In June this year, we asked our supporters to report the homophobic page “Gays should be fit and muscular” (ID 500634340092240). The page was deactivated for a time, but on October 28th it returned under the name “Gays should be fit and Muscular, not hairy and corpulent #fpsbg” (ID 500634340092240 – as before). The page address is “https://www.facebook.com/Fatgays” which should have been enough of a clue that something was wrong with this page. Please take a moment to report the page, even if you have done so before. Together we can draw Facebook’s attention to the fact that homophobia like this is just not acceptable.
The page continues to promote homophobia through the shaming and vilification of a subculture of the gay community known as “bears”. The page now has 244 supporters, which is down from 321 supporters in June, 2015. In this briefing we will provide some examples of the hateful nature of the most recent posts made by the page, with links so you can report them to Facebook and to our reporting system FightAgainstHate.com
Return of the page
The posts below show how the page has been suspended twice by Facebook, first for a month, then for a further 2 months. It’s time Facebook closed it for good. We’ll be writing to them with that recommendation.
Example 1: Vilifying Bears
View the post here so you can report it.
Example 2: Presenting Bears as Racist
View the post here so you can report it.
Example 3: Body Shaming
View the post here so you can report it.
How to report the page and its content
Our guide to reporting Facebook Pages gives step by step instructions you can follow to report this page. Note that in step 4 you should select “A gender or orientation”.
Our guide to reporting Facebook posts, comments and images maybe helpful for reporting the specific items of content. As above, you will want to select “A gender or orientation” when asked to describe the type of hate speech.
After reporting it to Facebook, please also report the items to OHPI’s online hate reporting tool FightAgainstHate.com. This will allow us to track how many reports Facebook is receiving in relation to this content. Reporting is a straight forward process, you can see how it works here. These examples should be reported under the Homophobia category.
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Further publications by OHPI on Homophobia are available here. Your support via our Facebook page will help in our work to combat all forms of online hate and if you haven’t done so already, we invite you to join us. You can also keep informed about our work by joining our mailing list for a monthly summary of our activities. Thank you for support, and for taking the time to report “Gays should be fit and Muscular, not hairy and corpulent #fpsbg”