Jessica Roy reports at NY Magazine that news aggregator Fark has became one of the first original link aggregators to ban misogyny from its community making moderators responsible for ensuring that misogyny doesn't make its way into headlines or comments. Banned headlines include rape jokes, calling women as a group "whores" or "sluts" or similar demeaning terminology, and jokes suggesting that a woman who suffered a crime was somehow asking for it.
There are lots of examples of highly misogynistic language in pop culture, and Fark has used those plenty over the years. From SNL's "Jane, you ignorant slut" to Blazing Saddles' multiple casual references to rape, there are a lot of instances where views are made extreme to parody them. On Fark, we have a tendency to use pop culture references as a type of referential shorthand with one another.
On SNL and in a comedy movie, though, the context is clear. On the Internet, it's impossible to know the difference between a person with hateful views and a person lampooning hateful views to make a point.
According to Roy, Fark's new guidelines are a "refreshing departure from the misguided free speech arguments that sites like Reddit that bend over backwards to defend the handful of misogynist communities that are among its ranks, not to mention the free-floating slut-shaming that snakes its way into regular comment threads."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20 2014, @06:21AM
I guess they're okay with Misandry [wikipedia.org].
Sexist bastards!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jimshatt on Wednesday August 20 2014, @06:25AM
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 20 2014, @06:36AM
I am just upset about anyone being offended by soy products, Soy sauce, Tofu, Natto, or Miso. Although, I never could actually stand Natto, nastly stuff, kind of like Vegemite.
Of course, any one taking any kind of offensive action, verbal, pictoral, or textual, against any one because of their gender identification, that is just wrong. Now within my lifetime, some words were perfectly acceptable in polite company, but now they are not. Same with being a jerk as regards gender, no longer acceptable. You may think that I am a guy, given the masculine ending of my handle. What do you base that on? Do you not realize that the Isle of Samos is only (so to speak) a stone's throw from the Isle of Lesbos? Have you not read the poem of Sapphos? Wait, why am I asking. We will just have to sue you bastards.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 20 2014, @06:50AM
Say what?
Dam'd, just where the today people keep their gauntlets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hybristic on Wednesday August 20 2014, @06:48AM
If you single out something like Misogyny, then you've entered into sexist territory which this rule is trying to prevent. Why is it okay to hate men, but ban hating women? It's very one sided. These words are parallel. The GP was not suggesting that by being against misogyny they are okay with Cambodian sex trafficking, instead the GP points out that it's counter intuitive to only select one side of a two sided coin. Should ONLY women be protected online? Fark should work to prevent hateful comments across the board of that's the principals they stand by. Instead it seems like they only care about one sex.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Konomi on Wednesday August 20 2014, @07:23AM
I think it's more they are targeting a specific problem they see as a much larger occurrence on their website, I don't really see doing such a thing as a problem. And just because they specifically target one problem area does not mean they are neglecting the rest. If you read their FAQ they cover a lot of unacceptable behaviour http://www.fark.com/farq/posting/#Aside_from_.22not_safe_for_work.22_posts.2C_the_following_are_also_unacceptable: [fark.com] Including hate speech based on gender which would include males.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 20 2014, @07:30AM
Yes, only one sex. I was astounded (yes, my stound was assed) to see "ladies only" cars on Japanese trains. Why? Oh why. I have long pointed out, to those males who do not have daughters, that you should imagine what it is like to have a bunch of testosterone driven idiots after your butt. Put yourself in the opposite position. If you have a daughter, your male protective instincts should kick in, but it is not enough. We need visuals.
It used to be that the number one paranoid hallucination was that the CIA (fortunately, we can pick from more TLAs these days) was broadcasting radio waves to control your mind. Fortunatly, tinfoil hats were invented. But the most common paranoid delusion (excuse me if I do not provide a citation, since it would only confirm your delusion) is that there are naked pictures of you on the internet! This is an advance, since this is much more likely than radio mind-control. But just think about the source of this anxiety: Men, looking at naked pictures of you! Yeah, no problem, read 'em and weep! Except they keep looking. Looking at you, well, like you look at women. Like a piece of meat, an object of their desire. Don't they even want to get to know you? Have dinner first, maybe a movie? Guys are homophobic exactly because they KNOW that gay guys look at them EXACTLY the way they look at women, and they don't like it. So, put yourself in the other person's position. How would you like it?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20 2014, @10:04AM
You are sounding very sexist there.
I know I don't like sexism when I see it, and I see it now.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday August 21 2014, @07:43AM
STOP looking at me! I never approved those photos! If you prick me, do I not. . . oh, forget it.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20 2014, @09:44AM
"Why is it okay to hate men, but ban hating women?"
Maybe because men are big, loud, smelly, hairy, violent, selfish, uncivilized apes?
Tim Allen explained it all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7H3hMQl2Rs [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Buck Feta on Wednesday August 20 2014, @10:38AM
While it doesn't sound very evenhanded, it's a practical way of dealing with what is a rather asymmetric problem.
