I wanted to drop you a note to ask for your help with a day of action, 11/2, to pressure Facebook to take down pages that promote rape, sexual violence, and violence against women and declare these pages a violation of their Terms of Service.
A petition on Change.org, started a few months ago by Florida activist John Raines, has over 180,000 signatures; similar campaigns launched in the UK, Canada, and New Zealand bring the total number up to 200,000. In addition, Sprint, Blackberry, PBS, and other companies have insisted that their ads be taken off pages that activists have flagged as promoting rape and violence.
Facebook’s Terms of Service already ban content that is “hateful, threatening,” or contains “graphic or gratuitous violence,” and the site has also removed inoffensive content such as photos of breastfeeding mothers. However, Facebook is standing firm in their refusal to remove the pages under fire for supporting sexual violence, going so far as to say, “It is very important to point out that what one person finds offensive another can find entertaining – just as telling a rude joke won’t get you thrown out of your local pub, it won’t get you thrown off Facebook.”
Since Facebook finds pages like “Riding You Girlfriend Softly So She Doesn’t Wake Up” entertaining, we’re upping the ante. Tomorrow we’re asking people to tweet at Facebook the names of real pages that promote rape, sexual violence, and violence against women with the hashtag #notfunnyfacebook. The idea is that if more people — and yes, the media — see the bile Facebook is protecting, the site will have to cave to the pressure.
Here is a link to a post Alex DiBranco wrote for Women’s Views on News, who are leading a UK campaign, about the day of action: http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2011/11/notfunnyfacebook-join-the-twitter-day-of-action/
And here are some sample tweets:
- .@facebook “Riding your Girlfriend softly, Cause you dont want to wake her up” #notfunnyfacebook http://chn.ge/r9T2EV
- .@facebook “Let’s have sex.. LOL jk i’m a rapist, were doing it wether you like or not” #notfunnyfacebook http://chn.ge/r9T2EV
- .@facebook “Kicking sluts in the vagina because its funny watching your foot disappear” #notfunnyfacebook http://chn.ge/r9T2EV
- .@facebook “1.5 Million ‘likes’ and I will rape my mom!” #notfunnyfacebook http://chn.ge/r9T2EV
- .@facebook “We’re gonna have sex tonight” “Why?” “Because im stronger than you are” #notfunnyfacebook http://chn.ge/r9T2EV
- .@facebook “It’s Not Rape If You Yell Surprise” #notfunnyfacebook http://chn.ge/r9T2EV
- .@facebook “Whats 10 inches and gets girls to have sex with me? my knife” #notfunnyfacebook http://chn.ge/r9T2EV
We’d appreciate tweets, Facebook posts, and blog posts. Please let me know if you need a quote from us or any of the partner orgs. Thanks for all your help and all the work you do!
Shelby Knox
