July 18, 2009

  • Rape, Xanga and Censorship

    Recently I wrote a post about rape and the military.  I wrote in the post that a woman was more likely to be raped in the military than be killed in action.  In the post, I thanked women in the military for taking one for the team.

    Some of you may remember that the post received about 300 comments in a few hours and xanga took the post off Top Blogs and the front page feed by giving it a “C” rating.  Xanga explained to me that some people may take the post in the wrong way and might think that the post was advocating rape.  Anyone with basic reading skills could see I was not advocating rape and 7 out of 10 people could see I was using sarcasm to make a point.

    Yesterday I read a post about the site Mancouch.  Mancouch is an ish site that xanga controls the content.  A post was posted by xanga and placed on xanga’s front page.

    Here is the post:  Link

    In the post, a story is told of a 50 year old man that was pulled off his bike and then sexually assaulted by 5 women.

    The post is titled “The Luckiest Man in the World?”  So the post tells the story about a 50 year old man being sexually assaulted and then gives the title of the man being lucky. 

    Here is a direct quote from the post:

    “People of Mancouch, I don’t want to make light of something like sexual assault. After all, it is a very serious thing, and it’s always wrong.

    But with that said…imagine that a guy is just minding his own business, biking down the street, when a pack of girls ambushes him and has their way with him.

    I’ll leave this one up to you guys: would you feel bad for this guy, or is he the luckiest guy in the world?“

    So the post indicates that they don’t want to make light of sexual assault but then the author indicates it is funny that would happen to a guy.  It goes on to ask if a guy in that situation would be the “luckiest guy in the world?”

    So xanga removed a post from Top Blogs that I posted saying I was advocating rape when I clearly didn’t do that.  But in this post, it can be read to express that a guy may actually enjoy sexual assault when the guy was 50, pulled off a bike and had his trousers and underwear pulled off and was sexually molested.

    What if this was a woman?  What if a 50 year old woman was pulled off a bike?  What is her underwear was pulled off and she was sexually molested?  Why is this funny?

    The thing about my post was I was making a point.  I was talking about how we set a day aside to honor the troops that gave their lives for their country but we ignore the real threat to the women in the military which is rape.

    But the mancouch post doesn’t make a larger point.  It just makes fun of a 50 year old man who was pulled from a bike and then molested.  Rape is not funny if it is a defenseless 5 year old boy or a 50 year old man.  Just because the gender is male doesn’t make it funny.  But the post itself is pointless.  There is no real point made.

    Here is the problem.  You don’t have the ability to rate the post.  Have you noticed you can’t rate an ish site post?  Xanga can just override it.  But xanga can knock off any content they want from their front page just by rating it “C.”  So the ish sites are allowed to print inappropriate content and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

    There is only one thing that you can do.  You can report the content through the ads.

    1.  Go to the site:  Mancouch

    2.  Look at the ads in the upper right hand corner.  Do you see the ads?  Do you see under the ads that part marked “Ads by Google?”  Hit the black words “ads by google.” 

    3.  Scroll down the page.  Hit the link marked “Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw.” Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw

    4.  A drop down comes down below that link.  There is a link that says, “Also Report a Violation.”  Hit the link marked “Also Report a Violation.”

    5.  A drop down comes down below that link that says, “The issue(s) were with”  Click the click on that says “the website.”

    6.  A drop down comes down below the link that says, “Did the site you just came from violate any of the following policies?”  Hit the link marked “The site violates AdSense policies in other ways.” 

    7.  You then see a message box that says, “Add additional information here:”

    8.  Write in that box “You have ads on this site that posted about rape.  It looks like the site is saying rape is ok in the case of men and even makes fun of it.”  Then give them the link:  http://www.mancouch.com/707490830/the-luckiest-man-in-the-world/?ref=xn

    9.  Then hit “Submit Feedback to Google.”

    That lets Google know the problem.  In fact, most of the ish sites violate Google’s policy with adult content.  So you can report something almost daily from their sites.

    Now this is a few minutes of effort but it lets Google know what is going on.

    There is something else you can do that is even more effective.  Contact the ads directly.  Just go to Mancouch and click on the ads.  Then go to the “contact us” portion of those ads and email them directly.  Those sites will respond to you.  They respond to you quickly.  They usually send out an automatic response but you can actually talk to a person if you respond back.

    Here are a few advertisers that you can contact from Mancoach.

    They have advertisements on Mancouch:

    Go to any of these links and typically these links go directly to the headquarters of the organization.

    This is the HP executive from Hewitt Packer.  They have an ad on Mancouch.  Just email the CEO from the link:

    http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/email/hurd/index.htm

    You will get an automatic response.  But just wait because they respond.  Report the post or any inappropriate post.  Then ask them if they support rape of men. 

    Here is the link for circuit city and they have ads on Mancouch.

    http://www.circuitcity.com/sectors/Help/email.asp

    Here is the link for network solutions and they have ads on Mancouch:

    https://www.networksolutions.com/help/domain-service-request.jsp

    Here is the link for Frito lay and they have ads on Mancouch:

    http://fritolay.com/about-us/contact-us.html

    If you go to Mancouch and go to the ads, you can report from them too.  Focus on the big banner ads because they are larger companies and they tend to be more responsive to the people.  Remember in your email to sound intelligent.  It is going to the CEO in most cases.

    You can do this with inappropriate mature content from an of the ish sites.

    This is nothing personal.  I just want the ish sites to be held to the same standard of all the ordinary xanga users.

    Recommend this post so we get the word out and get help.