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 4, Informative) by mojo chan on Wednesday August 20 2014, @12:12PM
Saying it's not okay to hate black people does not imply that you think it's okay to hate white people. Saying it's not okay to hate women does not imply it's okay to hate men. Saying misogyny is not okay does not imply that misandry is okay.
Fark doesn't have a major problem with misandry. When men say perfectly innocent things they don't usually get a torrent of abuse and rape threats from women. That's probably why they neglected to mention it, but I'm sure if it ever did become a problem they would have something to say. You are just trying to make a controversy out of nothing.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Boxzy on Wednesday August 20 2014, @03:03PM
The important thing isn't to be fair and even handed, it's TO BE SEEN to be fair and even handed. These arguments that you don't need even and equitable rules are ignoring the facts, if the rules applied to everyone equally we wouldn't be arguing about it.
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20 2014, @03:59PM
Men get it just as much as women. The real problem is one of perception, because part of the male gender role is to take any abuse without showing physical or emotional "weakness," while women are very quick to begin damselling upon the slightest infraction. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you have a penis, your abuse is greatly amplified if you squeak at all.
(Score: 1) by Lazarus on Wednesday August 20 2014, @04:22PM
Fark has had a serious bigot problem for a long time. They should deal with all the racism and homophobia too, so we don't have to individually block all the idiots to get to a reasonable signal to noise ratio.
(Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Thursday August 21 2014, @06:36AM
I have a story to tell:
Emperor Akbar called Birbal because he wanted to prove that he is indeed his most brilliant adviser among other rivals advisers. They had drawn a line and were asking Birbal to make it longer without modifying it.
Birbal drew a smaller line.
In other words, putting a lens in front of one problem does make the other problem look bad. There *is* misandry in real life. You don't see it often because we are still in a patriarchal society that teaches women to talk 'women stuff' to women only. You will never see public misandry because most women don't get involved directly - they have their brothers, boyfriend, father etc. for that. If you are thinking a time will come when women will talk about raping men, you may be talking about a future that might never pass and will not pass in at least 1000 years at its best estimate. Men are raised to be confrontational, with the idea that they need to be 'alpha' (guess who teaches them that), so you will always find misogyny being propagated, on a loudspeaker, from average men.
Misogyny doesn't exist in a void, independent of what (most) women think of men.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday August 20 2014, @07:17AM
That makes no more sense than saying "omg that means they must be cool with bashing brown-haired people!!!"
Note that the issues mentioned are virtually never said with men as the targets:
Banned headlines include rape jokes, calling women as a group "whores" or "sluts" or similar demeaning terminology, and jokes suggesting that a woman who suffered a crime was somehow asking for it.
Exactly how often have *you* seen posts/comments/etc. where people were laughing about a guy that was raped, calling men sluts/whores, or making jokes about a guy 'asked' to be beaten/raped/etc.?
Or to be even more specific, when did you last see *women* posting those things?
As the actual article points out: if you're that desperate to swap jokes about women being raped, there's always Reddit's /r/mensrights...
(Score: 4, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday August 20 2014, @07:32AM
Exactly how often have *you* seen posts/comments/etc. where people were laughing about a guy that was raped, calling men sluts/whores, or making jokes about a guy 'asked' to be beaten/raped/etc.?
Addressing this point, almost every time a report is made of someone going to prison in the USA. Any online discussion that includes the topic of prisons in the USA will almost certainly include a joking reference to homosexual rape. It seems to be accepted in the USA that this is normal, acceptable, behaviour.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Wednesday August 20 2014, @10:05AM
As I see it both the insulter and the insultee are guilty, usually. We have to find a balance between trying not to insult and trying not to be insulted (the balance is probably *not* somewhere in the middle).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mojo chan on Wednesday August 20 2014, @12:14PM
That doesn't seem to misandry though, as in hatred of men specifically because of their gender. Homophobia, acceptance/trivializing of rape culture in jails, and definitely wrong, but not misandry per-se.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Wednesday August 20 2014, @06:26PM
Then what makes acceptance/trivializing rape of women "misogyny?"
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 4, Informative) by unauthorized on Wednesday August 20 2014, @08:22AM
Exactly how often have *you* seen posts/comments/etc. where people were laughing about a guy that was raped
Very [orain.org] often. The vast majority all fictional examples of comedic rape are performed on men.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20 2014, @10:00AM
Every time a woman hits a man. Every time a woman kills a man. It is always 'he was asking for it' 'he deserved it' and so on. Nevermind the majority of unreciprocated domestic abuse is by women.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @10:08PM
^Citation Needed
(Score: 4, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday August 20 2014, @07:26AM
This Miss Ogyny sounds hot!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 4, Funny) by jimshatt on Wednesday August 20 2014, @10:12AM
(Score: 1, Redundant) by zeptic on Wednesday August 20 2014, @07:34AM
Just because it is posted on Slashdot doesn't make it interesting for SN.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday August 20 2014, @08:51AM
This is a pretty common thing that Hugh Pickens pulls. He cross posts to both slashdot and soylent and the editors are just trying to be objective and don't even read slashdot anymore. Pretty kind of them too because it's clear that Hugh doesn't give a damn about Slashdot's integrity much less Soylent's and its future with this crap. It's apparently too much to ask of him that he send submissions to either one or the other.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20 2014, @09:44AM
Who cares whether it was posted on Slashdot. The only question that matters is whether it is interesting for this site.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday August 20 2014, @10:15AM
Given that it deals with a website technically similar to this one in a way and an issue that is one huuuge clusterfuck of professional victims getting pedestals and actual victims getting drowned out is involved then yes objectively I would say it's appropriate for a site with the slogan "SoylentNews is people."
