Category: facebook censoring rape memes the world is ending oh no

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a voice for men actual activism advocacy of violence antifeminism are these guys 12 years old? conspiracy theory douchebaggery facebook censoring rape memes the world is ending oh no gross incompetence harassment hundreds of upvotes imaginary oppression johntheother men who should not ever be with women ever misandry misogyny MRA not-quite-explicit threats not-quite-plausible deniability paul elam reddit threats

Facebook: Page advocating murder of feminist blogger “doesn’t violate our community standard on bullying and harassment.”

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Several months ago, you may recall, feminist activists got Facebook to agree to remove blatant sexist hate speech from its site — much to the chagrin of many Men’s Rights Activists, like Paul Elam of A Voice for Men, who declared, in a post filled with alarmist rhetoric, that “feminist ideologues are co-opting Facebook, and they will root out any and all opposition to their worldview.” AVFM’s John Hembling, meanwhile, denounced the feminist activists as “fascists.”

Ever since then, Men’s Rights activists have been playing a game of “gotcha” with Facebook, trying to prove that the hate-speech monitors there only care about misogynist hate speech, and don’t actually care about hate speech directed at men. Every few days, it seems, there is a new thread in the Men’s Rights subreddit purporting to document this alleged “double standard.”

Ten days ago, for example, a Men’s Rights Redditor called dizzy_j got nearly 400 upvotes for a post complaining that “I reported three anti-men Facebook pages for gender-based hate speech today. Only one was removed.”  Six days ago,  DerDietrich got 580 upvotes for submitting this supposed evidence of a double standard. Trouble is, you can’t actually prove a double standard with a handful of examples.

But I would like to suggest an alternate hypothesis, which also fits the anecdotal data provided thus far by the MRAs, and provide an additional piece of anecdotal evidence that supports my theory and undercuts theirs.

My hypothesis is that Facebook is shitty at recognizing and dealing with hate speech and harassment, no matter whom it’s aimed at.

My evidence for this? Well, yesterday bloggers at Skepchick noticed a Facebook page targeting a specific feminist/skeptic blogger and asking if she “should … be murdered.” The anonymous poster — who identified her by name and posted pictures of her on the page — coyly avoided a literal call for murder, writing instead:

We should not ever break the law. Rather, we should advocate , through lawful land constitutional processes, to have the law changed so that it is legal to kill [name redacted by DF]. Alternatively, we should, where legal, request that [name redacted by DF] kill herself. Relevant laws should be changed so that suicide, and advocating suicide, is legal.

The Skepchick bloggers reported the page to Facebook for its obvious violations of the site’s harassment policies.

And they received this reply from Facebook (I’ve covered up the blogger’s name):

facebookharassnoteREdact

I think it’s fair to say that if Facebook can’t recognize a page calling for the literal murder of someone as harassment there is something very wrong with its system for dealing with harassment and hate speech.

The page has since been taken down, though it’s not clear if it was removed by Facebook or by the original anonymous Facebooker.

Get your act together, Facebook.

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a voice for men drama facebook censoring rape memes the world is ending oh no gross incompetence lying liars MRA

Keep digging: A Voice for Men ready to triple down on dishonesty in order to cover up mistake? [CORRECTED]

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CORRECTION: New evidence suggests that the screenshot discussed in this post and elsewhere was not a forgery but the result of a glitch. I offer a correction, and an apology, and a discussion of the implications, here.

So the other day I showed you all in detail how someone at men’s rights hate site A Voice for Men fabricated evidence — in the form of a faked screenshot — in order to cover up an embarrassing mistake on their part. The person responsible for the fabrication appeared to be AVFM’s so-called “managing editor” Dean Esmay.

Well, now it appears that they’re going to triple down on their dishonesty and concoct more screenshots. In a “news roundup” from Esmay today I found this remarkable passage:

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And going back to the story with the error I found a new “editorial note” from Esmay:

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I can’t wait to see what on earth they’ve come up with this time. I encourage readers to take screenshots of all this in case AVFM decides to do any retroactive ninja editing as part of its plan to pretend it was right all along.

Meanwhile,those of you who have been following this story may be wondering: who is this Joshua Thompson? Well, it appears that AVFM — or at least Dean Esmay — can’t even get the name of the post’s author right.  That’s right, AVFM’s MANAGING EDITOR can’t get the name of one of AVFM’S OWN WRITERS RIGHT.

The author was first identified on AVFM as Jason Gregory — and if you look at the bio for Jason Gregory on any of the other articles he’s written for AVFM, like this one, it points to American Idiocracy, the blog where the problematic Facebook post originally ran. (It’s now been replaced, on his blog, anyway, by a completely rewritten version.)

At some point, apparently by accident, AVFM changed the byline of the author to Jason Thompson, who appears to be someone else who wrote something for AVFM a long time ago. And now Dean Esmay is calling him Joshua Thompson.

Or maybe Joshua Thompson is his real name, and Jason Gregory was his pen name, and Esmay has accidentally doxxed his own writer. Who knows?

I suspect we have not yet plumbed the depths of AVFM’s dishonesty –or incompetence.

