013 OP
Right on ismnotwasm Apr 2013 #1
amazing how this is ignored. reality that this effects all of us. and here, we pretend it has no seabeyond Apr 2013 #2
 

seabeyond

(110,159 posts)
2. amazing how this is ignored. reality that this effects all of us. and here, we pretend it has no
Sat Apr 20, 2013, 11:34 AM
Apr 2013

affect. further, it is sunshiney for women.

we know how this conditions people, except when it comes to hatred of women.

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