Facebook's big misogyny problem

[Starry Messenger]

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

Sounds familiar... *coughcoughcough*

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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.

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How is this not a loss of free speech for these users (overwhelmingly women), resulting from bullying, harassment and misogyny? The people left feeling comfortable at Facebook are rape apologists and those who create content glorifying the debasement of women.

A common retort to all of this is: "This is the internet. It's offensive. If you don't like it, leave." That is correct: speech on the internet can be offensive and the right to be offensive is vital to democracy. But Facebook is not "the internet". Facebook is a company with principles and community standards that create a reasonable expectation in users that it will enforce rules it itself has established in an unbiased manner. Facebook is perilously close to allowing "freedom of speech" to be used as a defense of unjust actions that are clearly intimidating and silencing female users.

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