*Trigger warning*

Starting on May 21, a coalition of more than two dozen organizations — including Led by Women, Action & the Media, The Everyday Sexism Project, and author Soraya Chemaly — are calling on Facebook to end its complicit approval of memes and pages that promote violence against women and gender-based hate speech.

As the coalition explains in an official statement released today:

Specifically, the group demands that the social media giant take three specific actions:

1. Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that Facebook will not tolerate this content.
2. Train Facebook’s content moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.
3. Train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

The message to Facebook is accompanied by a massive social media campaign, calling on advertisers such as Dove and American Express to pull their advertising from Facebook until they can be assured it won’t appear next to content that promotes rape or domestic violence.

Examples of these pages include Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus and Violently Raping Your Friends Just for Laughs. This is not new. Back in November 2011, I wrote about several pages on Facebook, including It’s Not Rape if you Yell Surprise and Kicking Sluts in the Vagina Because it’s Funny Watching Your Foot Disappear. When you combine this with tolerance, or even implied approval, of photo memes that depict violence against women with taglines like, “This bitch didn’t know when to shut up,” it adds up to a long history of a corporate culture that is a willing participant in spreading gender-based hate speech and rape culture.

Indeed, the ubiquitous nature and incredible cultural power of Facebook has been leveraged as a unique tool for rape culture and to promote violence against women. Last month, Retaeh Parsons killed herself after more than a year of cyber bullying following her sexual assault in 2011. Her very attackers posted photos of the incident on Facebook and proceeded to use that evidence to mock and harass her for months on end until, finally, she could take no more and ended her life. And she is not the only one.

That alone would be enough. The very fact that the power of social media sites — Facebook being nearly the king of the hill, so to speak — can be harnessed for such malevolence is a testament to its power to harm. So, when a brand like Facebook allows the “humor” sites like What’s 10 Inches and Gets Girls to Have Sex With Me? My Knife to proliferate, there is a very real consequence to that act.

And let’s be clear. For all its hand-wringing and cries of First Amendment rights, Facebook has a history of acting to remove anti-Semetic, Islamophobic, and homophobic speech. Facebook is a public forum, yes. But it is governed by the same rules and laws that prohibit me from walking into a crowded movie theater and shouting, “Fire!” when there is none. We have Freedom of Speech, but speech is not free.

Further evidence to the misogynistic culture that Facebook is either willfully or indirectly complicit in is the fact that the company has a long history of removing another kind of page and photo memes: That of breast-feeding women. It’s a curious thing that the Facebook will protect the rights of misogynists who want to promote rape culture but not the rights of women who want to promote a biological act which feeds infants.

This is a fight we can win. Facebook is not too big to listen, just ask the UFC. Two years ago, I joined a coalition of organizations to take on the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to get them to enact a code of conduct to address rape jokes and homophobic speech that fighters were proliferating on social media. There was a lot of resistance from UFC CEO Dana White, until advertisers like the US Marines started pulling their ads and support for the organization until they cleaned up their act. Earlier this year, the UFC enacted a code of conduct, and used it to suspend a fighter for transphobic comments. If a brand like the UFC, which has built itself partially on a kind of hyper-masculinity that tends to dovetail into rape culture, can change its ways, so can Facebook.

In an open letter to Facebook, feminist coalition partners said the following:

In a world in which hundreds of thousands of women are assaulted daily and where intimate partner violence remains one of the leading causes of death for women around the world, it is not possible to sit on the fence. We call on Facebook to make the only responsible decision and take swift, clear action on this issue.

It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Be a part of the solution, Facebook.

Photo by Chase Carter via Creative Commons

Read here  the open letter to Facebook

Originally appeared on Left Standing Up.

Ten minutes. I was hitting the ten minute mark of just standing in front of the freezers, seemingly debating whether to buy a quart or a gallon of milk. Or perhaps unsure of which kind I wanted. Skim or whole? Maybe 2%? I had a pensive look on my face.

It’s the look I get when I’m frozen inside. Generally from shock. Often from fear. Almost always after a harrowing experience that’s left me momentarily paralyzed.

My allergies had been just horrific, but I’d decided to brave the run across the street to the little bodega anyway because I’d been out of dishwasher soap and milk and coffee filters for three days. As I walked up the steps to the entrance, two men walked out. Because I’m a woman who’s been trained by society not to look strange men in the eye when its dark out and they look potentially threatening, I didn’t. But they stopped in the doorway and came up close to me, speaking far louder than was necessary. “Whoa mama, look at those tits.” “Daaaaamn. Naw like really dog, daaaaaaamn.” One started masturbating and pushed up close to my face as I stared at the ground, trying to navigate around them. He rubbed himself and licked his lips as he undressed me with his eyes and loudly proclaimed what he’d do to me.

“Guys, stop it.” I said in my tired, exasperated and slightly pissed off voice.

Hollaring back is something I’ve been doing lately, but only from afar. To those men who – in broad daylight – yell at me as I pass by on the sidewalk. From a fairly safe distance I might add. When others are around.

Never before have I fought back – even verbally – to men (plural) who’ve gotten up in my face and harassed me so loudly so late at night in utter isolation.

