What Happened to Bra-Busters on Facebook?

Quick recap, then the spill. On April 29th, 2013, a man contacted a feminist on Facebook and asked for her help to admin what he called his “patriarchy FB page.” He claimed he wanted her to promote a guerilla image of women and make men think. The page he offered her was called Bra-Busters, and it was a pornography page with upskirt photos, creep shots, nude photos with tiny smiley faces covering nipples, and more disgusting comments from the male fans than can be covered here.

The feminist woman, currently using the pseudonym Lili Fitna for all correspondence related to this event, accepted his offer on Beltane, April 30th, when she gained ownership of the page. She immediately deleted him as admin and appointed five of her radical feminist friends to co-admin the page. Right away, they took down all the pornographic content and turned it into a rather popular radical feminist page that was written about by Feminist at Sea, The Daily Dot, Women’s Liberation Without Borders in both English and French, Anai Rhodes, Melinda Tankard Riest, Drink Tea Be Social, and even Al Jazeera and the Huffington Post. Lili Fitna is currently speaking with the BBC. In other words, word got out. The page had over 3,400 members, and had become a sharing space for women to talk openly with each other about their experiences as women living in heteronormative, misogynist patriarchy.

Things were always interesting with this page, but then they got more interesting. With all the media attention the takeover was getting, of course the trolliest of the trolls wanted in on this, and the ban list for the page became longer and loooooonger to keep things from becoming a cesspool of violent vitriol. One troll in particular, a man who goes by the name of Elizabeth Veldon, teamed up with Redds Deville after both were banned and issued this threat to the managers of the page (be warned: this is a mixture of uproariously hilarious and eerily creepy):

CALLING ALL REVOLUTIONARY FEMINISTS !
This page has been declared as fundamentally Counter Revolutionary by The New People’s Army of California.
The charges are as follows –

(1) DISHONESTY. The story about “taking over an existing porn site” is bogus. Here is a bunch of people who believe porn is SO evil that anyone who so much as looks at it is contaminated without hope of redemption (This is similar to medieval notions of how witchcraft worked, & in fact – many of the attitudes displayed on this page are similar to those of right-wing fundamentalist Christians – i.e- the very people who set up the patriarchy & have been oppressing women for centuries). Given that the people running this page think porn is so evil, does anyone else find it incredibly dubious that one of the admins here was a “friend” of someone who “ran a porn site” ?

(2) FAILURE TO WORK TOWARDS A FEMINIST REVOLUTION. If one believes that men are “the enemy”, one is faced with 2 choices – either one rises up & kills them all, including (hopefully) Luc Kitton, & then finds a new way to procreate, or else one decides to work WITH men to overthrow the patriarchy & create a world of equality. Seeing as this bunch of losers would be incapable of doing the former, that only leaves the option of working WITH men, which means being able to eplain your critique of society & your revolutionary programme to them. So far, intelligent questions politely put by articulate feminist men who have come on this page to hopefully find common ground have merely been met with childish insults, blockings & bannings, comments removed & truly revolutionary postings being taken down.

This will achieve NOTHING.

(3) DISTORTING INFORMATION. Dictators (& those with an agenda, such as those who run the media) always make sure that the proletariat do not have DIRECT access to information. In the supposed “interests” of the people, we are not allowed to see things for ourselves & make up our OWN minds. Instead, we are given an “interpretation” of what was (allegedly) said, & told to BELIEVE it. 2 days ago a posting was placed on this page asking (very politely & articulately) some relevant questions. Instead of allowing that posting to remain on the page, it was removed & followed by comments accusing it of being an “entitled male demanding….”. If that REALLY was the case, then the owners of this page should have left it up so everyone could see that for themselves. Instead, we are be asked to take Bra-Busters INTERPRETATION of that posting on “faith” alone.

We, the New People’s Army Of California declare this page, & those who run it to be counter-revolutionary. We declare you our ideological enemy, & the enemy of free-thinkers everywhere.

You can remove this posting, & block the person who posted it, but our numbers are many, & our members will return to this page every day in one form or another to sabotage your counter-revolutionary activities.

Those who are interested in a GENUINE feminist revolution (as opposed to merely whinging, moaning, blaming & wallowing in victim consciousness) are welcome to contact us.

Redds Deville (on behalf of Motherseed Discorporated)

This was back in May, shortly after the takeover, and wasn’t responded to at all. The admins had a chuckle and went back to connecting with the various sisters who had discovered the page and raising feminist consciousness.

And let’s not forget Damian Kaos, who takes trolling to a whole new level in his 20-minute video dedicated to nothing other than how pissed off he is that the women at Bra-Busters banned him (by the way, none of the admins have watched this whole video, cause tl;dr).

Damion Kaos, FB page: http://www.facebook.com/damian.kaos.7?fref=ts

I don’t even wanna give this dude more hits, but here is his monologue. Also, the irony of burning women seems to escape him. He doesn’t seem to know herstory:

But then the admins of Bra-Busters did the unthinkable!

One of the admins at Bra-Busters shared this image on the page:

OH THE HORROR!

