Sea Change —

Attitudes changes.

Cultural norms change.

Societies change.

Sometimes of their own accord, sometimes with a little help.

Sometimes you can see the change coming. It’s something natural, organic, that occurs when the ways of our antecedents no longer satisfy the needs of the contemporary generation. It’s almost as though an entire chunk of society develops a single mind and together we define what “normal” is.

Other changes need a little help gaining a foothold. The biggies like suffrage and civil and equal0 rights spring to mind, but remember, also, how sexual and physical abuse, or even eating disorders, were once considered statistically insignificant.

Society generally ignored the powerful impact these social aberrations had, let alone of the sheer volume of people these behaviors impact. Until the brute reality is exposed, society turns it’s eye away from uncomfortable subjects, thereby implicitly permitting dangerous behaviors to continue abated.

What is the turning point? What changes society from tacit approval to widespread intolerance of things like sexual abuse and eating disorders?

One word: education.

To me, activism is all about education. When you educate people, you help them understand why they should be as pissed off and motivated as you are. You provide them with a reason to add their voice to your own. And, as Elizebeth likes to say, Ever voice makes us louder.

Fat Acceptance is no different.

Our job is to educate the unaware masses that treating fat people like shit is unacceptable and, by every standard conceivable, counterproductive to the ultimate goal of improving society’s health and welfare.

But right now, the social norm says that fat people don’t need to be shielded from public humiliation, constant shaming and wanton cruelty because being fat is a choice and if we all just chose healthier lifestyles, then we could escape the torment of Fathood.

Even if fatness were a choice, as detailed in my my interview with Dr. Rebecca Puhl, Director of Research and Weight Stigma Initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, the current atmosphere is neither conducive to weight loss nor healthy behaviors.

So, regardless of whether you view obesity as a choice or a genetic endowment, it is in the best interest of society to end hate speech against fat people for the simple reason that ANY hate speech directed at a particular group can have devastating consequences on members of said group.

My current focus, however, is specifically on hate speech directed at fat people and although you can find it anywhere in society and on the internet, there are very few places where it can be eradicated, literally, with the click of a button.

I’m talking about Facebook.

As many of you know, I began targeting Facebook fat hate groups after Definatalie related her experience being targeted by one particular group: There’s a weight limit on leggings & skinny jeans.

I can’t tell you how much Natalie kicks ass for standing up for herself and drawing attention to these asshats. Because it moved me, I began my initial assault on that group and, today, I’m proud to say that I made that group so uncomfortable and (dare I say) guilt-ridden, that it is pretty much a spam graveyard with the VERY sporadic “Hooray for skinny people” post.

As anyone who has read my blog a while knows, I can be one obnoxious jackass. And although I pissed off an unknown quantity of FA bloggers and readers during my time on the Fatosphere, it should hearten some people to know that I can use this power for good as well.

So, a short time later, Fat Nurse had a similar experience and I decided not only to wage a new guerrilla war on this new Eurotrash fat hating group, but also to create a new group to encourage Facebook to put an end to this once and for all. The group is called, Facebook, Please Stop Permitting Fat Hatred. If you haven’t already joined, please add your voice.

After a week of my harassment, I was booted from the fat hating group. So, I encouraged our members to create a Fatty Flood in order to inundate this group with a little shaming of our own. The results were fabulous!

You’ll notice that the last images I took were about four hours after the first fatty, Toni Dove, spoke up.

I was planning for a week-long campaign of harassment, but four hours later the site vanished.

POOF!

Like that, a group with over 70,000 members dedicated to fat hatred was gone.

People have credited me with this Fatty Day Miracle, but I cannot take credit for it nor account for it. This group has been reported to Facebook repeatedly to no avail. Through a series of probably coincidences, this group was eliminated shortly after we began our guerrilla campaign (which, in all honesty, was sort of a disappointment because I was looking forward to seeing how people confronted the fat haters).

However, I’m willing to take this as a sign that if this group can be eliminated, so can the countless others.

So, I did a quick search on Facebook to see just how pervasive fat hate groups are.

With ten groups per search page, I got to page 121-130 before I got tired of searching.

Out of 130 pages I found using the search term “fat,” FIFTY of them were clearly fat hate groups.

Some groups had HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of members.

It’s enough to make you want to resign from the human race.

The journalist in me requested a chance to take a crack at this, so I sent their press relations a series of innocuous questions to get a response:

How have Facebook Groups changed the way people interact?
How do you ensure appropriate content in Facebook Groups?
What do you have planned for Facebook Groups in the future?
What is the most innovative feature of Facebook Groups?

A representative of Facebook responded with a set of innocuous answers. So, I sent a followup:

Hello [FACEBOOK LADY],

Thank you so much for responding. I hope you don’t mind a quick followup.

Of interest to our readers is Facebook’s stance on hate speech. Currently, on your Statement of Rights and Responsibilities you have the following:

1. SafetyWe do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help to do that, which includes the following commitments:
   1. You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.
   2. You will not collect users’ content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.
   3. You will not engage in unlawful multi-level marketing, such as a pyramid scheme, on Facebook.
   4. You will not upload viruses or other malicious code.
   5. You will not solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else.
   6. You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user.
   7. You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.
   8. You will not develop or operate a third-party application containing alcohol-related or other mature content (including advertisements) without appropriate age-based restrictions.
   9. You will not offer any contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes (“promotion”) on Facebook without our prior written consent. If we consent, you take full responsibility for the promotion, and will follow our Promotions Guidelines and all applicable laws.
   10. You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.
   11. You will not do anything that could disable, overburden, or impair the proper working of Facebook, such as a denial of service attack.
   12. You will not facilitate or encourage any violations of this Statement.

