Elka is right, there are many sites where photos of ex girl friends are posted in far more compromising situations than facebook, so trying to target facebook is a little lame.

The point I was making about the article is that MTR is well known for jumping on the feminist band wagon. And while this page is aimed at women, there are plenty of similar issues with cyber bullying aimed at boys using facebook.

If Melinda is only worried about the femminist angle then she has either missed that this page is only one facet of a larger issue, or she has deliberately ignored it for her own agenda.

That the women are being offended by the sexual tags is more a product of our society that they care. Why don't guys care?

The bullying of boys takes another tack altogether.

Thanks Elke, it's a matter of what one is going to do about it. I suggest nothing - unless of course it was me being defamed. Then I'd call in Slater & Gordon and hammer them.

MTR ain't much of a feminist. She's strongly anti-abortion. See her posts on RU486.

Pelican - some thoughts...
If it's private information it must also be true information and is clearly already known by others. As far as I'm aware, breach of personal trust is not a crime. As for the photos, complaint may be justified if these women do not already have a photo of themselves available elsewhere on the internet, but that's a rare thing these days - I would guess that most have already chosen to place their image on a facebook page or similar.

On the other hand, if it is false information, it is not actually private information, and only defamatory if society takes issue with people's sexual preferences thus placing a woman at a disadvantage for having been branded a slut. If society at large is no more negatively impacted by the label 'slut' as it is by the label 'vegetarian' (for eg.) then how is a woman disadvantaged by the claim?

Perhaps we should be addressing the issue of society's prejudice towards a woman who chooses multiple sex partners in the same way we are (& should be, don't get me wrong) the issue of society's prejudice towards a woman who chooses another woman as her sex partner (again, for eg.).

Now we need a site which identifies all those who post on sites like the one MTR describes so the rest of us can know to stay well clear of them.

pelican "I thought it was taken as a given that the message in this article relates to all sites like it including those that invade the privacy of men." - from what I've seen of MTR's writing I'd not take that as a given. It would be easy enough to add a side line noting that males face similar issues but somehow that does not seem to be part of MTR's agenda. That's a side note, it does not really take away from the point's made in the article.

In some way's I'm more concerned about the media's ability to use images of people without consent. How often do we see someone accused of a crime (or being investigated by a current affairs show) clearly attempting to hide their face from the camera's and making it very obvious that they don't consent to being filmed/photographed. Those images make it to prime time TV broadcasts with a wider audience and potentially with the appearance of greater authority to their claims.

R0bert

Orange Donkey

"Perhaps we should be addressing the issue of society's prejudice towards a woman who chooses multiple sex partners in the same way we are (& should be, don't get me wrong) the issue of society's prejudice towards a woman who chooses another woman as her sex partner (again, for eg.)."

A million people say that you are wrong. Maybe, just maybe, how we conduct our sex lives actually affects other people. Maybe your sex life actually involves other people, but only maybe. Maybe there is good reason to pressure women to think of others. On the other hand, it is much safer to protect women from any and all criticism and use social pressure exclusively to convince men to solve all of the world's problems. And orange donkeys always do what is safe.

I'm actually quite surprised how many people are making an issue out of the facebook page, and that there is an article getting so bent out of shape over what a bunch of basement-dwellers carelessly post about other people on a page with crude language that one would actually have to deliberately seek to view the content of.

Let's try a real-(ie tangible)-world example:

Suppose instead of a remote corner of facebook, on the web- it was a concealed, grimy passageway below an overpass bridge crossing over a river on a wall nobody on the road could see, and somebody graffitied the same misogynistic title as the facebook page there, and the person responsible either got more guys (the majority most likely teens as Cheryl said) doodled a few words of support or some sexist stories describing girls as 'sluts' the way a pimp does (trying to be cool)- eventually this insignificant arch was covered in hundreds of these doodles...

Does anyone actually care? Or think it reflects a disturbing reflection on the attitude to women? Or is it just some silly garbage a bunch of dropkicks wrote to blow off steam or for kicks? Would you think that even half of the people writing these messages were even being remotely serious? That is, that they're holding deep-held convictions of girls as sluts for not covering up?

Would anyone consider the graffiti-ed wall remotely similar to sharing these messages over radio or television? (The answer would hopefully be NO). What about in a (high)schoolyard conversation?

Hence why I felt the need for the shocked wowsers to get a grip.
The internet isn't playschool, it isn't prime-time TV- it's an anarchistic and unlimited network of information- nothing more, nothing less- the information including EVERYTHING and being so diverse that people would actually need to key in a VERY specific address or search term to even find it (that being deliberately looking for it- in the same way someone would have to go WELL out of their way to find the graffiti under the bridge).