They were pissed. One pushed me into the doorframe as I tried to pass. Both started screaming at me – “You f—ing ugly a– b—-!!” “Who the f— you think you are?!” “You’ll take it and like it!!”

I got into the store as I heard them trample down the stairs, still yelling obscenities at me. Nonchalantly, I went straight for second aisle, grabbed the soap, and moved to the freezer section.

Where I froze up completely.

And where I now found myself with a slightly pensive, mostly blank expression on my face, just staring. It wasn’t that I couldn’t decide between a quart and a gallon, or whole or skim.  It was that I couldn’t remember what I was looking for. It was that I was paralyzed with fear. After a minute the thoughts flowed, and they only made me more petrified.

They had screamed awfully loudly at me. What if they were waiting for me outside? What if they jumped me from behind the stairs as I came down? I’m carrying my house keys and my wallet – my wallet with my ID, which clearly says I live exactly across the street. What if they simply walked up behind me with a knife or a gun and forced me to open my front door for them? What then?

I didn’t have my phone so I couldn’t call or text anyone. The store owner had gone to the back stock room and wasn’t someone I’d have sought help from anyway. Minutes ticked by and still I stood and stared at the fridge. What was I doing there? Why had I come to the store in the first place? How long should I stay?

More minutes passed. I started to sneeze again, and to sweat.  Finally I looked around and thought: I have to get home. I grabbed the wrong size and type of milk, sauntered to the front, paid for my purchases, and headed to the exit.

Crossing the street, my eyes were like daggers as I took in all the potential warning signs, jumping at every leaf that crackled behind me.

I quickly bolted both my gate and my front door. Sliding down to the floor, I slowly let the tears go.

Why had they had to say anything at all? Why had they had to block my way and masturbate in front of me? Why did they have to yell at me? Why did they have to make me feel so unsafe and so vulnerable and so scared?  Why?

The ironic thing is that I had just returned from a happy hour, celebrating women’s rights and choices and power and freedom with friends and allies. After which I’d given a friend a ride home. We chatted the whole way back about street harassment. About how our male friends – allies though they were – just didn’t understand. It wasn’t just about how often it happened. It was about how often we had to think about it, and how bad it was when it did happen.

Street harassment is about power. It’s about making women feel unsafe and unwelcome all the time. It’s an extension of rape culture that results in making women feel frozen in fear of the “what if.” That fear is what has chained us for so long, its iron grip piercing our skin and invading our minds and making us feel like we’re crazy as we stare and stare at the freezer, waiting for the waves of panic to pass.

An hour later, feeling calmer and more grounded, I look back and wonder why and how it was so bad. Because few such encounters are so bad when you look back on them instead of as you experience them. And now, with the very minor distance of time, I can’t help but wonder about so many women for whom home is not a safe haven. Who wouldn’t have had anywhere to go. Who didn’t have a sister to call immediately afterwards, or a front door to bolt and lock. For most women in the world, their home is the most unsafe place for them to be.

I’m very lucky. I know that. But I’m still angry. I’m still hurt. I admit it – I’m still even a little scared. I’ve looked out my window more than a few times in the last hour, because knowing you’re being irrationally paranoid about such a thing doesn’t actually prevent you from being that way.

Another 20 minutes later, and I realize I’ve forgotten the coffee filters.

But I’m not going back out again tonight.

Photo Credit: Abigail Collazo

It’s hard to accept that sexism is alive and well and that it undermines virtually everything we believe about equality, fairness, and justice.

“Am I doing an injustice to the female members of this school?”

This is the question 16-year old Junius Onome Williams, running in an election for his school’s student body president asked himself recently when confronted with the reality of gender imbalances in leadership at his high school. Williams attends Phillips Academy Andover, in Massachusetts. A New York Times article, “School Vote Stirs Debate About Girls’ Leadership,” threw the campus into heated controversy and forced discussions about why girls don’t think of themselves as leaders, why boys do think of themselves as leaders and systemic sexism. It won’t win us any popularity contests, but some of us call what they are talking about misogyny.* The problem identified by this group of students, a tip of the tip of the iceberg, is male power that excludes females. The hallmark of misogyny, besides gross pandemic violence against women, just happens to be women’s marginalized access to decision making and institutional power.

A letter written by twelve seniors, in Andover’s newspaper explained in an understated way, “Having four female school presidents since the 1973… is embarrassing.” This is, of course, better than our national or state records. The Andover imbalances are just visible outcomes of largely unchallenged and embedded norms in our mainstream culture… globally. It’s unfashionable to say, I know, but this is just Patriarchy 101. Worldwide, women — still more than 50 percent of the population — make up roughly 18 percent of legislators. Earlier today, writing in Foreign Policy Magazine, David Rothkopf described sexism as civilization’s greatest shame: “The underrepresentation of women in positions of power is proof not so much that men still dominate the top of the pyramid as it is of a system of the most egregious, widespread, pernicious, destructive pattern of human rights abuses in the history of civilization.”

And, if you think this is a problem in the Mythical Land of Over There, Warren Buffet took some time out of his busy schedule this week to explain how this works in the United States, “Despite the inspiring
‘all men are created equal’ assertion in the Declaration of Independence, male supremacy quickly became enshrined in the Constitution.” The United States ranks 77th for women in legislatures.

