I wrote this in response to a particular poster on another forum, who was questioning whether the @EverdaySexism blogger was anti-men for trying to deal with Facebook because most violence happened to men, and why weren’t we dealing with that?

Being misogynistic isn’t exclusive to men. Believe it or not there are women out there who also hate women and act against them.
There are also many men who count themselves as feminists.
Facebook acting in an inherently misogynistic way does not preclude it from also being misanthropic, or anti-anything else.
It isn’t the fact that the pictures are posted so much as what Facebook chooses to do about them once they are alerted.
Either they have a bot to moderate such things, in which case someone will have programmed it to act in a certain way and they have, over quite a length of time, refused to alter its programming to be more even-handed in the way these images are dealt with OR there is a team of human moderators who all have to adhere to company policy, or a combination of the two.

Any which way you look at it, to allow pictures of violence and rape with captions glorifying in and advocating such behaviour while AT THE SAME TIME taking down positive images of women, closing accounts of women (and possibly men) who have tried to question their policy in this, deleting reporting records of those who try to complain about such images seems to me inherently, unquestionably misogynistic.
You are of course free to disagree, but I would refer you again to my starting points and ask you to consider again whether it really is sexist to see a problem in front of you and try to deal with it.
I apologise profusely for not having so much energy and so many hours in my day that I can simultaneously solve all problems for all people, all wildlife and conservation issues and, while I am at it, feed the world and cure AIDS, Malaria and the common cold.
That’s my bad and I guess I’ll have to live with the shame.

Now, I have questions for you. Most of what I have just said was either stated explicitly in my blog or the links, or implied.

Maybe you didn’t read it all and felt you just had to stick your oar in any way. Why? If you couldn’t be bothered to read it all why post about it at all?

Maybe you read it but didn’t understand it. You don’t seem deficient in cognitive ability so just what is so difficult to understand? What is so hard to understand about someone, who happens to be a woman but I like to think I’d feel the same way if I’d been male, seeing an issue and wanting to deal with it?

Maybe you read and understood but disagree. The fact that you have accused the blogger of misandry for the simple ‘crime’ of objecting to violence against women seems to say more about you than the blog. Oh, except that wasn’t quite what you meant, was it? No, you were concerned that us women couldn’t get uppity about violence against women unless we 1) included a campaign for violence against men and 2) had men acting in our campaign.

Well, sorry to disappoint you but I don’t need ANYONE’s permission or approval for what I think be they man, woman or little grey fluffy things from the outer reaches of the galaxy.

I dispute the fact that trying to stop violence towards women makes me sexist or a man hater. In the same way that looking after cats doesn’t make [another blogger on that forum] anti-human and Dr Brian May campaigning against the badger cull doesn’t make him anti-bovine.

I am not a man-hating feminist, but I am open-minded enough to recognise that they do exist (I’ve met some) and to see that they harm us all.

Can you accept that some people mean violence against women and others seem less than interested in stopping them?

Oh, and to go back to what you were saying about Facebook not wanting to irritate (stronger phrases are also available) half of its audience, ie women, that’s a whole other issue.

The words, ‘Don’t you want to ask your husband first?’ are a familiar sound to any woman seeking to buy something expensive. What on earth makes you think that anyone sexist enough to advocate violence against women would also have the wit to realise that they have spending power of their own? Yes, I am talking big corporations here.

Then there’s the sheer breath-taking gall of thinking that women will know their place and simply stay away from anything like these so-called joke pages, because goodness knows women have no sense of humour at all, right?

There’s also the distinct possibility that in their warped perception women will somehow see the joke, and any who don’t are simply humourless idiots who probably deserve to be raped the next time they step outside the house.

So no, I don’t see that Facebook necessarily sees upsetting women in this way as a problem. There are any number of ways they could be justifying it to themselves.

Of course, I don’t know what’s going on in those pretty little heads of theirs. Let’s hope they work it out for themselves soon and let us all in on the secret.