The Facebook page is named "You know shes [sic] playing hard to get when your [sic] chasing her down an alleyway," and many say that it's advocating rape. They're also saying that Facebook is refusing to take down the page despite several protests and online petitions.
Facebook is a funny animal, because although it does have a Terms of Service agreement that says, "You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence," it seems to arbitrarily enforce it. It did yank an Arabic page that asked men to whip women, a Ku Klux Klan page, banned photos of breastfeeding babies and the album cover photo of Nirvana's "Nevermind," which features a naked baby swimming (it then changed its mind and re-allowed the cover.) Yet it still allows rape jokes and similarly themed Facebook pages.
Although Facebook didn't respond immediately to Press:Here's request for comment, a spokesman previously told the Telegraph (U.K.) that outrageous and offensive content doesn't mean it's hateful or incites violence.
"It is very important to point out that what one person finds offensive, another can find entertaining," a spokesman said. "Just as telling a rude joke won't get you thrown out of your local pub, it won't get you thrown off Facebook."
The problem is not just the pages, but the sentiment expressed on the pages -- especially when someone decides to protest. If the poster is a woman, she will frequently be subjected to insults or threatened with rape. Of course, it's clear reading the postings that most of the users and possibly creators of these sites are 13-year-old boys trying to be shocking, but it still can be threatening and offensive.
So we have to wonder if this is truly a sexist double standard, or does the Facebook hive-mind find adolescent rape jokes really funny?
