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posted by n1 on Wednesday August 20 2014, @06:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-time-to-grow-up dept.

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."

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday August 20 2014, @07:17AM

    by Magic Oddball (3847) on Wednesday August 20 2014, @07:17AM (#83423) Journal

    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...

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday August 20 2014, @07:32AM

    by pTamok (3042) on Wednesday August 20 2014, @07:32AM (#83429)

    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

      by jimshatt (978) on Wednesday August 20 2014, @10:05AM (#83464) Journal
      Guys can take it! Okay okay, sorry. Seriously though, Fark also states that jokes about guys being raped are not okay. I, for one, are okay with almost any and all jokes, but this is my personal view. Misogyny and misandry are not okay when it is actually intended as such. Most sexist jokes are so overt they can be seen as parodying sexism itself, so the joke is on sexism and not the gender being joked about.
      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

      by mojo chan (266) on Wednesday August 20 2014, @12:14PM (#83495)

      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

        by GeminiDomino (661) on Wednesday August 20 2014, @06:26PM (#83637)

        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

    by unauthorized (3776) on Wednesday August 20 2014, @08:22AM (#83441)

    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

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 20 2014, @10:00AM (#83462)

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @10:08PM (#84123)

      ^Citation Needed