UPDATE:
Thankfully, Facebook have caved to the #FBrape campaign and thus I am no longer in a rage- my rage is still preserved below though because I’d rather not delete it.
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Remember the boardgame Guess Who? You know, the one you used to play as a kid?
Because we all looked exactly like that when we were kids.
Well the game always had less women than men (tut tut) so lets take that spirit several steps further and imagine that instead of people’s faces in each slot there’s some kind of violent and misogynistic image instead:
“Mummy, do you have the card with the dead woman?”
“How about the incestuous one where the girl was raped by her father?”
Hopefully I’ve now successfully ruined your childhood.
The end of ‘Boy Meets World’ ruined mine.
Anyway, lets take that reealllyy fucked up version of Guess Who and merge it with another board game- Cluedo.
You know the one where the Tories killed social justice with divisive legislation in the society?
Wait, I have another: The one where Sgt. Pepper shot the Beatle with a gun outside his apartment.
Shit, he’s mad, and his music is immortal- I’m fucked then.
Well in case you don’t know of the game/live in a cave/are too young to be reading this then the aim is to find the murderer, their weapon and where the crime was committed. Now lets go back to insanely fucked up Guess Who? The board, where all the sexist and violent crap is can be facebook because that’s where you will find most of that shit.
http://www.womenactionmedia.org/examples-of-gender-based-hate-speech-on-facebook/
You’re damn fuckin’ right Nic Cage.
Now facebook’s problem is well-documented so anything I say on it is just a drop in the ocean but you can read more about all that stuff below:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/18/facebook-big-misogyny-problem
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/an-open-letter-to-faceboo_1_b_3307394.html
So we have our faces of sexist violence and misogyny and we have our board that’s full of them. Now to merge with Cluedo we need the culprit. Now the where and the what with is easy in this case- on facebook and with their ridiculous support of that kind of content.
The links above already talk about how facebook’s rules and regulations do nothing to sort out the issue but when you read it like that you may just be inclined to think that its an error on facebook’s part- this stuff if slipping through the radar if you will but that is not the case.
No less than 5 minutes ago did facebook just state the following about a picture that had been reported:
Note that the owner listed there is apparently a troll- I will do a blog post on trolling in the future to discuss things like this. Anyway- the image does not fall under the category of “photos that attack a person based on their… gender” in facebook’s mind.
So what is the photo then?
Firstly, “Chokeslammed” (yes, I’m starting there) and capitalised too? Is the maker of this actually 13 years-old!?
Ah, I see.
So it’s a picture that condones violence, actually shows the results of it and aims that violence specifically at a woman. Facebook doesn’t consider it in breach of its violations and thus believes that it is the kind of material that a 13 year-old should be able to see.
If I was viewing material like that from as young as 13 and seeing that it had however many ‘likes’ or whatever it would quite possibly become normalised to me and that is a scary fucking thought.
So why do facebook allow it then? Their guidelines concentrate specifically on “a person” and in most cases this is likely enough- if someone insults you, the user, personally, based on your gender etc. then you can report it and they will remove it. In cases like this though, no individual is being targeted- there is the child in the picture but who is she? She is certainly not the one reporting the picture anyway. Does this then mean that no-one is being targeted? Of course not- it means the exact opposite- the whole female gender is being targeted and it seems that facebook either can’t recognise that (which makes them blind or seriously stupid) or they don’t care about it. (that’s where my money is)
The reason that I believe they accept and thus promote and encourage this kind of behaviour is because it still breaks their guideliness and they allow it anyway- “you will not post content that: is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence”. That is a blanket rule that does not apply itself specifically to attacks on individuals. There can be no doubt that the picture they’ve only just approved breaks at least three of those rules, I’d say it breaks them all aside from pornography. You could at least assume then that facebook is lax as hell with what could be considered pornography as well then?
NNNNOOOPPPEEEE, they are strict as hell when it comes to that, they’ll block a picture over nothing, literally nothing:
HOW IS THAT PORN!? and that’s just one example- if you have a facebook account (still? why!?) you’ve likely seen how giddy everyone gets when there’s an explicit image that hasn’t been removed yet- its like a fight on a school playground or something, which is understandable- its not like porn is freely available on the same device they are using to check facebook or anything…
That one isn’t from the official site but it may as well be.
Now facebook can do what they like: at least in the U.S. anyway they’ve been given the thumbs up from the Government due to the first amendment.
“DATS CLOSE TO DA SECOND AMENDMENT, YEEEE-HAWWWWW.”
