A while ago I de-friended someone when I saw they had joined this group. When he messaged me to ask me why I took him off my friends list, and I told him, and he said not to be such a "uptight feminist bitch." #rapeculture
@Keep it cool: Charming. Who knew that being anti-rape was such an extreme feminist stand to take? Here I thought it was just a, ya know, common human decency thing. But I guess he's right. It's really funny when people are raped, and anyone who can't see the humour in it should just lighten up.
I know I shouldn't say this, but anyone who joins a group like that and thinks rape is soooo hilarious and no big deal, really needs to be raped.
I wonder if it occurred to any of these jackasses that maybe some women on their FB friends list have actually BEEN raped and might not like to see something that is "pro-rape" popping up on their screen? Maybe even women they are close with? Idiots. #rapeculture
I am a University of Sydney student, and I came across this group - in March - and reported it to facebook (I didn't realise it was a college thing and didn't report it to Paul's) - it didn't come down.
If you read the other article about college culture in the Herald, you'll see evidence of all kinds of horrific stuff like this happening at our residential colleges - the same college has a bar, which had graffiti saying 'she can't say no with a cock in her mouth' on the wall for weeks before being taken down. #rapeculture
@ausfeminista: I should add also that there is now a fb group created for people to talk about the problem, which was quickly populated by college students offended at the suggestion that there's a rape culture at our residentials, and who wanted the name changed from 'Usyd students discussing college rape culture' to 'Usyd students discussing college PR problems' as though this were a question of college reputations rather than, I don't know, the very real threat of sexual violence women are faced with on campus. #rapeculture
@ausfeminista: Well done you for reporting it!!
I'm a graduate from Sydney University and one of the residential colleges. They are closed institutions - students are encouraged to form an exceptionally tight knit community and will defend each other and their college to an almost ridiculous point. This has some beautiful repercussions, I have friends for life across the nation and my college allegiance will remain with me. But it also means dealing with problems within the community are exceptionally difficult. And there are problems (huge problems) but each college is different. The college I went to has been co-ed since the 1960's which means while it still has gender issues they are very different to those brewing in single sex or colleges that have recently gone co-ed. (My ex-master David Russell is the one speaking out now.)
And the issues go beyond sexual violence towards women. In my college their was a horrible hyper-macho culture that many of the men felt obliged to live up to. While women certainly cop the brunt of this negative culture, like most problems based around gender issues, it affects guys and girls and straight/gay/bi students at the college.
So each college has its own culture to tackle.
And the other issue is that it's not just a college problem. This is a University-wide, Sydney -wide, Australia-wide problem. Rape culture is a serious thing. The boys who are starting these groups are (*generalization ahead*) from very wealthy backgrounds, they're the elite of Sydney. They didn't pick up these attitudes in College. They just found a place where they think it's safe to express them. That's the highly terrifying thing.
@clevernamehere: You are a champ. I will dedicate the next hour to hating the world and reporting as many of these as I can. After that I want a glass of wine and a Nora Roberts novel, dammit. #rapeculture
@clevernamehere: Good luck there. There are several anti-Israel sites that call for "another Hitler", "let's jihad the Jews!", "can we kill another 6 million?", "peace will reign when the Jews are wiped off the earth" and a ton of racist speech. (all of which, unsurprisingly, has a ton of grammatical errors)
I've reported, and NADA. I think that the internet is just a breeding ground for psychopaths, finally getting validation they wouldn't have seen otherwise. #rapeculture
@deeemer: Their removal policies are iffy [www.cnn.com] but since they just removed a similar group, I think the chances are pretty good that some of these will be removed if a bunch of people report. #rapeculture
@yvanehtnioj: Okay, one hour later and here's what I've learned:
1. Do you have a stupid group that you think people won't be interested in? Find a way to name it so that the acronym is R.A.P.E. and you're instantly clever! Good job idiots!!
2. A disturbing number of Hahahaha Rape! groups have high school / secondary school kids as creators.
3. The worst offenders are at the beginning of the list, as you work through you get to many more Stop Rape and Men Against Rape and Rape Survivor groups. I hope this is because the shitty ones are newer, and that they're newer because they get banned.
4. A lot of Yawn Rape and [Animal] Rape and other things are supposedly cute. You can tell because there are a bajillion of these groups. Har har.
