Facebook Community Standards Allow The Promotion Of Violence Against Women, Shocker.
Many crazy things have happened in 2020. One you may have missed, is Facebook’s Community Standards allowing the promotion of violence against women.
It’s not surprising that you didn’t know about this. My mother always told me women were invisible. She has pretty solid feminist credentials. In the 1960s, she was threatened with expulsion from teacher training for sunbathing in a bikini. In the 1970s, she had difficulty getting a mortgage because of her sex. You couldn’t just identify in or out of oppression in those days. She wasn’t “assigned” a gender at birth. She was a woman, and that was that. In the 1980s, she was told off in a women’s group for wearing makeup. She laughed that off too, just as you’re laughing off the idea now that Facebook’s Community Standards allow the promotion of violence against women.
But they do.
It’s perfectly OK, according to Facebook Community Standards, to post about punching women. Punching women in the throat seems to be particularly popular.
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There is a catch, of course. You can’t just post about punching any woman, or all woman. You do have to make sure your posts only involve encouraging violence about women who have wrong opinions about gender ideology.
Many years ago, I worked in Family Law. There was a popular joke amongst lawyers dealing with domestic violence that went something like this:
“What have a thousand battered wives got in common? They just won’t listen”.
It may have come from the comedian Jerry Sadowitz.
If that joke shocks you, it shouldn’t. It’s exactly the justification used by men who batter their wives and partners. The joke is funny, essentially, because it’s true. That doesn’t mean the lawyers laughing at that joke promoted or justified violence against women.
No — that’s the job of Facebook’s Community Standards.
On Facebook, you can post about punching (or “throatpunching”) women to your heart’s content.
You just have to make sure to call these women “TERFs” first.
“TERF” was an acronym for “trans exclusive radical feminist” — but you don’t have to be “trans exclusive” or a “radical feminist” to be a “TERF”. All you need is a slightly different opinion to the person calling you a TERF.
Do you think that there should be a discussion on when biological males who identify as women should be able to access women’s sports and prisons? You are a TERF.
Do you think that trans women deserve love and respect but that they aren’t in all cases actual women? You are a TERF.
Do you think everyone should be able to dress and express themselves however they want, but that no-one else should be forced to think or pretend that they have actually changed sex? You are a TERF.
Are you a trans person like Debbie Hayton, frustrated at intolerant, hyperbolic trans activism? You are no better than a Nazi collaborator.
And it’s OK to hate and promote violence against TERFs. Facebook’s Community Standards say so.
But wait, you say: Facebook doesn’t allow the promotion of violence against women per se — it’s just women with wrong opinions.
These women have it coming to them. As ever, they just won’t listen.
This anger at non-compliant women remarkably widespread.
Writing in the Guardian, the public intellectual Owen Jones tells us:
Anti-trans zealots, know this: history will judge you.
He should know. He was recently beaten up for being gay. We all condemn that. I was never beaten up over my sexuality, but like Owen, I was regularly bullied for being gender non-conforming while growing up. Now, however, the same bullies who told me I wasn’t manly enough, or that I looked like a woman, are telling women that they deserve violence for saying biological sex is real and can’t be changed, or that men shouldn’t be able to self-identify into women’s spaces. Owen Jones is clear who’s side he’s on in that regard.
On Twitter, Jones wrote:
“Both sides” rhetoric must be abandoned: we have to focus on the fact that it’s the far right who are the chief violent political menace
Jones doesn’t mention “TERFs” specifically, and he surely doesn’t think TERFs are all “far right”, but he does say this:
…like most bigots, the anti-trans cult are the most awful crybullies. They have the support of most of the press and constantly try to get their opponents fired, but claim they’re being silenced, and loudly promote their bigotry and cry victim when it’s challenged.
I don’t think Owen Jones actually thinks it’s OK to promote violence against non-complaint women, despite those words. I also don’t think Facebook, the multi-billion dollar corporation founded by Mark Zuckerberg, thinks it’s OK to promote violence against non-compliant women. I think women’s rights just don’t mean much to most people. I think it’s just that, as my mother always said, women are invisible.
However, Facebook’s Community Standards allow the promotion of violence against non-compliant women nonetheless.
I’ve asked Facebook why. I’ll let you know if they respond.
Roger Dubar is editor of the satirical blog #satiria, on Facebook & Twitter.
UPDATE 23 MAY 2020!
Facebook responded to this article by temporarily preventing any further posts on the Satiria page. A few days later, I was issued a 30-day ban for a comment highlighting absurd intolerance within “trans activism”. Welcome to 2020 on Facebook, where even criticising hate speech is hate speech…
Read all about the new 30-day ban here.
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