Massive companies pay facebook so that their adds can be used on the site, (we’ll come back to that) facebook, like any other big corporation have a responsibility here and they are simply refusing to meet that. Worse yet- most people still aren’t aware that this is happening- they believe that facebook follows their rules but evidently they do not. As far as I’m concerned facebook are being deceitful- they know that by being strict and stringent on nudity that they can get away with keeping the supposedly humorous (though many of them don’t even try and hide under the guise of comedy) posts that are nothing short of vile. Why do they continually defend content like this? I don’t have an answer, its simply unbelievable.
So our ‘where’ and ‘what with’ is facebook- so who in the end is responsible? Most people’s first thought is that the buck lies with whoever posted the material- or maybe whoever made it, as its rarely the same individual, what about whoever liked it or commented in support of it? All of these people should take part of the blame but it can’t end there- facebook allows this so they too are accountable and those who support facebook despite this are also accountable- the reality is that everyone is responsible for things like this if we allow them to continue.
I simply ignored these things at first myself when I used facebook, I assumed facebook would remove such content- I was wrong to make that assumption. This attitude stems beyond the individual though- it applies also to the companies who pay facebook and essentially promote the content that facebook supports.
Companies like BSkyB and Dove either ignore the issue completely or have specific pages removed which, as they damn well know, does absolutely nothing. The kicker is that the only reason they even do that is because people are spending their time constantly bringing this to their attention and actually having to explain to the companies why it is a terrible idea for them to be giving money to facebook. Everyday Sexism (@EverydaySexism) is at the forefront of this and you can check out how hard people work trying to stop companies from funding facebook’s hate.
Thankfully, some of this doesn’t fall on deaf ears- companies have ceased doing business with facebook because of this issue and have likely gained new customers for it. Companies like Dove- whose whole marketing campaign is based around supposedly empowering women, simply don’t give a fuck about the problem. The excuse that you’ll see from these companies time and time again is that they do not condone the material and that it is not their fault it is there. Facebook is a free site- these companies pay facebook to continue, these companies are directly responsible. Their adds should be placed next to the offensive material that they “do not condone” because they are the ones paying for it to be there. What company would place their ad. in the “rape and murder of women” magazine? (which I’m hoping doesn’t actually exist) The answer is none and yet that’s what much of the content on facebook is.
Game Of Life was a cool boardgame right? The wheel in the middle and everything…
So we blame the individuals involved, we blame facebook and we blame the companies who associate themselves with facebook. Sadly though, there’s more people to blame. While facebook may be one of the most extreme cases there are but there’s examples of misogyny, sexual violence etc. all over the net and removing all of it would be virtually impossible. On facebook alone, removing individual pages does very little- what is needed is a change in their regulations and an honest approach from them, but across the whole we cant and we shouldn’t have regulation like that. Facebook should but we can’t control the internet overall. The ultimate cause of all of this lies in our society.
I refuse to let old memes die!
When Everyday Sexism isn’t busy trying to fix facebook they are showing the state that our society is in- its extremely sexist and its shocking because people like myself thought that attitudes like that were dead, long dead. This isn’t the case though, in fact its so engrained in society that people of all ages and genders are blissfully unaware that they are contributing to it.
Be it a parent buying their child a toy that’s blatantly sexist (check out @LetToysBeToys for more on that), maybe a teenager using sites like Lad Bible because either rating a girl’s cleavage or posting your own cleavage to be rated is such a normal thing in today’s world. (though its your choice of course) – Check out the #CleavageThursday hashtag if you want to know that I’m not just making shit up here. Maybe its the attitude that everyday sexism is a compliment or that it’s just how guys are or any other bullshit – its all still around today and none of it should be.
Scotland Yard is my favourite ever boardgame- I recommend the shit out of that.
My reason for writing this is not to provide a catch-all solution for these problems- I can’t do that, its not to bring attention to the issue either because so many others have already done that, heck, that’s how I found out about all this. The reason I’m doing this is to say that we mustn’t tolerate it, we shouldn’t ignore it and we certainly shouldn’t support it. If I ever have a child and I find even the slightest suggestion that they are going down the road that those who post those things on facebook are down then I will lock them in a room and make them play Guess Who? and Cluedo (the normal kinds- don’t worry) all day until they realise that I’m not kidding around- none of us are.
The outrage is real because the problem is real- facebook and the other corporations involved need to realise that and so do the people who post and support sexist violence and misogyny in any form. I’d lock them all in their own room full of board games that they’d have to play by themselves until they stop BEING ASSES because its the only way they’ll learn. (Its not but the board game business could use some help right now.)
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Now that’s just cruel Hasbro, NOT AS CRUEL AS SEXIST VIOLENCE, but still… cold.
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