Worst offender was a group called "I rape" with this description: If you catch someone from across the room and rape them, you can join I Rape.
If you've been caught, you have to leave the group.
And the recent news was: Nick-1, brunette-0
So, obviously I would like to murder that person a lot.
Which leads to my question: the reporting format lets you report either the title or the basic info or the recent news or the wall posts, etc. So I wasn't sure if I should report pages for everything, or pick the most obvious and move on. In the interest of covering a lot of ground I chose the latter, but I'm not sure if it was the most effective.
And because there was one single site that made me laugh out loud, I'll leave you all with this: [www.facebook.com]#rapeculture
What foul attitudes these boys have. While we're at it, could FB please get rid of those "It's not rape, it's surprise sex" type groups. Everytime someone I know joins one, another FB 'friend' bites the dust. It's actually a very successful way of weeding out all the dropkicks from my high school. #rapeculture
There's a lot more pro-rape BS all across facebook groups... and problem is facebook lacks the monitoring to control it and the reporting framework for users to indicate how an entire group (from posts to notes to photos) constitutes "hate speech."
That said, we could organize flash-mob type net activism to report groups for abuse... maybe let's make Nov 17 at 7pm EST "reporting on rape culture hour"... and everyone with a feminist conscience and a facebook account could log on, search pro-rape groups, and start reporting with "rape culture" as the line in the "additional information" part. Anyone interested? Suggestions? #rapeculture
@Sir: I just put what I could manage at the top of this post. Based on what happened with the urban dictionary definition of cockbibs and how I think Facebook reviews groups, I don't think it will take a flash mob, just a few complaints. The problem is no one complains. You can see even on this thread, people drop friends but don't think to report.
I went through the first 100 rape groups (some of which are just in bad taste), the first 40 rapist groups (again, some are just bad taste) and the first 10 "surprise sex" posts. If 20 people who read this thread report the ones they find objectionable, I bet they will be gone soon.
I'll leave it to someone else to link to the other 500 rape groups and the other 125 surpise sex. It took me 30 mins to go through 150ish groups and find the ones that aren't offering support, reporting as I went. #rapeculture
@Sir: It might be a good idea to report some of the individuals also. Like the dude who said, "I told my ex it was 'surprise sex!'" Some people come pretty close to admitting criminal activity. Hopefully they're actually just full of shit. #rapeculture
From the ABC link: "Facebook furore: The college says steps have been taken to express disapproval."Wow, way to take decisive action, St. Paul's. Perhaps they're among the campaigners for a "Dislike this" button so they can comment online. The dean says "We would condemn utterly any matters that derogated from the value of women." Let me help you there, Reverend. Replace "matters that derogated from the value of" with "public statements in support of criminal sexual assault against" and at least then we're dealing with reality, not PR. Does Facebook also consider rape merely something that diminishes the value of women? Not so sure; so far I'm inclined to side with others here who have posted that the administrators have to become aware through complaints from others before they can take action. But couldn't certain words be flagged, and those sites eyeballed by a living person to see whether they're appropriate or not? #rapeculture
Sadly unsurprising. One can only hope that the names of these individuals are being kept on record for future reference or even better if they are listed publicly as supporting this digusting group. If their group was in the public domain then there is no reason why they cannot be publicly named and shamed. FB has removed the group but have the accounts of these arseholes also been suspended permanently? #rapeculture
I looooved FB when I started - I could talk to my friends in Israel and San Francisco and share South Park clips with my brother. I used a nickname and only listed my high school and colleges, no graduating year, and only accepted friend requests from people I knew I was going to talk to.
Well, I changed it to my real name when a couple friends I contacted didn't respond for a long time, then figured out it was me and laughed that they would have responded a lot sooner had they recognized my name. Not three days after putting my real name, an ex boyfriend I had to threaten with a restraining order and that got escorted off my high school campus for following and threatening me in the hallways TRIED TO FRIEND ME. I am completely freaked out about it. He can't see my profile, but just the idea that he would recognize my name nine years later and think I would want to talk to him just icks me out and makes me worried he'll find out I moved back to town and try to talk to me. #rapeculture
@Gnatalby: She is the greatest artist in the history of ever. Sorry for the crappy picture quality on the vid--she's made the original/not live version not available to post. #rapeculture
I've seen so many hate groups on facebook, this doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I've been thinking about reporting a group lately about criminals under the age of 14 that's so filled with hate speech, racism and calls for violence, it's disgusting. I don't know if I should, it's like, what's the point anymore?
