Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Facebook's Woman Problem

Since Bra-Busters was taken down, one of the administrators created a new site, BONER Busters, where, as Fitna tells me, 'Many trolls are bragging that they are reporting our page for porn.' Facebook has recently shut down other sites as well: Amazing Women had their site shut down for posting about the #FBrape campaign; Equality for Women repeatedly had posts removed ; and Femen has had its major accounts on Facebook suspended.

Women in Action Media (WAM) has employed various campaigns to encourage Facebook to change its attitude but in the absence of any real change, WAM began working with advertisers encouraging them to pull their ads from Facebook.

The egregious targeting of feminist sites by Facebook is incontrovertible as is Facebook's sexist approach to its female users. In recent months Facebook has removed photos of breast-feeding women, a woman's mammogram image and various sites for social and political empowerment, dialogue and organisation such as Bra-Busters while allowing for images of women who are beaten, raped, tortured as well as images of teens and children.

Some of the women on Bra-Busters have suggested that all women make a mass exodus from Facebook in the absence of Facebook taking a more pro-active stand towards women's and human rights. Others, such as Rapebook are attempting to tackle misogyny from within Facebook stating: 'We simply ask that FB follow its own rules on hate speech. Nothing more.'

In the absence of radical action by Facebook, we must all seriously question if our keeping in touch with friends and family (and loads of baby animal photos) is worth our passive support of this company's participation in the exploitation of women and children.

by Julian Vigo

Read entire article here: huffingtonpost.co.uk

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