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"proxy violence" a voice for men actual activism advocacy of violence antifeminism conspiracy theory crackpottery drama kings facebook censoring rape memes the world is ending oh no false accusations figurative nazis grandiosity hate imaginary oppression incoherent rage johntheother misogyny MRA none dare call it conspiracy oppressed men paranoia playing the victim rape culture rape jokes slacktivism the sound of his own voice

John the Other: Feminists who oppose rape memes on Facebook are violence-promoting fascists, and you are too! Probably.

Typical feminazis! Oh, wait.
Typical feminazis! Oh, wait.

The MRA hissy fit over Facebook continues. Over on A Voice for (Human) Men, our old friend John “The Other” Hembling offers up his take on the whole controversy, which has roused the usually torpid MRAs to “activism,” and somehow manages to be even more overheated and incoherent than even Paul Elam before him — and at times nearly as ponderous as the legendarily ponderous Fidelbogen as well.

Continue reading “John the Other: Feminists who oppose rape memes on Facebook are violence-promoting fascists, and you are too! Probably.”
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actual activism antifeminism armageddon drama kings facebook censoring rape memes the world is ending oh no misogyny MRA oppressed men playing the victim rape culture rape jokes slacktivism straw feminists

Man-O-Philosopher Fidelbogen: Feminists want to ban Facebook rape memes because “feminists do not allow the right to exist of people who are not feminist.”

Feminist grinding men into dirt on the Internet.
Feminist grinding men into dirt on the Internet.

While we’re talking about this whole Facebook thing (see here and here if you don’t know what I’m referring to), I figured some of you might be wondering: What does the eminent Man-O-Philosopher and self-described “Counter-Feminist Agent of Change” Fidelbogen think of all this?

Continue reading “Man-O-Philosopher Fidelbogen: Feminists want to ban Facebook rape memes because “feminists do not allow the right to exist of people who are not feminist.””

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a voice for men actual activism advocacy of violence antifeminism drama kings excusing abuse facebook censoring rape memes the world is ending oh no gross incompetence gullibility hate irony alert misogyny MRA paul elam rape culture rape jokes sexual abuse sexual assault slacktivism the eternal solipsism of the MRA mind

A Voice for Men activates its activists to make asses of themselves over this Facebook thing

For MRAs, driving in circles IS the plan.
For MRAs, driving in circles IS the plan.

So if you’ve ever wondered what sort of activism that Men’s Rights, er, Activists do when they do do activism, take a look at this little ACTION ALERT from A Voice for Men.

You may recall Paul Elam getting all worked up the other day because Facebook, responding to a campaign launched by a coalition of feminist activists and groups, announced it was going to try to do a better job removing “gender-based” hate speech from its site. You know, like this [TRIGGER WARNING] sort of thing.

Naturally, Elam and other MRAs interpreted Facebook’s announcement as the first step in the End of Male Speech on the Internet, or something.

Anyway, now the MRAs are ACTIVATING! AVFM has announced that it’s going after the groups that signed onto the feminist Facebook protest. Because, well, I’m not sure I get why exactly.

Here’s their explanation:

It’s time for action. The AVFM community has scrambled to look beyond the fine print of WAM!’s ultimatum to Facebook and into the signatories. We are finding that some of them are tax-exempt, and even government funded. We now know that government funded institutions have endorsed a harmful double standard that results in the censorship of men.

But, if we discover that even one cent of government money touched WAM!’s campaign, we will be exposing a whole new dimension of hypocrisy.

Uh, ok. I’m just really having a hard time finding the hypocrisy here. If you look at the names of the groups that signed onto the open letter, you’ll find a number of general feminist groups, groups concerned with the representation of women/gender in the media, and groups organized against sexual assault and other forms of violence.

They didn’t sign a petition demanding that all men posting on the internet be banned or, I dunno, kicked in the balls. They signed onto an open letter demanding that Facebook remove

groups, pages and images that explicitly condone or encourage rape or domestic violence or suggest that they are something to laugh or boast about.

That doesn’t seem hypocritical to me. It seems rather in line with what these groups promote.

And the only men who will be censored will be men posting this sort of hateful shit. If women post this sort of shit, they’ll be banned too.

Apparently, AVFM and its “activist” fans are so divorced from reality that they think they’re going to be able to publicly embarrass rape survivor support groups … for standing up against crude, hateful rape jokes on Facebook featuring images of brutalized victims.

Still, at least this sort of surreal, self-defeating activism is better than firebombing courthouses and police stations, as that infamous manifesto posted in AVFM’s activism section so enthusiastically recommends.

EDIT: I forgot the link to the AVFM alert; added it inthe first graf.

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a voice for men advocacy of violence antifeminism conspiracy theory drama kings entitled babies facebook censoring rape memes the world is ending oh no grandiosity hate imaginary oppression inspiring men who should not ever be with women ever misogyny MRA not-quite-explicit threats paul elam playing the victim rape culture rape jokes sexual harassment

The Facebook/Feminist Plot to Destroy Free Speech, Male Liberty, and 10-13% of A Voice for Men’s Traffic

Evil feminist banning male thought from the Internet
Evil feminist removing male ideas from the Internet

Men’s Rights, er, activists are waving their arms frantically in the air over what they see as a dire new threat to men and manhood: Facebook’s recent annoucement that it was going to try to do a better job of taking down violent images mocking victims of rape and domestic violence, and other kinds of misogynistic hate speech.

Continue reading “The Facebook/Feminist Plot to Destroy Free Speech, Male Liberty, and 10-13% of A Voice for Men’s Traffic”