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Women We Love: Laura Bates

Women We Love: Laura Bates

Sickened by pages on Facebook that joke about violence against women, writer and activist Laura Bates is at the forefront of an international social media campaign – #FBRape – that calls on the social networking giant to put an end to “gender-based hate speech” for good. And it appears to be working.

Bates, along with fellow activists Soraya Chemaly and Jaclyn Friedman of Women, Action, & the Media (WAM) last week posted an open letter to Facebook, calling on it to block pages dedicated to misogynist content.
To date, 15 advertisers have taken the open letter’s advice to pull advertising until Facebook takes a stance against images and memes that glorify violence against women.

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And following around 50,000 tweets in response to the #FBRape campaign – many targeting advertisers on the social media site – Facebook today responded by removing the offensive images pointed out on Twitter, and encouraged its users to continue to bring offensive content to its attention.

While Facebook’s terms of service state that it prohibits the posting of content that is hateful or threatening, the social media platform had allowed pages including “Violently Raping Your Friend Just For Laughs”, “Kicking Sluts In the Vagina” and “I Know A Silly Little Bitch That Needs A Good Slap” to remain active.

“Facebook is a company that already chooses to moderate and censor what material it allows on the site and what it considers unacceptable ... we decided to ask them to reassess the acceptability of images and content depicting rape and domestic violence,” said Bates.

Follow Laura Bates on Twitter @EverydaySexism.