Protesters have failed so far in their approached to Facebook to shut down several Facebook pages allegedly supporting rape.
“You know she’s playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleyway” and “Raping your mates girlfriend to see if she can put up a fight” are examples of some of the explicit pages that have caused outrage. The concern is that violence against women will be encouraged by these sites.
Campaigners have cited Facebook’s own Terms of Service, which prohibits content that is “hateful, threatening” or contains “graphic or gratuitous violence.”
“Facebook could and should do more to stop [the pages] from popping up in the first place and to swiftly remove those that do exist,” reads a petition listed on change.org. “Facebook needs to clarify that pages that encourage or condone rape ... are in violation of their existing standards.”
Despite this pressure and the fact advertisers have pulled out of their site, the social networking agency has refused to censor these pages.
According to the BBC, a Facebook spokesman 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.”
“These online discussions are a reflection of those happening offline, where conversations happen freely in people’s homes, in cafes and on the telephone.”
The page administrators of “You know she’s playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleyway” argue the site is nothing more than “a joke between...friends” and is not in anyway condoning rape.
One of the administrators wrote: “You people think that this is about rape do not get this joke because they are small minded people. one again for those feminists...this group is not about rape! no were in this have I ever said one thing about rape. so please those feminist who have nothing better to do with there lives but to post anti rape photos on this groups wall...[expletive]!”
John Raines’ petition “Demand Facebook Remove Pages That Promote Sexual Violence” has received 180,875 signatures so far.
Angi Becker Stevens wrote a letter entitled “Dear Facebook: Rape Is No Joke,” on Ms Magazine Blog, saying, “It would be absurd, of course, to suggest that anyone goes out and commits assault as a direct reaction to a Facebok page. But in reducing sexual violence to nothing more than a joke, they reflect and perpetuate the idea that women are objects to be used for the sexual satisfaction of men. Countless seemingly small things work together to uphold that kind of pervasive misogyny.”
“It would be naïve to imagine that the removal of these pages will in and of itself end rape culture. But that doesn’t mean the appropriate response is to simply accept them,” she added.
“Facebook is certainly not responsible for the prevalence of sexual assault in our society,” Stevens said. “But those in a position of power at Facebook are responsible for the choice they make to either condone or condemn the use of sexual assault as humor. Silence, as the saying goes, is acceptance. And Facebook’s refusal to take sexual violence seriously is exactly the kind of complicit silence that rape culture thrives on.”