And Rothkopf and Buffet are talking about the obvious things, not the insidious marginalization and small violences that permeate life. According to Miss Representation, 61 percent of students surveyed report seeing or hearing derogratory comments or images of women. In the one year since its inception, the Everyday Sexism Project has been flooded with women’s stories describing daily encounters with sexism. More than 85 percent of women globally report street harassment that inhibits their movement in public space.

Since the NYT‘s article there have been ongoing conversations about gender, off and on line, in school meetings, at dinner, with speakers on Andover’s campus. The overall result, despite frictions, has been a good one: people are talking about sexism and intersectionality, which was not the case before and they are confronting surprising opinions about things we take for granted or assume “everyone” agrees on… like whether or not we live in an unbiased meritocracy.

We do not live in a meritocracy, not even in the most privileged corners of the country where diverse, academically driven kids enjoy access to what might legitimately be seen as unlimited opportunities. This idea deeply disturbs people. Sexism — which is the focus of this article — is a difficult idea to come to terms with if you’ve grown up being told it doesn’t exist. Sexism affects everything: from classroom interactions to gendered safety gaps, from hook-up culture to the pay gap; from parenting to health and bodily autonomy. To some, it is shocking, saddening and enraging. To others, it is unbelievable, uncomfortable and conflicting.

Students have created a group, Feminism=Equality, a Facebook page, and they are organizing speakers and discussion groups. This, of course, means that they are encountering a whole new level of casually accepted everyday sexism and backlash, but (don’t say anything) what critics who say things like, “You’re a girl, and the teacher is a feminist, so it’s an easy A,” perversely don’t seem to realize is that sexism isn’t actually a disincentive to feminists.

“We have three goals,” explains M. J. Engel, 17, a senior from Wisconsin who ran for president last year and is a founder of Feminism = Equality. “One, to raise awareness that sexism is an issue at all at Andover; two, understanding why it’s an issue of systemic oppression and not a girl versus boy thing; and three, cultivating overall gender equality through social and cultural change, not just leadership positions, but in campus life.”

The question posed by the young man above was a good one, but it needs tweaking. “Am I doing an injustice to all the members of my community?” is the question we should be asking, because, without a doubt, the gross underrepresentation of women in leadership — whether in government or business or religious life, negatively affects us all. It is revelatory though. His question shows a laudable concern with others as individuals. It also demonstrates his grappling as an individual with how to manage privilege. But, it highlights a serious and recurring problem: when people talk about systemic injustice — which is what feminism’s fight against sexism and misogyny are — those who benefit from that injustice often feel that are being blamed as individuals. As one student interviewed in the Times said, some boys “felt attacked for simply being boys.” Instead of hearing, “Our systems are prejudiced,” people hear, “You are prejudiced.”

Consider what these studentsare saying because, frankly, it’s far more nuanced and deeply thought out than ideas I’ve heard expressed by much older people:

“The access has been achieved, but the equality in terms of roles has not,” said Jing Qu, 18, a senior from Illinois. “Girls are scared to be overly ambitious because they’re scared of the potential backlash.”

“I find it shocking that this is still an issue,” said Daniel Feeny, 16. “I’ve grown up with feminist values. It’s surprising to me to get here and see women say they are still treated unfairly.”

“Fewer girls try to get ahead because of a mentality in our culture that says boys have better leadership skills,” said Farris Peale, 17, who ran for office. “But you have to put yourself out there.”

This controversy at Andover, now played out in national media coverage, has transpired during the same month in which a new study designed to investigate why a gender gap in political ambition exists, and how large it is, Girls Just Want to Not Run, was published. Among the study’s most telling findings were that twice as many boys as girls envision themselves as leaders and that boys are seven times as likely to plan to run for office by the time they get to college.

“Right off the bat, it’s not a meritocracy for girls,” said Maia Hirschler, 19, a senior told the New York Times. “They’re starting behind because we don’t associate leadership qualities with them.”

Role models are important. This isn’t even a remotely controversial fact, just a conveniently ignored one. In terms of leadership, a study released, also this month, documented how significant even just seeing a woman in power is to inspiring self-confidence in other women. Our traditions, media, education system and language, if left unexamined and unchanged, will continue to teach our children that only men, usually straight, white ones, can lead and make decisions on behalf of everyone else. That’s who “gets” to lead.

Take public life alone: in the U.S., there are 5,193 public, outdoor statues. Guess how many of those are of men? 4,799. We have no women on our everyday currency, no public holidays marking any significant effort made by any woman in this country. We have no visible, national, public acknowledgement of the fight for women’s rights, equality, parity, liberation — name your term. In schools, women’s activist and feminist movements are briefly mentioned in core curricula, marginalized in “women’s history months” and usually framed along the lines of “the vote was given to women,” like a nicely wrapped gift instead of something they marched, starved and went to jail fighting to get. Imagine not knowing who Thomas Jefferson or Martin Luther King are. Our kids learn about John Adams, but not about Abigail Adams‘ entreaties that he “remember the ladies” when considering voting rights. They learn about Thomas Paine, but not about Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. They grow up to be people who don’t know Ada Lovelace, but can’t wait to see the upcoming Linda Lovelace biopic. When President Obama mentioned the Declaration of Sentiments in his inaugural address, most people probably wondered if he’d been paid by Hallmark. Sojourner Truth? Is that an indie band? What we don’t teach children about what women have done in our past is ridiculous.

