Leftists created the concept of “protected classes,” groups covered under “hate crime” law and which social media may shield from certain derisive comments. Apparently, however, liberals aren’t happy when this concept is used against them, to stop their attacks on groups they don’t much like. Such is the case with some comediennes suspended by Facebook for posting “men are scum” and other anti-male messages.
One is comic Marcia Belsky (shown), banned for 30 days after replying to a friend’s October Facebook post with “men are scum.” Fellow comedienne Alison Klemp received a seven-day suspension for the same. And the Daily Beast reports that Kayla Avery, a comedienne in Boston, “said she’s been banned close to 10 times by Facebook and is currently serving out the end of her third 30-day ban.”
The Beast also writes, “Women have posted things as bland as ‘men ain’t s[**]t,’ ‘all men are ugly,’ and even ‘all men are allegedly ugly’ and had their posts removed. They’ve been locked out of their accounts for suggesting that, since ‘all men are ugly,’ country music star Blake Shelton ‘winning the sexiest man isn’t a triumph.’” (I see a lot of cats in these women’s future.)
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If the above sounds bizarre, it could be that it was part of an organized effort. The Beast again: “In late November, after the [censorship] issue was raised in a private Facebook group of nearly 500 female comedians, women pledged to post some variation of ‘men are scum’ to Facebook on Nov. 24 in order to stage a protest. Nearly every women [sic] who carried out the pledge was banned.”
“‘It wasn’t the best protest because it clearly didn’t work,’ said Klemp. Avery said she is still suffering the consequences after posting ‘men are trash’ on that day.”
The banned women complain of double standards, claiming that people have attacked them with derogatory language and not been suspended. The liberal NYMag.com joins this lamentation, writing:
Training documents for Facebook’s moderation team, leaked in mid-2017, show the mind-bending logic of Facebook’s moderation policies. Facebook’s ‘protected categories’ are sex, race, religious affiliation, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, and serious disability or disease. But there are ‘unprotected categories,’ which include things like social class, occupation, continental origin, political ideology, appearance, religion, age, or country. Facebook instructed moderators to ignore comments about ‘subsets’ of users in unprotected categories.
This means derogatory comments about “white men” aren’t allowed on the service (as both race and gender are protected), while derogatory comments about “women drivers” and “black children” are (because occupation and age are unprotected).
Of course, this would mean derogatory comments about “men drivers” and “white children” would be allowed, too.
Really, this smacks of the usual “useful idiot” grinding of teeth that occurs when a leftist revolution turns its cannons, as it inevitably will, on its own revolutionaries. The “mind-bending logic” of Facebook’s moderation policies simply reflects the mind-bending illogic of leftist “hate speech” social engineering. It’s much as how feminists swore for decades the sexes were the same except for superficial physical differences.
Then they got upset when men said they could claim woman status (“transgender”) by changing the “superficial physical differences” (body hair, external genitalia, etc.) — and took athletic opportunities from women.
Yet it eludes these leftists that this is a kind of commie karma. In fact, the spirit of entitlement and cries of victimhood are shocking. The Beast quotes one comedienne who claims that Facebook’s actions amount to “absolutely silencing women” who were, poor dears, just “responding to male trolls.” AV Club adds that “Facebook’s moderators don’t take anyone’s emotional state, profile, or even the pertinent thread or status into account when responding to content flags.”
I’m not sure how Facebook’s faceless mods are supposed to assess someone’s emotional state; maybe they should send a psychiatrist to the poster’s house. But if a person were responding to female, black, or Muslim trolls and wrote “_______ are scum” (fill in the relevant word), would it be tolerated? Would the media defend him? Why, the press was all aflutter recently simply because President Trump retweeted actual videos of Muslims committing crimes. And a group of ex-Muslims complained in July that Facebook was censoring their substantive criticism of Islam.
Speaking of which, what’s truly shocking about this story is that politically correct Facebook — notorious for censoring conservatives — actually took some politically incorrect actions.
But this may change. Responding to complaints, a Facebook spokesman stressed that the social-media giant was, reported the Beast, “working on a fix to this and the company plans to look at ways to eventually apply its policies in a more granular way. In the future it hopes to take into account the history of oppression with different genders and ethnicities, etc. when reviewing posts, but stressed that Facebook is a global platform.” Translation: “We really do want to be pc — but we have people to pander to other than you.”
Of course, Facebook isn’t “absolutely silencing women.” Rather, it’s censoring a small, entitled group of leftist women whose complaint seems to be, “How dare you hold us to our own standards! We’re the ones ‘more equal than others’!” It’s yet another example of how calls for equality are more ploy than principle.
Image of Marcia Belsky: Screenshot of her website