@sarasasa: I think you should definitely report it. I think FB relies a lot on those kinds of things being reported, and less on finding it themselves. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't want to take it down if they knew about it. #rapeculture
@sarasasa: You should. I don't think Facebook is any paragon of virtue, but I doubt they'd let something as egregious as a pro-rape group as explicit as this on their site if they had known about this. I could be very naive, but I would like to think that had someone in the FB administration seen this, it would have gotten taken down. But it's possible that it just wasn't flagged, for a really long time. I have a hard time blaming facebook for what it's users do if facebook is unaware of their actions. Once FB is made aware, if they don't do anything within a reasonable period of time, then facebook sucks.
If it turns out FB knew about this group and did nothing, I'll be highly disappointed. And will want to boycott the companies that advertise on facebook, to show my dissatisfaction. But my boycott will only work if I make sure that FB and their advertisers are aware that I'm boycotting, and why. I don't know how to do that. I don't buy Nestle chocolate anymore, but Nestle doesn't know that because I haven't sent them a letter. I suppose I should get on that, actually. #rapeculture
@RiloKilo and Cimorene: I agree completely, I don't think Facebook was aware of this group, they probably get millions of daily reports. I meat, what's the point, they're like gray hairs, everytime a group is closed, 7 more appear. It just feels so futile. #rapeculture
@sarasasa: In my experience, FB does deal with reports in a timely manner. Someone set up an account in my name with a rather malicious intent and the account was closed two days after I reported it.
Other groups might pop up afterwards, but take a stand report the one that offends you. If you don't, how can you ever complain about FB's policies/groups again? #rapeculture
I've been debating for quite sometime whether to get an account at Facebook or not. All my friends have one, and it would be a great way to keep in touch with relatives and the like. However, this definitely made my decision for me. I will NEVER have a Facebook account. #rapeculture
I don't normally do this, but I am going to give Facebook the benefit of the doubt here and say that I don't think the long lag time before the page was shut down is indicative of FB condoning rape. It's far more likely that they have lax or sporadic check-ups on content and this one was missed. I manage my employer's website, which is a teensy fraction of the size of something like Facebook, and I missed a link once that had expired and changed into a site with some decidedly NSFW content, until someone brought it to my attention (which was pretty damn embarrassing, I must say). It happens. It definitely makes Facebook look bad (and they should probably review to their content management process) but it is not necessarily indicative of their stance on sexual assault. This doesn't mean they think rape-as-public-sport is acceptable. #rapeculture
@brokenscope: Yeah, I'm sure that as soon as it was reported it was taken down. Now the problem is that we live in a society where people routinely report pictures of breastfeeding for being obscene, but this shit can go on for a year with nary a complaint. Seriously, world? Srsly? #rapeculture
@Cerridwen: I had the same reaction as you when I read that they were complaining about Facebook taking a few months to find this and report it. Three months or whatever is pretty fast when you consider that Facebook probably gets thousands, if not millions, of reports of bad Facebook groups every day. That's not even to count the ones they have to ignore, where the reporter misreads the Facebook policies or is reporting an okay group out of spite. And even after they delete a group, they have to keep an eye out to make sure it doesn't get re-created. I'm not surprised it would take them a few months to notice this one. There are so many, one can likely assume the Facebook staff probably didn't even see this group until someone took the time to report it.
I mean, I've seen whole groups of Facebook users dedicated to reporting hate groups of certain stripes. I'm a member of one that looks out for homophobic groups, and a new group to report gets posted pretty much every day. And Facebook has only been able to remove about five of the ones we've targeted. I'm sure they're pretty swamped with these requests.
@Cerridwen: Ditto, The pictures of breastfeeding moms are often left up for months as well. They aren't out there looking at each group or picture, they do respond to complaints.