But, it’s more than reassessing history and storytelling. Ileana Jiménez teaches feminism at the high school level. She works to engage kids not just with history and theory, but with everyday activism. “Why don’t we talk to primary school children about gender roles and gender expression at a time when these roles are first reinforced?” she explains, in an article that includes a terrific list of suggestions for educators and parents. “Why not teach middle school students to be more mindful about the sexualization of women and girls in the media and how these images prime their buying habits and influence how they eat (or don’t eat)? Why aren’t educators teaching high school students how men can stop rape?”

Once you start thinking about these topics you realize that the unbalanced power is inseparable from the violence that permeates women’s lives and defines the insouciance and casual acceptance of everyday sexism.

In Andover senior Madeline Silva’s words: “This is about how sexism is ingrained in the attitudes of students. A marker of successful change would be that a girl running for president wouldn’t have to think anymore, ‘I should run with a guy, because I can’t run for office with another girl, because I’d never win,’ or ‘I shouldn’t be too aggressive, or someone will think I’m a bitch.’” She knows exactly what she’s talking about considering that last year, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was called “a man’s bitch,” by a political opponent, of who then went on to lecture her on sexism and misogyny. Gillard responded with a speech that changed the dictionary definition of misogyny to include “entrenched prejudice against women.”

It sounds strange, right, to associate the idea that an imbalance in leadership as the visible symbol of pervasive oppression and hatred with students in a pristine, bucolic corner of North America.

We better start. While our boys and girls may lack role models, students like these, Jimenez’s and others like them, are filling our void and I am grateful for their work.

* According to The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology, Misogyny is defined as: “a central part of sexist prejudice and ideology and, as such, is an important basis for the oppression of females in male-dominated societies. Misogyny is manifested in many different ways, from jokes to pornography to violence to the self-contempt women may be taught to feel toward their own bodies.”

Cover Photo credit: Tumbrl And You Have to Give Them Hope

This post was cross-posted with permission from Huffington Post

Location:  5th and Mass Avenue NW, DC
Time: Night (7:30pm-12am)

I was walking from my house to the Gallery Place Metro Station. I had to stop at the corner of 5th and Mass until the light changed. A teenager (probably between the ages of 16-18) asked me if I had a dollar. I usually dont give out money on the street, well not not to younger people who dont appear to be homeless. But I happened to have 4 quarters in my jacket pocket so I did. I was on my cell phone at the time (talking to my brother) and the guy starts telling me that I have a sexy voice and he noticed that I started to get nervous so he started to get closer to me and asked me “what is wrong with me and if I’m ok” hes completely violating my space and starts to follow me.

Read more stats via Stop Street Harassment; www.stopstreetharassment.org

I asked him to leave me alone and that I wasn’t interested. He still follows me on his bike asking me whats wrong with me. I stayed on the phone with my brother, to feel safer and I said to my brother I should get a cab instead of going any further to the train station. The guy rode his bike on another street by then…but as soon as I hailed the cab the guy on the bike rode up to the cab and basically chased me in there and I had to get in the door before he could try to open it, he was still saying things to me.

This was around 8:20 pm, it wasn’t completely dark yet and there were plenty of people outside. The cab driver noticed that the guy chased me to the cab (while still on his bike). This should not be happening.

Emphases by CASS.
Submitted 4/27/13 by Anonymous

This piece was originally posted on the Collective Action for Safe Spaces and it’s cross-posted here with permission.

Note: A) This post contains strong language and graphic descriptions. B) This is long, because this topic is complicated and difficult and cannot be reduced to 800 words. C) There is not “overkilling” this topic.

There is a photograph being shared in Facebook of a woman cowering in a corner, eyes downcast, as large man standing in the foreground swings his fist at her head. The caption reads, “Women deserve equal rights. And lefts.”

AT&T, American Express, Cubesmart and Ancestry.com are among the page’s sponsors today.

This image has been reported to Facebook repeatedly. Their response is: “Thanks for your report. We reviewed the photo you reported, but found it doesn’t violate Facebook’s Community Standard on hate speech, which includes posts or photos that attack a person based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or medical condition.”

The “joke” isn’t offensive.  What is offensive is fact that the infliction of pain on girls and women –pain inflicted because they are female – is entertaining and acceptable. As with rape humor, domestic violence humor reduces girls and women to their body parts and communicates that we are violable for other people’s purposes and entertainment.  Helpless and full of shame. At the same times, this content perpetuates harmful stereotypes about what makes men “real” – violence, control, infliction of pain on others, lack of empathy, never weak or helpless.  This is our culture of cruelty and domination.  Its how we teach boys and girls to be.  Not Facebook’s problem, I know.

But, imagine a photograph of a gay or African American man standing under a tree with noose hanging from a branch and some white guys standing nearby laughing with the caption, “Hanging out!” Because I don’t know how this is different.

A few months ago, a Facebook spokesperson explained that, “Having the freedom to debate serious issues like this is how we fight prejudice.” Maybe this images and others like it are biting social satire? An entrée into incisive debate about a controversial social problem.  Here are parts of the debate (let’s call it, “When is raping, beating and brutalizing girls and women funny?”) over this image taken from more than 300 comments (photo has more than 5,000 likes).

