Facebook has a problem with women. That was clear about the time it started to take down photos that showed women’s mastectomy scars whilst leaving images that apparently showed women beaten and raped.
As problems go, it’s been a longstanding one (I wrote back in October 2011 about their housing of rape promoting groups – groups like “Riding your Girlfriend softly, Cause you don’t want to wake her up” – and refusal to do anything about it). It’s also been progressing. As last month’s outcry over misogynistic pages showed, over the past two years horrific (warning: not hyperbole) words have been joined by horrific pictures.
After a targeted campaign by feminist groups, Facebook finally listened. They made a public commitment to improve their handling of gender-based hate.
I wonder, then, why “revenge porn” pages are sitting on the site.
By unhappy accident, I stumbled upon one last week. After less than five minutes of investigation via the Facebook search tool, I’d found 22 more. (Having continued to search over the past few days, it was creepily easy to keep finding new pages.)
Pages with the declared intention to (quote) “Expose all the slags and sluts” and “Inbox pictures of your nude ex and get them back for the bad things!” Want to get back at your girlfriend for leaving you? Upload a photo she gave you in private and let strangers help you abuse her.
It’s been known for a while that there are websites dedicated to “revenge porn”. They’re about humiliation and shaming women for being sexual. And now Facebook is part of it.
On the site’s pages, there’s photo after photo of women in their underwear or holding their breasts. Some are masturbating. One I saw was a woman giving oral sex – a picture that showed her face.
Facebook’s “comment” and “like” functions allow an added layer of sleazy misogyny. With a click, users can rate what they see or write what they’d like to do to the victim. (Examples: “i would smash you in” and “there a boss pear [sic] of tits to sponk all over lool.”)
Under one photo of a woman holding her breasts that showed her bedroom, users proceeded to have a conversation about how she needed to “spend less time in front of that mirror and start cleaning up that room. what [sic] shit hole.” (10 likes). I imagine they lifted that one out of the sexist’s rulebook: while calling a woman a slag, tell her to do more housework.
Whether the victim is named varies. On some pages, there are photos of undressed women and above each – with a chilling lack of comment – is their full name. On others, the photos are anonymous and fellow Facebook users bate the poster to name and shame her.
Many of the pages have a town or city in their title, as if this is a trend with regional affiliations. Disturbingly, it also makes it easier for anyone to identify and find the victims. (The NS has decided not to give any more details, or link to any such sites, to avoid further distress to those featured.)
Holly Jacobs, Founder of End Revenge Porn, tells me that so far she’s seen limited action from Facebook in dealing with the issue. “Several people have told me that after they report pages like [these], Facebook refuses to remove them on account that they are not violating any of their terms of service,” she says. “I’d love for Facebook to eventually recognize that these are essentially promoting violence against women, but I suppose that will take some time.”
Pornography, in and of itself, clearly violates Facebook’s terms and conditions. As such, if you report a page that shows sexual acts or nudity, the explicit content means it should be taken down (though that’s cold comfort to the naked victims in the meantime). But what about the revenge porn pages where women aren’t naked? Many of the victims I saw were in their bra and pants. To the cold wording of terms and conditions, an ex-boyfriend vengefully posting a photo of a woman in her underwear could be no different than a girl posting a photo of herself on holiday in a bikini. If Facebook’s point of concern is nudity rather than misogyny, what happens to the (technically covered) women currently having their image abused on the site?
Or put it another way, does a woman having her image put online to shame and humiliate only matter to Facebook if it shows her nipples or genitals?
If Facebook is serious about gender-based hate, it needs to get to grips with this: clarifying where it stands on revenge porn and dealing with what’s currently festering under its name. Or, as its users stumble across themselves exposed for other’s twisted amusement, Facebook’s problem with women is only going to get darker.
Content from our partners
Related