I'm MUCH more upset at the people who participated in the group. #rapeculture
@yvanehtnioj: My profile was disabled less than an hour after someone reported me for posting a photo of a shirtless man. Because you can see his bare hip it suggests that he may have been nude but it showed nothing more than that. After several days and several emails, my profile was reinstated with a warning and they removed the photo. I have seen countless truly obscene photos of women on FB and it makes me crazy that a those photos and a pro-rape group would not be reported but a shirtless man and a woman breastfeeding are considered unacceptable content. #rapeculture
Hopefully the Herald will publish the identity of these shitstorms; they went public with their pro-rape stance so they can't hide behind any privacy laws.
That way, all the pro-rape fuckery will be out in the open and it wont be quite as easy for these fine citizens and leaders of the future to leverage daddy's connections into a sweet law or finance job. #rapeculture
There was a feature on, I think, Gawker, that detailed the history, personality and proclivities of the inventor of Facebook, whom I believe still possesses some controlling ownership interest.
Based on what I read, although I am horrified, I cannot say, particularly given the other things I keep seeing and seeing and seeing these days, that I'm surprised. #rapeculture
11/09/09
11/09/09
I know I shouldn't say this, but anyone who joins a group like that and thinks rape is soooo hilarious and no big deal, really needs to be raped.
I wonder if it occurred to any of these jackasses that maybe some women on their FB friends list have actually BEEN raped and might not like to see something that is "pro-rape" popping up on their screen? Maybe even women they are close with? Idiots. #rapeculture
11/08/09
If you read the other article about college culture in the Herald, you'll see evidence of all kinds of horrific stuff like this happening at our residential colleges - the same college has a bar, which had graffiti saying 'she can't say no with a cock in her mouth' on the wall for weeks before being taken down. #rapeculture
11/09/09
11/09/09
I'm a graduate from Sydney University and one of the residential colleges. They are closed institutions - students are encouraged to form an exceptionally tight knit community and will defend each other and their college to an almost ridiculous point. This has some beautiful repercussions, I have friends for life across the nation and my college allegiance will remain with me. But it also means dealing with problems within the community are exceptionally difficult. And there are problems (huge problems) but each college is different. The college I went to has been co-ed since the 1960's which means while it still has gender issues they are very different to those brewing in single sex or colleges that have recently gone co-ed. (My ex-master David Russell is the one speaking out now.)
And the issues go beyond sexual violence towards women. In my college their was a horrible hyper-macho culture that many of the men felt obliged to live up to. While women certainly cop the brunt of this negative culture, like most problems based around gender issues, it affects guys and girls and straight/gay/bi students at the college.
So each college has its own culture to tackle.
And the other issue is that it's not just a college problem. This is a University-wide, Sydney -wide, Australia-wide problem. Rape culture is a serious thing. The boys who are starting these groups are (*generalization ahead*) from very wealthy backgrounds, they're the elite of Sydney. They didn't pick up these attitudes in College. They just found a place where they think it's safe to express them. That's the highly terrifying thing.
11/08/09
To that end, I just searched under groups for rape and found the following:
No idea if this is an in group joke or what [www.facebook.com]
Group is fine, comments are fucked up [www.facebook.com]
"Joke" [www.facebook.com]
"Facebook rape" [www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com]
(there are a bunch of these groups)
Rape Islam [www.facebook.com]
Bro Rape [www.facebook.com] (again, there are a bunch of these)
Rape Club [www.facebook.com]
We stand for rape [www.facebook.com]
Where mutants rape you [www.facebook.com]
I don't even understand [www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com]
Rape Squad [www.facebook.com]
Anal rape [www.facebook.com]
Team Rape [www.facebook.com]
Rake Rape [www.facebook.com]
Team Rape [www.facebook.com]
Free Rape [www.facebook.com]
I only made it through the first hundred and forty, but there are a bunch that are either questionable or flat out fucked up.
Groups with the word rapist in their title include these winners:
[www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com] #rapeculture
11/08/09
[www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com]
[www.facebook.com]
I only made it through 10/135 #rapeculture
11/08/09
11/08/09
I've reported, and NADA. I think that the internet is just a breeding ground for psychopaths, finally getting validation they wouldn't have seen otherwise. #rapeculture
11/09/09
11/09/09
1. Do you have a stupid group that you think people won't be interested in? Find a way to name it so that the acronym is R.A.P.E. and you're instantly clever! Good job idiots!!