• “I don’t care what anyone says if a woman deserves to be hit than hit her. there a difference from being a beater and slapping a bitch when she needs it. there probably wouldn’t be some many loud mouth bitches or sluts if they got slapped up when needed.and keep in mind I’m a woman saying this.

• “And same goes for a man.sometimes people need to be hit.”

• “It’s a joke. Everyone knows beating up a wife/husband is wrong.”

• “Stop with this shit Women already have more rights then men so stfu.”

• “Feminism at this point is the fat kid who wamts both cake and pie and can choose one so they cry and whine till they get both. Its to support women to the equal status as men yet they treat guys as unequal. Want to be equal then treat both sides the same.”

• “im not a girl… but they deserve = rights.. if i known that guy id kick hes ass…”

• “Equal rights are equal rights, bitches can’t be picky about what they want and don’t want for them.”

• “Not the worst thing I’ve seen on the internet. Pretty silly tho. Domestic violence happens to men too, and pretending it’s just a female problem furthers the stigma men have in speaking out against the violence they experience. So for all the guys who are like “Hyurr durr, this is funny, feminists can gtfo”, remember: you are entitled to equal rights, lefts, and up-one-side-down-the-others, too.”

• “Dont hit women. Ignore them. Its a lot worse then hitting them.”

• “You know… not all women are whores, I mean you’ve got to know that because abusing women or children is not right!”

• “You ‘feminists’ need to pull your heads out of your asses and accept that you deserve a beating if you fucking provoked it, stop acting like such victims all the fucking time.”

• “IF YOU’VE EVER BEEN IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP and you are reading this: Don’t worry, you are not alone in believing that this is false and horrible. If Facebook had a “DISLIKE” button, there would be far more dislikes than likes. Abuse is always wrong. Demand better of yourself and others. Love, forgive, and don’t accept violent behavior in others.”

What is interesting is that rape and beating women up is controversial, normalized and “debatable,” in a way that targeted violence against other marginalized and minority groups no longer is to most “reasonable” people. That’s why I keep making the point that this isn’t about censorship or law, but about norms. Pro and anti comments were fairly equally split between self-identified male and female commenters.  That’s why I keep making the point that this isn’t a battle of men versus women, but worldviews.

People are so inured to images, tv shows, movies, music, memes and advertising that use violence against women for entertainment that most people don’t even think about it as real. And while maybe 12 celebrities today can make pointed rape jokes in ways that reveal the horror of rape’s reality or the ugliness and pain of living with daily domestic violence, most people can’t. Instead, content like this usually mocks victims and glorifies abusers and violence in general. Facebook makes no such distinction.  So here, as elsewhere, violence against women and girls becomes a fiction, a fantasy, something they watch as they rack up points in a game, enjoy a drink or eat dinner.  This isn’t “offensive,” it’s an atrocity.  While we do everything possible to hunt down two violent young men terrorizing a city, we willfully ignore the daily violence that people are subjected to in their own homes every day in acts of individual terrorism.

The only way to tear this culture down is to object to it every time you encounter it.

Facebook moderators contact authorities about real instances of violence and crime every day.   As others and I have written before, “Not real” content depicting rape and the physical abuse of girls and women is often categorized by Facebook as [Humor] and frequently surfaces in the news. For example, a recent photograph of a man carrying a limp girl with the caption, “ Rohyphnol: When Traditional Dating Methods Just Aren’t Cutting it!” or the page “I Love the Rape Van.” Facebook has a detailed and thorough process for handling complaints about this sort of material and is on the record saying that it is not in the business of defining and changing culture, or interested in policing free speech. This is false. Facebook does both of these things simply through the process of reviewing and editing pages created and by having a reporting structure for complains. The company has actually been lauded for its approach in other situations.

Of course, it may simply be that objectionable pages and content appear in Facebook in proportion to the rate of their production by users.  The point remains however:  Facebook has terms, conditions and guidelines.  By default that makes Facebook and arbiter and interpreter of norms whether it cares to be or not.

Last week I wrote a piece in the Guardian, Facebook’s Big Misogyny Problem, about what has been happening to the administrators of a page called Rapebook, and an Everyday Sexism Project initiative to raise advertisers’ awareness that their ads are showing up in Facebook on pages featuring violence against women. What happened after Rapebook perfectly illustrates why it was created in the first place.

“At first, people started posting pictures of women and young girls being raped or beat up and commenting on the page saying things like, “I will skull-fuck your children,” explains Trista Hendren, one of the page’s founding administrators, who became the target violent threats and daily graphic abuse on the site.

Within days of its creation, the site was the target of trolls, Facebook users themselves, posting crude commentary, links to violent pornography and rape, Facebook pages depicting rape, including of babies, rape “humor,” malicious software links, and rape and death threats (for example, “ fuck that. hit that hoe,” and “Domestic violence is a 2 way street you hypocritical cunt.”) Personal information was shared online. Hendren’s picture was used to create rape memes.  After months of working closely with Facebook, to mixed results, Hendren stopped using Facebook and Rapebook admins have shut the page down.  She is now working with the FBI.  This is not about “debate.” It is about silencing. Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher and professor of law at University of Chicago, squarely identifies similar incidences as gender-based hate crimes.

