Facebook removes rape “joke” pages

Well, it’s about damn time. Violet Blue reports:

It only took two long months, over 186,000 signatures on a petition to Mark Zuckerberg, and finally a furious Twitter campaign to get Facebook to remove Pages that graphically celebrated and encouraged rape and sexual violence.

This time, anyway.

Unfortunately this was not the first time Facebook had to be externally pressured to enforce its own Terms around the flashpoint topic of sexual violence.

And it won’t be the last. In a way, it’s a tough victory to celebrate; the fact that it was only after nearly two-hundred thousand letters were sent, companies pulled advertisements, and a massive Twitter campaign that Facebook decided to remove the pages. After all, they originally dismissed earlier efforts to remove pro-rape pages and likened them to bar jokes. It’s a depressing reminder of how pervasive rape culture is off- and online. And we all know this isn’t the end of pro-rape pages on Facebook. People will continue to create them, and we’ll continue to push to get them removed.

But on a more hopeful note, it’s pretty effing incredible that online activism succeeded in getting one of the most powerful online corporations in the world to pull content promoting rape culture and misogyny, content they previously refused to remove. There’s serious power in that — and is definitely something worth celebrating.

via Amanda.