Should Facebook Ban Sexist Pages?

[redqueen]

Sexism just is not recognized as a problem by most people, still. No one would dare say racist pages shouldn't be banned... but sexist ones? Well that's still ok and fun and cool, of course, to far too many people.

An online petition is calling for Facebook to change its policy on pages that organizers say promote sexual violence. Jessica Bennett reports on the enduring problem of misogyny online.

(snip)

No, there isn't a ton of concrete data to prove this, which makes it easy to dismiss as whiny. But what we do know is that from 2000 to 2008, nearly three quarters of online harassment complainants were female—and the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. The twisted tale of well-known programmer Kathy Sierra, who was driven offline by threats of rape and violence, is perhaps the most high-profile case of a female blogger being silenced. But there are plenty of other stories. Women have taken male names to avoid being a target for their online musings; still others simply accept the abuse as fact: they think something's wrong if it doesn't happen.

(snip)

But the latest fury over web misogyny has landed in the social networking realm, in the form of an online petition, 188,000 signatures strong, and a UK campaign called "Rape is Never Funny." The protest is focused on a number of offensive Facebook pages that organizers say promote violence toward women, and even rape—pages with titles like "Kicking Sluts in the Vagina" (which has 3,338 "likes"), "You know she's playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleyway" (sic) (with 3,443 fans), and “What’s 10 inches and gets girls to have sex with me? My knife" (which has been removed since the petition launched).


These pages aren't open to the public—a person has to be logged in to see them. And, judging by the titles, they're not written by the most grammatically proficient users. (It's you're with an re, thanks.) Yet while Facebook's Terms of Service ban content that is “hateful, threatening,” or contains “graphic or gratuitous violence,” these pages, as defined by Facebook's community standards, don't fall under the site’s definition of "hate speech." Were the pages encouraging rape, bullying, or violence toward a particular individual—say, kicking the vagina (don't laugh) of that slut Jane Doe—Facebook says it would be a different story. "Groups or pages that express an opinion on a state, institution, or set of beliefs—even if that opinion is outrageous or offensive to some—do not by themselves violate our policies," a spokesman for the site, Andrew Noyes, tells The Daily Beast. "These online discussions are a reflection of those happening offline, where conversations happen freely."

The difference, of course, is that offline conversations don't happen in front of a built-in audience of 800 million users. Facebook has already come under fire this year for refusing to ban Holocaust denial pages—despite, as many commentators pointed out, regularly removing photos of women breast feeding because, as the site put it, they constituted “obscene content." In the case of anti-Semitism, Facebook told The Daily Beast that the site does ultimately end up removing "the vast majority” of the offensive content, “because it's explicitly hateful or threatening." To which the women's organizers want to know: Does Facebook not know all of these things are all connected? "The point that people are missing about this is that it’s not just the titles of the page--it’s the content," says Shelby Knox, the women's rights director for Change.org, which is hosting the petition. "It's perpetuating a cesspool on Facebook for those who would perpetuate real world violence and rape."

More at link.

[iverglas]

1. it seems so simple ...

Replace any of the derogatory words for woman/women with a derogatory word for a member of a racial, ethnic or religious minority, or, I presume, gender minority.

Post a page advocating or describing the same treatment of members of those groups.

Duh.

Misogyny and racism/bigotry/homophobia are different, but they are differences without a distinction in this situation.

Just a point on the terms.

Sexism and misogyny are different. A rough equivalent would be the difference between racialism and racism:

ra·cial·ism
1.
a. An emphasis on race or racial considerations, as in determining policy or interpreting events.
b. Policy or practice based on racial considerations.
2. Chiefly British Variant of racism.

rac·ism
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.


Discrimination and prejudice are different, but "racism" tends to be used in North America to cover both. A practice of not hiring people of a particular race is "racist"; a person who hates people of a particular race is "racist".

But for sex, the former would be "sexist" and the latter "misogynist".

The Facebook pages in issue don't practise or advocate sexism; if they did, that would be pretty much an opinion that should not be suppressed (just like advocating discrimination on the basis of race in hiring). As the Facebook flack said: "Groups or pages that express an opinion on a state, institution, or set of beliefs—even if that opinion is outrageous or offensive to some—do not by themselves violate our policies."

They are misogynist and promote misogyny: hatred of women. That is no longer "stating an opinion". That's where there is no general agreement as to where lines should be drawn in the legal realm. (Canada, for instance, has laws about publicly inciting hatred against certain identifiable groups, including homosexuals but not including women; other countries have laws that cover more than that; the US essentially has no such laws.) That does not mean that Facebook may not draw its own lines, and apparently it does in respect of other targeted groups.

But they go beyond that and advocate violence against women (lurid descriptions that approve such violence are advocating it). Go back to the beginning: would they be tolerated if the targeted group were identified by race or ethnicity or religion? Doesn't seem too difficult to grasp, to me. "Explicitly hateful or threatening"? Um, yeah.

[redqueen]

2. It does seem so very obvious, though, doesn't it?

Excellent, excellent explanation of the difference between sexism and misogyny, an important distinction. Thanks for the clarification of those concepts.