As I wrote last week, a common retort to all of this is, “This is the Internet. It’s offensive. If you don’t like it, leave.”  But, Facebook is NOT “the Internet.” That’s why it fascinates me – because it illustrates how norms work and how they can be challenged. Facebook has principles and community standards that create a reasonable expectation in users that it will enforce rules it itself has established in an unbiased manner.

In summary, what I said last week is this:

First, Facebook’s guidelines prohibit hate speech review process that does not recognize sex-based hate speech and its case-by-case approach cannot assess how an overall hostile environment (treating rape and violence against women literally as a joke or ignoring content that is viscerally threatening and desensitizing) is threatening, unsafe and harmful to users (male and female).

Second, girls and women, acculturated to a world where one in three women will be sexually assaulted (in the US, that number is one in five; for men, one in 77), cannot separate this reality from their online experiences. Domestic violence and homicide statistics reflect a similar epidemic.  This dynamic is reflected online, where more than 75% of targeted online abuse is aimed at women. Women experience and assess safety differently from men and Facebook’s policies do not take this into account.

Third, users employing sex-based hate language and images manipulate Facebook’s system and lack of introspection regarding sexist norms. Over and over images and language reducing girls and women to their body parts, their appearances, their pornographic and rape potential are deemed not credibly harmful and threatening, when studies demonstrate repeatedly that they are. In addition, almost all of the content related to rape and domestic violence jokes features women as victims, which perpetuate rape myths and deny the reality of male victims of abuse.

Fourth, what people like Hendren are protesting is not the result of easily mocked “hurt feelings” or “offensiveness,” but systemically tolerated hate, degradation, objectification and marginalization of girls and women, behind which loiters actual violence.  Minimizing their concerns (i.e. “they’re only trolls, it’s not a credible threat”) is a symptom of the very problem they are challenging. Threats provoke anxiety and change behavior – which makes them credible.

Fifth, it’s important to note that people who supported Rapebook’s efforts were unwilling to publicly show their support in Facebook, for fear of similar targeting and abuse. Hendren’s leaving Facebook, Rapebook’s closing and the hesitancy of people to support them publicly are actual losses of free speech for these users (overwhelmingly women) as the result of bullying, harassment and misogyny. Women and their male allies who are are disproportionately negatively harmed.

A new Facebook page was recently created, Sheryl Sandberg Lean-In And Remove Misogyny from FB. This page, like Rapebook, is an example of individual women doing exactly what Sandberg prescribes in her new book, Lean-In, but encountering overwhelming systemic obstacles and biased norms that prevent them from succeeding. It is not Sheryl Sandberg’s job to purge the world of misogyny or to singlehandedly equalize cultural norms being employed at Facebook. However, she is at the center of a perfect storm: In addition to being Facebook’s COO, and the author of Lean In, a corporate-power-feminist manifesto, Sandberg is on the board of VDAY. V-Day’s intent, ending violence against girls and women globally, is seriously undermined by Facebook’s unbalanced approach.

Individuals can communicate directly with Facebook by registering complaints using the Facebook option on every page, by engaging in “debate” when they encounter content that is hateful and by writing and speaking openly about these topics.  Facebook, I’d like to think, is doing the same.

Cover Photo via Memegenerator

Tweet Chat: On Monday, April 8, from 1-2PM ET Fem.2.0 will host a Tweet Chat, as part of the International Anti-street Harassment Week  with special guests, Shawna Potter, Executive Site Leader & Melanie Keller, site leader of Hollaback! Baltimore  to discuss  the unique experience of street harassment that the LGBT individuals face. You can join the conversation at #EndSH.

I was talking to a friend on Facebook last week and, when he asked me what I was doing, I told him I was writing something for International Anti-Street Harassment Week.

He had no idea what I was talking about.

I sent him a link to the website and showed him some pieces I had written before on the topic of street harassment. And he was really surprised. He’d never seen public harassment framed this way and wasn’t familiar with the concept. He certainly understood that it happens, but not to the degree that I was describing.

My research in particular focuses on the street harassment of men who identify as gay or bisexual – research I undertook for my women’s studies MA thesis that attracted 331 responses from men around the world. What I found, and what should concern every one, is that about 90 percent of the men I surveyed said they are sometimes, often, or always harassed or made to feel unwelcome in public spaces because of their perceived sexual orientation.

I’m not sure that I was surprised by my friend’s response, though.

Of the 227 men who answered the question on my survey asking them to define street harassment, only 12 referenced sexual orientation, among other identity categories, as a reason for harassment. Since street harassment has been popularized as a largely gender-specific form of violence, it is possible that men do not conceptualize it as something by which they could possibly be affected – a thought process that is documented in gay and bisexual male domestic violence research. Many men view their experiences of victimization as inconsistent with their male identity – but this shouldn’t be so.

Men who are perceived to be anything other than heterosexual (and cisgendered) face harassment from straight (and other gay/bisexual) men who operate in homosocial spaces, distancing themselves from and adversely reacting to anyone whose masculinity falls short of comporting with what they view as appropriate. They face sexualized harassment from other gay/bisexual men (usually older men, according to my research participants, but certainly not exclusively). They face harassment from a lot of people and, like the street harassment of women across all identity categories, it’s not fair.

