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Facebook rape page campaign: four demands

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Jane Osmond
WVoN co-editor

Facebook’s decision to take down the ‘alleyway‘ page on November 4 is certainly worth celebrating.

But WVoN and the other campaign organisers are continuing to put pressure on Facebook to address the issue of other pages and posts that advocate sexual violence against women.

Although its stated mission is to be a safe community where people can communicate and share ideas, it is marginalising women and rape survivors by failing to come out against this type of content.

Global organisers have therefore put together a list of demands that Facebook needs to address in order to ensure that similar pages are taken down and new pages prevented from springing up:

Facebook should:

1. Make a public statement that rape is never acceptable; that promoting sexual violence and violence against women is repugnant; that Facebook will remove content that advocates rape, sexual violence, and violence against women; and that the terms of service/community standards will be updated to specify this.

2. Address in a public statement that the previous “pub joke” defense was poorly stated, explaining that alleging humour does not give a free pass to promote any hate content; that Facebook does not consider promoting violence against women or sexual assault to be a joke or funny; and that such content will be held to the same standard as any violence against any other group or individual.

3. Be transparent about the content monitoring process; to state publicly if and how many pages are removed that promote sexual violence or violence against women; and to establish relationships with experts in sexual violence and violence against women who will help identify content that needs to be removed.

4. Update its terms of service/community standards to specify that: “Content earnestly promoting violence against women or sexual violence violates Facebook’s terms of use and will accordingly be removed whenever reported.” In addition to the internal reporting system, provide a public contact email for users to register complaints about content that violates the terms of service/community standards, that will acknowledge receipt and respond with a decision on whether or not to remove.

Please do tweet, repost and share these demands with your networks: also given that children as young as 13 have Facebook pages, you could email your concerns to the following organisations that are named on the Facebook Family Centre page:

Childnet International

Connecting Safely

Family Online Safety Institute

National Network to end Domestic Violence

Wired Safety

As always, the full story is on http://rapeneverfunny.wordpress.com

Campaigning organisations:

US: change.org

New Zealand: National Council of Women of New Zealand

Canada: Rape is no Joke

  1. Facebook is a social networking site where all sorts of opinions are expressed, some are serious opinions that may be thought of as a sort of positive propoganda message where others are just spoof pages that are jokes. I think you are targeting the wrong thing, simply telling an inappropriate joke online is not serious. The vast majority of people do not mean harm by it and it is not their actual view on the subject, it is just a joke.
    This is just one more crazy censorship, it’s going to happen elsewhere online and obviously in the “real world”. I think people need to calm down about it, it’s really not worth all of this hype, that will simply draw more attention to the joke pages and make it more serious than it needed to be in the first place.

  2. Kat – what you are failing to see is that the rape jokes perpetuate a culture where women are raped and sexually assaulted every day all over the world. For more info on rape culture see here: http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/20/outing-rape-culture/

  3. Jane – I understand that rape is awful, but these jokes are not going to change, just not having them on facebook will not stop them being told/thought up.
    I just think that putting more and more restrictions on something as huge as facebook will make people leave it and find a new place to put these things. At least on facebook it generally stays light hearted and people who do not wish to read it don’t have to, why look for things like that if you disagree with it? This is why I think highlighting it in the news in the first place is ridiculous, it has just drawn more attention to the thing you are trying to “ban”.

  4. Kat, Facebook encourages children as young as 13 to put up pages – as such it has responsibility to check what is on its site. It simply is not good enough to say that violence against women is humour. As for people going elsewhere to put such vile posts as the one below (do you really think this is lighthearted?) – then let them.

    Q: Which is better to rape four month old boys or four month old girls ???
    A: it dosent matter as long as their dead!!!’

    Funny huh?

  5. Let’s keep it real. As we said in our press release of October 24, 2011 (http://rinj.org/release/oct24_2011.htm) the “Alleyway” is the least of our concerns.

    Some of the internet content we are opposed to is about real rape, not humour. There are gangs of males organizing rave rapes by hunting out LG’s (little girls); prepping them for the big party; drugging and raping them at the party while the events are video taped; and then publishing the videos on Facebook and elsewhere on other sites. It seems to take us forever to get these pictures and videos off Facebook.

    Knowledge of these type of events inspired the two co-founders to create RINJ.org, not jokes.

    We are talking about threats; eventual attempts; and actual rapes that are planned directly or indirectly on Facebook. We are not opposed to jokes about anything. We are opposed to sexual assault of women and children. we are opposed to rape.

    We know what we are doing and we know what we are talking about or we wouldn’t be volunteering our time. We ask for all manner of input but we remain steady on course in our goal of opposing sexual assault and rape in any incarnation, particularly the prolific endorsement of pro-rape internet content and the blatant profiteering on this misery brought to women and children.

    Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) sets out: …[Freedom of speech and expression may] “therefore be subject to certain restrictions” when necessary “for respect of the rights or reputation of others” or “for the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals”

    In short, do as you will, say what you want, but harm no one.

    Rape is harmful. Rape is the fastest growing crime on planet earth.

    Rapes are planned in Facebook groups, carried out and the bragging rights are later claimed in pictures and videos subsequently published on Facebook.

    There is nothing about rape that is a joke although many people from among the ‘great unwashed’ seem to be laughing and many others seem to be screaming “freedom of speech”.

    Who are the “great unwashed”? In the last five years the income of 3% of the population rose 245%. Income of 97% rose a pittance of 18% while costs rose 28%. The “great unwashed” is the have-nots, the ones losing their homes (or already lost them); the working poor or those headed for that status. Who calls them the “great unwashed”? The 3% enjoying all the wealth (government officials, politicians, politicrats, system embeds, corporate leaders and so on). All of these people in that top 3% make their wealth on the backs of the 97%.

    So many of the financial elite in modern society are people who are making millions from advertising placed on free internet content, rife with rape; kiddie-porn; child molestation; female objectification; sexual assault; sex trade; and worse. That’s free content supplied by malcontents, sociopaths, perverts, rapists, paedophiles and losers. Where? Social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube.

    You have all the freedom of speech you want until you do harm.

    As global population passed the seven billion mark climbing rapidly toward eight billion, the disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is enormous. Anger over this gap in prosperity levels is on the rise. Something else that is on the rise is rape and the objectification of women and children. Why? Because in an overpopulated world, women and children have become far less important. Pro-creation is not a priority; might even be a curse in some areas of Earth; and the rights of women and children are at risk among empathy-lacking two dimensional people.

    At a time when some experts suggest the rate of sociopathy might have hit one out of three persons within certain cultures on Earth, the number of empathy-lacking people is seriously on the rise.

    We see angry, hateful people disrespecting the rights and safety of women and children everywhere but for some reason, Facebook, an ungoverned corporation without moral compass and with only greed as its motivation, has, in cavalier fashion, come to bring grave risk of harm to 51% of the globes’ population, it’s women.

    That harm is what we see and seek to end. 

    We are RINJ Campaign (Rape Is No Joke) http://RINJ.org and we are here to stay.

  6. This is not a bout Jokes. Some of the internet content we of the RINJ Campaign are opposed to is truly about actual rape, not rape jokes. Did you know there are gangs of males organizing rave rapes by hunting out LG’s (little girls); prepping them for the big party; drugging and raping them at the party while the events are video taped; and then publishing the videos on Facebook and elsewhere on other sites?
    Learn more at: http://rinj.org/release/

  7. Congratulations Jane, you are running a truly inspirational campaign.

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