2. A disturbing number of Hahahaha Rape! groups have high school / secondary school kids as creators.
3. The worst offenders are at the beginning of the list, as you work through you get to many more Stop Rape and Men Against Rape and Rape Survivor groups. I hope this is because the shitty ones are newer, and that they're newer because they get banned.
4. A lot of Yawn Rape and [Animal] Rape and other things are supposedly cute. You can tell because there are a bajillion of these groups. Har har.
Worst offender was a group called "I rape" with this description:
If you catch someone from across the room and rape them, you can join I Rape.
If you've been caught, you have to leave the group.
And the recent news was:
Nick-1, brunette-0
So, obviously I would like to murder that person a lot.
Which leads to my question: the reporting format lets you report either the title or the basic info or the recent news or the wall posts, etc. So I wasn't sure if I should report pages for everything, or pick the most obvious and move on. In the interest of covering a lot of ground I chose the latter, but I'm not sure if it was the most effective.
And because there was one single site that made me laugh out loud, I'll leave you all with this:
[www.facebook.com] #rapeculture
11/08/09
11/08/09
11/08/09
Oh. Wrong. Just top three displayed. Over 15 000 exist but I'm hoping the majority are anti-rape. I pray.
11/08/09
11/08/09
That said, we could organize flash-mob type net activism to report groups for abuse... maybe let's make Nov 17 at 7pm EST "reporting on rape culture hour"... and everyone with a feminist conscience and a facebook account could log on, search pro-rape groups, and start reporting with "rape culture" as the line in the "additional information" part. Anyone interested? Suggestions? #rapeculture
11/08/09
11/08/09
I went through the first 100 rape groups (some of which are just in bad taste), the first 40 rapist groups (again, some are just bad taste) and the first 10 "surprise sex" posts. If 20 people who read this thread report the ones they find objectionable, I bet they will be gone soon.
I'll leave it to someone else to link to the other 500 rape groups and the other 125 surpise sex. It took me 30 mins to go through 150ish groups and find the ones that aren't offering support, reporting as I went. #rapeculture
11/08/09
11/08/09
11/08/09
11/08/09
Well, I changed it to my real name when a couple friends I contacted didn't respond for a long time, then figured out it was me and laughed that they would have responded a lot sooner had they recognized my name. Not three days after putting my real name, an ex boyfriend I had to threaten with a restraining order and that got escorted off my high school campus for following and threatening me in the hallways TRIED TO FRIEND ME. I am completely freaked out about it. He can't see my profile, but just the idea that he would recognize my name nine years later and think I would want to talk to him just icks me out and makes me worried he'll find out I moved back to town and try to talk to me. #rapeculture
11/08/09
11/09/09
11/09/09
11/08/09
11/08/09
11/08/09
11/08/09
If it turns out FB knew about this group and did nothing, I'll be highly disappointed. And will want to boycott the companies that advertise on facebook, to show my dissatisfaction. But my boycott will only work if I make sure that FB and their advertisers are aware that I'm boycotting, and why. I don't know how to do that. I don't buy Nestle chocolate anymore, but Nestle doesn't know that because I haven't sent them a letter. I suppose I should get on that, actually. #rapeculture
11/08/09
11/08/09
Other groups might pop up afterwards, but take a stand report the one that offends you. If you don't, how can you ever complain about FB's policies/groups again? #rapeculture
11/08/09
11/08/09
11/08/09
11/08/09
Really the only way they could do a 99.9% no offensive content thing would be to screen all photos and posts. #rapeculture
11/08/09
11/08/09
I mean, I've seen whole groups of Facebook users dedicated to reporting hate groups of certain stripes. I'm a member of one that looks out for homophobic groups, and a new group to report gets posted pretty much every day. And Facebook has only been able to remove about five of the ones we've targeted. I'm sure they're pretty swamped with these requests.
11/08/09
I'm MUCH more upset at the people who participated in the group. #rapeculture
11/08/09
11/08/09
11/08/09
That way, all the pro-rape fuckery will be out in the open and it wont be quite as easy for these fine citizens and leaders of the future to leverage daddy's connections into a sweet law or finance job. #rapeculture
11/08/09
Based on what I read, although I am horrified, I cannot say, particularly given the other things I keep seeing and seeing and seeing these days, that I'm surprised. #rapeculture