The men I conducted follow-up interviews with disclosed a lot to me, sometimes experiences (including rape) they hadn’t ever disclosed to anyone before. And after talking to them, that’s the biggest take-away: it really, really isn’t fair.

I don’t want to live in a world where my queer brothers and sisters feel compelled to hide physical evidence of their sexual orientation, to disguise any legibility of difference. Too many men involved in my research shared that they concealed particular parts of themselves in public to pass as heterosexual. This process is draining – emotionally, mentally, and physically. As is the perpetual fear of experiencing harassment.

Approximately 71 percent of the men who took my survey said they constantly assess their surroundings when navigating public spaces. In addition, 69 percent said they avoid specific neighborhoods/areas, 67 percent reported not making eye contact with others, and 59 percent said they cross streets or take alternate routes to avoid potential harassment.

I can’t say that I experience street harassment every day, as I know many women can. I don’t have to experience it to feel its affects, because I am always afraid. I’m afraid because it’s possible, because it’s happened before and will happen again, and because we live in a society where it’s unfortunately normal and expected.

And that’s why International Anti-Street Harassment Week is so important – because, like my friend, not everyone is familiar with how systemic this all-too-common phenomenon is and how many people it affects in very real ways. The more of us who speak out, the more attention it will get. It’s about collectively amplifying each other’s voices, about standing in solidarity and saying that this isn’t okay. It’s about human rights, and creating social spaces where all humans are free from this form of public harassment.

Patrick Ryne  McNeil is a feminist, a non-profit worker and an anti-street harrasment advcoate. Follow him @patrickryne

Photo: Credit Meet Us On the Street

Wir haben uns so an sexuelle Übergriffe jeglicher Art im Alltag gewöhnt, dass wir manchmal vergessen, uns dagegen zu wehre

“We have become so accustomed to sexual assault of any kind in everyday life that we sometimes forget to defend ourselves against it.” This comes from German blogger Maike Hank who was quoted in a Forbes article about street harassment—and the problem in Germany is looking like the same problem that exists in the US and Canada. The problem is the inability of society to let a woman walk down the street feeling safe. Hank’s blog tells an all too familiar story of street harassment where she is jostled by three young men saying, according to my translated version of the article “stupid things”. No physical violence is committed, but encounters like that cause a woman to have to carry around fear like the season’s hottest fashion accessory. I don’t have to explain to most women what it is like—because you all have lived with it.

We already live in a world where girls are kept in at night, told not to dress too revealing, and to always go out with friends. I, like many other women, had the fear of sexual violence instilled into me by parents, teachers, police officers, and friends.  It is wise to not go out alone, and to look after one another. But sexual violence is happening on a scale beyond what these measures could hope to remedy and that is because the victims are not the problem.

In Germany, Hank chooses a place to live based on her ability to avoid the subway, where women are groped. In Belgium, film student Sophie Peeters videotaped herself walking down the streets of Brussels to document the catcalls and insults she faced daily. In France, the Minister of Equality or Territories and Housing Cecile Duflot was catcalled when she stood to speak before the National Assembly.  Anonymous women in forums speak out about being groped in France, Cairo, Ireland, Turkey, London, Japan, and the list goes on-and-on.

Street harassment is too easily dismissed as cultural affectation, or as overreaction. Women are policed when they react out of frustration. We’re gaslighted. We are told to settle down, and not take things so seriously. It makes me feel like we are obviously not getting the message through the receiver.

I recall this past summer, I wrote as my facebook status: “I just want to go one fucking day without someone yelling at me from a car.” Incoming comments were filled with sympathizing, and a (I’m sure) well-intentioned man brought up that in Cuba in his experience was that the women dress-up and, “damn well expect it to be noticed”. So the issue must just depend on who you are and where you are right? Nah uh.

Look, I like being noticed too. I like compliments, and I don’t mind turning heads or stopping conversations mid-sentence. I don’t, however, like being told that I either look like or am a hooker/slut/bitch/skank/whore or that my tits are fake. And it’s not just me…most women don’t like being talked to like that.

Hank’s experience is felt not only by her in Germany, but by women around the world. Here is an issue commonly miscategorised as political correctness and dismissed as sensitivities of bleeding heart liberals. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cited “non-contact unwanted sexual experiences” those which do not include touching or penetration and can be things like exposing genitals, public masturbation, or street harassment as affecting  an estimated number of 40,193,000 victims in the United States alone. That number includes both men and women victims, and male victims reported predominantly male attackers.

The prevalence of street harassment is well-documented international problem, and it causes symptoms that do not the best of either gender. As a result of being made to feel unsafe constantly, women may ignore men they see on the street, they may be afraid; some women develop angry reactionary responses to males and vis-versa.  Legislation is only going to help women and men so much, what really needs to occur is a worldwide recognition that the right to notice or admire someone is fine, but there is no right to comment, to grope, to masturbate in public in front of someone because they are walking down the street. This should be obvious, so why isn’t it?

