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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: 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.