Facebook pages and rape

Among Facebook's many ongoing controversies is one where it has reserved the right not to delete pages which promote the rape of women. One such page is called (with errors included): You know shes playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleyway.

Cath Elliott has written about it in today's Guardian, and references earlier coverage from the same source. In the latest article, Elliott calls for Facebook to urgently rethink its policy of no action:

By refusing to take these pages down, and by resorting to such a ridiculous and quite frankly offensive "rude joke" analogy to justify their decision, Facebook executives have made absolutely clear where they stand on the issue of gender hate crime. It's fine to post hateful or threatening content on their site, just as it's fine to post content that incites violence. Well, as long as it's primarily aimed at women, that is.

A petition has started to lobby Facebook to remove the page; the petition has collected just over 4200 signatories so far.