Danielle Paradis is a short story, poetry, and non-fiction writer with a day job in developing educational materials. She is also a graduate student and a feminist. She enjoys serving up a fair amount of sass by arguing with strangers on the Internet. She is a post-it note aficionado. Read her eponymous blog [www.danielleparadis.com] Or follow her on Twitter.[https://twitter.com/DaniParadis]

Photo credit: bestarns via photopin cc.

What makes a relationship healthy?  What are the warning signs of abuse?  How can you help someone you know is in an abusive relationship?  If you’d like to start these conversations with yourself or someone you know, now’s the time because February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month.  The stats show that 33% of teens in abusive relationships aren’t talking about the abuse, so we must all do something to support teens.  It’s estimated that 1.5 million high school students experience abuse from a partner in one year.

On Monday February 11, we hope teens, parents of teens, young adults, and all who care about ending dating violence will join Fem2pt0, Spark Summit, and the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence for a #HealthyLove tweetchat.  Our chat will be from 1-2pm EST, and we’ll be sparking a dialogue on healthy relationships and healthy sexuality for teens and young adults.

We hope you can join us and share your crucial stories, advice, knowledge, and overall enthusiasm!  Just use the hashtag #healthylove to join us.

Photo credit: Alfonsina Blyde » via photopin cc.

In December, a Yahoo! Group for DC’s Cleveland Park neighborhood, posted a message detailing a rape allegedly committed by an Uber cab driver a few days prior. According to the post a 20-year-old woman who used Uber,  an “on-demand” cab service accessed via a smartphone app, was attacked, knocked unconscious, and raped by her driver after receiving a ride to her home in Cleveland Park. The incident, which has received only limited coverage, occurred the same week as the devastating gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman on board a bus in New Delhi, India. The woman, who was raped by six men over the course of an hour, died two weeks later as result of her injuries. Many have been quick to attribute the New Delhi rape to India’s rape culture. Yet the Uber incident is just one of an estimated 200,000 cases of rape and sexual assault that take place each year in the U.S., a shocking statistic that exposes the scale of our own rape culture.

The CDC estimates that 1 in 5 American women will be raped in their lifetime. In December, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) announced that reports of sexual assaults in DC have skyrocketed, rising from 174 in 2011 to 263 in 2012. (Although it is important to note that these numbers may hint at increased reporting, which is to be applauded.) Just last week, a DC man was convicted of posing as a taxi driver  in order to abduct and rape women passengers over a three-year period. In my time with the grassroots, DC-based anti-street harassment group Collective Action for Safe Spaces, I’ve seen the reality of sexual assault on almost a daily basis. Since it was founded in 2009, CASS has received hundreds of user submissions detailing sexual harassment and assault in the DC area. Often, these submissions incite floods of comments in which readers break their silence and share similar experiences. When photographer Liz Gorman wrote for CASS this past summer on her sexual assault while walking in a “nice” DC neighborhood, women in DC and across the country sent her hundreds of emails and messages in which they shared their own stories of assault. Later this summer, a woman identified as “Salma” wrote to CASS that reading other women’s stories of sexual assault empowered her to chase after her attacker when she was groped on the escalator at DC’s Union Station metro.

These stories underscore the unfortunate reality that the assaults committed by the Uber driver in DC and the six men on the New Delhi bus are not isolated events, neither in DC nor New Delhi. Rather, these cases highlight the high cost women pay when faced with a lack of safe options for travel. The past six months alone saw frightening examples of the threats women face to their safety while traveling. In September, a man threatened to kill a woman after she turned down his advances on the Los Angeles subway. In October, a bystander caught on camera a man sexually assaulting a female subway passenger. Even amid these cases, experts say sexual harassment and assault on mass transit systems are overwhelmingly unreported and generally pass under the radar of police.

As I’ve seen at CASS, when women report sexual harassment or assault while walking, many suggest taking the bus or train. When women report sexual assault aboard buses, many suggest calling a cab service. So what options are left for women and other vulnerable individuals when neither walking, using public transportation nor hailing a cab keeps them safe from sexual violence?

Luckily, there are solutions. CASS has been raising funds for over a year to secure funding to implement RightRides DC, a program which would provide free and safe late-night car rides every Friday and Saturday for women and LGBTQ folks. The program, which currently operates in New York City, was founded in 2004 in response to an increase in local late-night sexual assaults on women. In the last nine years, it has provided safe rides home for over 5,000 women and LGBTQ folks in New York City, including 1,000 people in 2011 alone. Driving teams consist of a driver and navigator, one of whom is always female. The program receives an average of 30-50 requests for rides home every weekend, casting it as a clear solution to a strong need for safe and trusted transportation. RightRide’s success is also evident in its plethora of awards and honors, including a Union Square Award for its efforts to improve the city, a Susan B. Anthony award for excellence in furthering women’s equality, and a Mayoral Proclamation, “RightRides for Women’s Safety Day” from Mayor Bloomberg.

The RightRides’ motto, “Because getting home safely shouldn’t be a luxury,” couldn’t be more true today. RightRides DC would offer the kind of positive, proactive response to sexual violence desperately needed in our nation’s capital. As Alexis Marbach recently wrote, the recent high-profile cases of sexual assault offer the chance to garner momentum to support solutions to preventing violence against women. It’s time we got to work.

Photo credit: Giacomo Carena via photopin cc.