Our readers have reported that there are DOZENS of sites aimed specifically at insulting, degrading, dehumanizing and expressing hate toward fat women. Most of these have been reported multiple times over the past year with zero response from Facebook.

In my research, I have collected over 50 links to groups or pages whose sole purpose is to engage in fat hate speech, and I stopped LONG before I ran out of pages.

So, my question is, does Facebook consider insulting pages directed at fat people as hate speech? If so, why do these pages continue to exist in spite of Facebook’s policies? If you do not consider insulting pages directed at fat people as hate speech, why not?

If you would like a list of the links, just let me know.

Pretty straightforward. I knew I’d get blown off, but here’s the response I hadn’t expected.

Hi Shannon,

We take our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities very seriously and react quickly to reports of inappropriate content and behavior.  Specifically, we’re sensitive to content that includes pornography, harassment of specific private individuals, direct statements of hate against protected groups of people, and actionable threats of violence.  The goal of these policies is to strike a very delicate balance between giving people the freedom to express their opinions and viewpoints – even those that may be controversial to some – and maintaining a safe and trusted environment.

Best,

[FACEBOOK LADY]

Emphasis mine.

Go back and read the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Do you see anything about protected groups?

By “protected groups,” I assume she means federally protected classes. Currently, fatties are not a federally protected class. So, my initial response to her followed this line of thinking:

So, if I understand you correctly, groups which promote hate speech against fat people is not a violation of your Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, correct? Could you please confirm or deny this?

Because currently, fat people are not considered a protected group of people, and as far as I can tell, none of the other items you mentioned as “sensitive to content” apply.

Let me give you a few examples of just the titles of some of these groups:

• beautiful girls, all over the world, except you. fat bitch.
• If sex is such good exercise, why are there fat sluts?
• You’re not “thick”, you’re a fat-ass in denial
• I don’t hate you ’cause your fat, you’re fat because i hate you.
• Your mama’s so fat, even Dora couldn’t Explora
• “Do you ride Elephants in India?”…”No, do you ride fat people in America?
• i hate fat/ugly people that try to act bitchy. like no, your fat.
• Friends don’t let friends bang fat bitches
• I would carry you to the moon and back…LOL jk, your fat and i’d die
• Being Fat and Ugly
• we all know a fat slag who thinks their fit
• You’re wearing a tight clothes and you’re fat….that’s not good.
• SHUT UP AND GET NAKED. LOL jk… your fat
• HIT THE GYM FAT ASS !!!

If fat people were a protected class, or if comparable comments were made to a protected class, would these pages be removed from Facebook?

And one last question, there was a page titled SAVING THE PLANET FROM FAT GIRLS IN LEGGINS which was removed just yesterday. Could you provide any details as to the reasoning behind its removal?

Thank you,

Shannon

That night I began to thinking about the whole “protected groups” thing and I suddenly realized that I had forgotten something critical. Do you know what other groups is not federally protected?

Homosexuals and transgendered persons.

So, I sent a quick follow-up:

One more follow-up… if your policy does not cover groups who are not federally protected, then are hate speech groups against homosexuals and transgendered persons allowed to exist?

Thank you,

Shannon Russell

That was last Thursday and I still haven’t heard back from FACEBOOK LADY. I’m pretty sure I never will.

So, I’ll be sending a followup through the press contact area of Facebook and see if I can get some definitive answers.

In the meantime, I decided to see how gay hate speech compares to fat hate speech. I mean, we all know that gay hate is still widely acceptable in many corners of our country, let alone globally. Yet, do a search for the terms “gay,” “homosexual,” “homo,” “fag,” or “queer” and the closest you get to hate speech is the incredibly determined group of people who insist that Justin Bieber is gay.

So, what’s happening here? Have all the gay haters switched to fat hating instead? Was gay hatred just not satisfying any more? Or are gay haters so ostracized that they no longer feel comfortable with publicly expressing their contempt for gay people?

Something tells me this is not the case.

Something tells me that Facebook does respond to complaints of hate speech against homosexuals. So, I decided to experiment a bit.

Since creating a hate group means automatic expulsion from Facebook, I created a fake identity: Bob HomoHater.

Bob then created two groups: I Hate Gay People and Homosexuals are an Abomination.

Neither are true, of course, but the former was to test outright hate speech and the other to test religiously justified hate speech. I then reported them both to Facebook through my regular account.

I reported them on Friday and they are still active. So, either Bob HomoHater is the loneliest bigot or gay hate groups are tolerated by Facebook.

Either way, the parsing of language (Facebook only removes hate speech against protected groups) is an intolerable stance on an intolerable issue.

It should not matter whether a group is federally protected or not. Hate speech directed at a group is still hate speech. And Facebook provides a forum where a hundreds of thousands of people reinforce the belief that hatred and hostility is acceptable.

I believe in freedom of speech, but Facebook is a private corporation, not a public space. As such, they have the ability, and should have the duty, to regulate hate speech toward particular groups.

I will grant that they cannot outlaw each and every group with a hateful theme, but discernment and judgment should allow the moderators to determine which pages unfairly or excessively target particular social groups.

Freedom of speech is important, but freedom from harassment is vital.

In the coming days we’ll be rolling out Phase II of our plan to end fat hate speech, as well as gay hate speech, on Facebook. Stay tuned because we’re going to turn up the pressure and show Facebook just why their current policy is intolerable.

Join us.