Onlymystory

castielofasgard:

I just learned about the #FBRape Campaign through a tweet that crossed my feed. Considering all the amazing people I know on social media who are committed to fighting against inequality and outright hate, I think this absolutely needs to go even more viral and as fast as possible. Facebook places advertisements next to any manner of post, including posts that promote rape, physical trauma, and more against women. Facebook is currently refusing to change their policy about allowing posts like this (yet another reason I’ve left Facebook) and many advertisers are calling it ‘good enough’ to simply report offensive pages. But without pulling their advertising, they indicate continued support of Facebook’s policy to allow sexist hate speech. I urge you to support the campaign in insisting that companies pull their advertisements. As women, we represent the largest buying force out there and it’s time we insisted on integrity from the companies we support.

I’ve quoted portions of the campaign’s letter to Facebook below that explain what the purpose of this campaign is. 

An Open Letter to Facebook:

We, the undersigned, are writing to demand swift, comprehensive and effective action addressing the representation of rape and domestic violence on Facebook. Specifically, we call on you, Facebook, to take three actions:

Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that you will not tolerate this content.

Effectively train moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.

Effectively train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

To this end, we are calling on Facebook users to contact advertisers whose ads on Facebook appear next to content that targets women for violence, to ask these companies to withdraw from advertising on Facebook until you take the above actions to ban gender-based hate speech on your site. (We will be raising awareness and contacting advertisers on Twitter using the hashtag #FBrape.)

These pages and images are approved by your moderators, while you regularly remove content such as pictures of women breastfeeding, women post-mastectomy and artistic representations of women’s bodies.  In addition, women’s political speech, involving the use of their bodies in non-sexualized ways for protest, is regularly banned as pornographic, while pornographic content – prohibited by your own guidelines – remains.  It appears that Facebook considers violence against women to be less offensive than non-violent images of women’s bodies, and that the only acceptable representation of women’s nudity are those in which women appear as sex objects or the victims of abuse.  Your common practice of allowing this content by appending a [humor] disclaimer to said content literally treats violence targeting women as a joke.

Although Facebook claims, in a narrowly-defined defense of free speech, not to be involved in challenging norms or censoring people’s speech, you have in place procedures, terms and community guidelines that you interpret and enforce.Facebook prohibits hate speech and your moderators deal with content that is violently racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic every day. Your refusal to similarly address gender-based hate speech marginalizes girls and women, sidelines our experiences and concerns, and contributes to violence against them.  Facebook is an enormous social network with more than a billion users around the world, making your site extremely influential in shaping social and cultural norms and behaviors.

Facebook’s response to the many thousands of complaints and calls to address these issues has been inadequate. You have failed to make a public statement addressing the issue, respond to concerned users, or implement policies that would improve the situation. You have also acted inconsistently with regards to your policy on banning images, in many cases refusing to remove offensive rape and domestic violence pictures when reported by members of the public, but deleting them as soon as journalists mention them in articles, which sends the strong message that you are more concerned with acting on a case-by-case basis to protect your reputation than effecting systemic change and taking a clear public stance against the dangerous tolerance of rape and domestic violence.

In a world in which hundreds of thousands of women are assaulted daily and where intimate partner violence  remains one of the leading causes of death for women around the world, it is not possible to sit on the fence.  We call on Facebook to make the only responsible decision and take swift, clear action on this issue, to bring your policy on rape and domestic violence into line with your own moderation goals and guidelines.

There are also links to other articles that have further information. Please be advised. These articles have some harsh truths in them and as such, have the potential to be very triggering. I’ve tagged with a trigger warning, but know that the honesty of the articles may be too much for you. 

The Guardian 

Miss Representation (With a great letter from Candypolis, a company who heard about the campaign and withdrew their advertising in support).

XOJane (Laura Bates-Starter of the campaign explains why. This article has severe triggers.)

If you wish to go directly to knowing how to help, follow this link. 

I will not be surprised at all if the themes of Heart of Darkness are worked into this season of Teen Wolf but I will want to bang my head against a desk and scream because I thought I was past this book after my literary theory class