Women land in "Facebook jail" after posting negative comments about men

SAN FRANCISCO -- Many people on Facebook are talking about the wave of sexual misconduct cases. But some of the phrases some women are using are getting them banned from the site, CBS San Francisco reports.

Comedian Kayla Avery has been banned from Facebook so many times, she's come up with a term for it: Facebook jail.

She's been sent to Facebook jail for writing things like "men are trash," "all men are useless" and "just imagine if men didn't exist."

"If in your community standards you say you make exceptions for sarcasm and comedy, well, then saying 'men are the worst' -- that would a hyperbolic, sarcastic statement," Avery said.

For feminist comedian Marcia Belsky, it really started getting serious when she wrote a Facebook comment that said, "men are scum."

Facebook blocked her for 30 days, saying they remove posts that attack people based on gender, among other factors.

Belsky says Facebook is treating white men as a protected class.

"So to make that equal to somebody attacking women who are already the subordinated group, I think is false," Belsky said. "It's a false equivalent. So I think to protect white men as a group, as a whole, is looking at society in a vacuum, and that's not how things work."

Avery has started a website called facebookjailed.com to highlight their stories.

For example, when comedian Amy Shanker decided to test Facebook by writing "women are scum" and got her friends to report it, the post actually stayed up. But when comedian Rae Sanni reported a comment by another user who said "kill yourself n*****," nothing happened.

When Avery was trying to raise awareness for her Facebook jail campaign, she wrote "it's all a charade so they can protect fragile men feelings." She got banned for that too.

"It's no secret that Silicon Valley is very white and very male, and if you don't have enough diversity in your staffing, that's going to cause more problems," Avery said.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

But a spokesperson told The Daily Dot that the company is "not perfect by any means." 

"We make mistakes," the company said. "We know there's a lot more we can and should be doing here. That's why the team sits down every week and asks, 'Are there gaps that we need to be addressing here?'"

Belsky is not mincing her words.

"White men have historically been the only protected group which is why you have to set up policy to protect other groups within this system of white supremacy and patriarchy," Belsky said.