Sexism on Social Media
In wake of Trump being elected, I decided to run an experiment. I scrolled through Lena Dunham’s Facebook page (a feminist and Hillary supporter), as I knew she would no doubt be receiving a lot of abuse from Trump supporters. As predicted, there was a barrage of shockingly offensive and sexist comments. I reported fourteen of the worst ones that I saw, and waited for Facebook’s response. After all, Facebook have stated in the past that it’s impossible to monitor and control abusive messages.
To every one of my reports, I was issued with a message to say that none of them had violated Community Standards.
This is the letter I wrote to them in response.
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Dear Facebook,
I’m contacting you to let you know how exactly the comments I reported on the 11th November breached your community rules.
The comments were on a thread against Lena Dunham, a woman who has supported Hillary Clinton and is a campaigner for women’s rights. After the success of Donald Trump, a man who has promoted the objectification of women and has been accused of rape and sexual assault (‘grab them by the pussy’), she received a barrage of abuse from Trump supporters. I’m all for freedom of speech. Being verbally aggressive towards someone is one thing (still unacceptable), but being openly sexist without consequence is quite another.
The reported comments, such as ‘you need a good fucking from a white Texan male’ and ‘all you are is a life support system for a vagina’ and ‘obese’, ‘fat pig cunt’ are not only disgustingly sexist, they’re damaging in the fight women, including me, experience every day. It reduces our argument to mockery. It reduces our worth to our ability to look pretty, have sex and conceive. It doesn’t just affect one public person in this case, it affects all women. Letting comments like this go condones this culture of reducing a woman’s self worth.
According to Facebook, all of my reported comments apparently did not violate community standards.
Though it’s impossible to change the result of the election, it’s important now, more than ever, for companies such as yours to hold people responsible for misogynistic behaviour. This is a targeted hate crime.
Facebook is one of the strongest and most influential platforms for communicating. Please help that communication be more positive for women.
I look forward to hearing from you.