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20 2014, @11:07AM
Might as well face it sooner rather than later - you're butthurt crazy.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 20 2014, @01:14PM
Part of the story isn't interesting. The actual activity was banning trolly behavior. You can be as misogynistic as you want as long as you're not using it as a trolling theme in certain rather precisely described trolling behaviors. Just troll under another theme or slightly differently, who cares. Nobody wants to talk about that aspect of the story, just the relative merits of misogyny as a philosophical outlook or whatever, which has little to do with the story.
That aspect, and lots of semi funny jokes. Maybe the humor aspect alone redeems the story, maybe humor alone isn't enough.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Wednesday August 20 2014, @09:45AM
Sorry, couldn't resist:
1. Submit story to /.
2. Submit story to Soylent News
3. ???
4. Profit.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday August 20 2014, @10:23AM
You might actually be closer than you think with that. Though I respect him for not linking to stuff with ads or even analytics so far as I can tell I swear he does this stuff so he can get more clicks to his... Interestingly bizarre website and push whatever thing he happens to be working on. Though he's entitled to do this and deserves at least that much as a reward for his submission (you'll notice I do this too but lagg.me is a personal homepage that is basically a business card with no other agenda) he's kind of shameless about it and really shows no indication that he understands what's wrong with the blatant cross posting and redundancy. He literally says what amounts to "What? *shrug*" in the occasional times he pops into comments.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Wednesday August 20 2014, @03:22PM
If you just stopped going to slashdot, or simply for the sake of everyone here just shut up about it, we wouldn't know. So, please shut up.
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 3) by Lagg on Wednesday August 20 2014, @04:47PM
When did I say I stopped using slashdot? I mean true I did but that wasn't relevant to this topic and I didn't mention it. Surely you're not dumb enough to somehow misinterpret my post as saying I am an editor? Oh who am I kidding. All of your type that respond to that kind of statement with rabid hate are the same.
Also, I don't watch TV either or even have one. \_(⌐■_■)_/
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Saturday August 23 2014, @02:36PM
I just don't want to hear about slashdot. I don't care what happens there. I don't care who posts there. You DO know why this site exists right? I did not say you stopped going to slashdot, I said you SHOULD STOP going to slashdot, OR shut up about it. Is that so hard to understand? Also, 'All your type' are why we came here to escape. Well done insulting everyone here.
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 2) by Ryuugami on Wednesday August 20 2014, @03:36PM
When I saw that there are a few Hugh Pickens posts on the SN homepage, my first thought was "This guy again?"
But then I looked to the upper right corner, and saw the "Only 14 submissions in the queue" message.
When the number of submissions is that low (which is more often than not), you can't be too picky. Maybe if you wrote some good submissions yourself, the number of HP stuff would be lower? Just a thought.
If a shit storm's on the horizon, it's good to know far enough ahead you can at least bring along an umbrella. - D.Weber
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Lagg on Wednesday August 20 2014, @04:43PM
If you'd have looked at my other posts in this rather small thread instead of pulling that idiotic "send them yourself" card (and I have sent several) you'll note that I actually believe Hugh was within his right for sending it and it was in fact an article appropriate for this site. What you see there was merely my answer to the person complaining about the cross post.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2, Insightful) by zafiro17 on Wednesday August 20 2014, @10:41AM
i don't necessarily agree. I'm interested in how other forums work, how they manage their users, and what is and isn't acceptable on the web. The ongoing discussion about moderation, karma, anonymity-vs-forced names in web forums and the like all make this relevant. Besides, I think it's cool Fark is going to stand up for this. Considering 99% of Fark's users are probably men, the issue of misandry is probably a nearly non-existent one.
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20 2014, @02:32PM
The thing is I think it is massively hypocritical of them to say making fun of this one group is not cool. The whole site is basically 'look how cool I am in relation to this dork'. Look no further than the stories they have on their front page.
Mention a D/R fight in the story and they will pretty much be a 600+ discussion on how one or the other stinks.
The whole site is designed to make fun of people. That is their user base. It is a small notch above daily mail, fox news, or Huffington, or gawker but less work because they just aggregate the stories off them.
It is a mixture of 'you should feel guilty' and 'check out what this darwin award nominee' and 'lets internet rage on someone for doing something we told you to feel guilty about'.
Its a good step forward, however they have a *LONG* way to go to clean up their act. Once they do they will not be as interesting.
(Score: 1) by T0T4L_L43R on Wednesday August 20 2014, @04:47PM
Same story, different comments.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20 2014, @04:07PM
Idiots who would espouse such a position deserve a giant black
dick, covered in shit, to be rammed up their ass and then down their throats.