Women, Action and the Media (WAM!) published an open letter to Facebook today demanding the supervision and elimination of gender-based hate speech in groups, events, and photo comments. 

While non-sexual images of women bodies are often banned and labeled pornographic content, pages that joke about violence against women seem to fly under the radar. WAM! points the finger at Facebook content that encourages or laughs about rape and abuse, including groups titled “Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs” and “Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus.” With over one billion active Facebook users, WAM! says this “humour” is falling under too many eyes to go unnoticed and unchanged.  

The letter asks Facebook to take three actions:

1. Recognize speech that trivializes or glorifies violence against girls and women as hate speech and make a commitment that you will not tolerate this content.
2. Effectively train moderators to recognize and remove gender-based hate speech.
3. Effectively train moderators to understand how online harassment differently affects women and men, in part due to the real-world pandemic of violence against women.

What can we do? The group has asked Facebook users to contact advertisers whose names appear next to gender-hate speech and content, insisting that they pull their ads until Facebook bans gender-based hate speech. Raise awareness and discuss using the hashtag #FBRape on Twitter.

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Farrah Khaled is an intern at the Toronto Standard. Follow her on twitter at @farkhaly.