Within a day of posting this, every single admin on Bra-Busters was banned from Facebook, being told that they had posted hate speech. Hate speech. The photo had been reported by various trolls, but most likely a particular group of trans activists who had been furiously commenting on the photo, claiming it is transphobic. After the 12-hour ban of all the admins was over, the image was reloaded in typical radical feminist fashion, cause we don’t shut up when men threaten us, and shared over 100 times within a day by the supporters of the page who were furious about the ban.

Just as an aside, let’s put this into context with the current #fbrape and #fbmisogyny campaigns led by WAM to combat Facebook’s refusal to remove violent images from Facebook that promote rape, child rape, racism, and misogyny. Examples of photos Facebook does not find problematic here:

But feminism…is about women? HATE SPEECH!

It’s not over yet. Where is the page now? Taken down. Various men (and a few women) teamed together to report the page for pornography and soliciting sex. You read that correctly. Here is the message the Bra-Busters admins received:

This happened just after the first theme day on the page, which was about women’s herstory. The irony is uncanny. Women’s herstory theme day is the day when women’s herstory gets erased again, since, after all, Facebook claims they will delete everything in the page’s history if they do not approve of the appeal. That means all the comments from the various women who have been engaging with each other—and even the multiple anonymous shares of personal rape stories, some of them shared for the very first time, in a space they felt was safe, where they were surrounded by loving women who would be supportive—will be removed.

Some men are very excited to take credit for silencing women. Here they are:

Ryan Carillo, FB page: http://www.facebook.com/ryencee81

Doyouknow Whoiam, FB page: http://www.facebook.com/doyouknow.whoiam.77

And this one, who created a mock page full of cat photos (oooh scary!), Jeffrey Hatch, FB page: http://www.facebook.com/jilly.hatch?hc_location=stream

As a result, and until the review of the appeal that will likely be denied, the admins have moved to BONER Busters: facebook.com/Brabustersreloaded.

The loss of the page is as symbolic as it is blatantly ridiculous. The page was originally a porn page, the type of page that Facebook usually responds to reports with “doesn’t violate Facebook’s terms and conditions” and once the porn was taken DOWN, the page was successfully shut down for apparently posting porn and soliciting sex (at this point, there was no longer ANY porn on the page) after being reported by men who had liked the page when it actually contained porn.

Men reporting porn on Facebook for instances when there is no porn.

Men succeeding in this.

Women reporting porn on Facebook for instances when there is actual porn.

Women not succeeding in this.

I know I’m repeating myself a bit, but I want to it make very clear what happened. In the heat of the mess, it’s easy to lose focus of what’s really going on.

Put into a larger context, what happened is that, first, a woman outsmarted a man.

Strike one—a woman outsmarted a man. 

Then this woman and others removed the pornographic content.

Strike two—women took away what men thought they were entitled to: women’s bodies.

Next, the new admins focused on other women and mostly ignored the males.

Strike three—women ignored men.

Conversations were between women, about women, and in the interests of women.

Strike four—women cared about other women.

Men who showed up to shout at, berate, harass, and intimidate women on the page were laughed at and banned.

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” – Margaret Atwood

Forget strikes—This qualifies as DEFCON 1.

And even when DEFCON 1 was announced, the women carried on, sharing with each other, enjoying their space, laughing, growing, raising awareness, and loving one another as human beings. Also, the men who left the most misogynist comments were featured in Whiney Dudes and the latest Not All Men Are Like That, both blogs run by two of the admins of Bra-Busters/Boner Busters.

NUCLEAR MELTDOWN!

women are holding men accountable for their actions!!!

women are refusing to give up a boundary!!!

women are not obeying direct orders!!!

women are not responding submissively, despite countless threats from men, but are instead frolicking gleefully together as though they didn’t hear!!!  

women are not behaving!!!

Clearly, on their end, all hell has broken loose. The making of videos, mock pages, “armies,” and raising up arms is all in the name of shutting women up making women submit, ironically while complaining that the reason they are doing this is because we are denying them free speech.

Other recently banned feminist pages include Cathy Brennan’s personal page: http://www.facebook.com/bugbrennan

Most of the women who frequented Bra-Busters were not even aware of the severity of the attacks, because the admins were so swift to get rid of these threats and ban the men making them. Our focus is on women, not men and their intimidation tactics. After all, Facebook provides a ban option to administrators for a reason. Choosing how to manage a space is part of moderating and is not “sexual solicitation,” unless you’re so sick as to think that every woman is just playing hard to get, because there is no possibility in all the universe of your misogynistic brain that any woman would ever simply not be interested in males, sex with males, games with males, conversation with males, yada yada. Because that’s misandry. And there are consequences for that. Didn’t anyone ever warn you women? Porn has taught men well. Or, men have created porn as a reflection of what is going on in their minds, and if porn reveals anything, it’s that she always wants it, no matter what it is, how severe, how painful, how torturous and dehumanizing, and no matter how many times she says NO, if he can just keep attacking her and denying her will, eventually she will enjoy the experience. Because women are sex, and sex is porn, and porn is rape, and rape is force, violation, denial of women’s will, so no matter WHAT we do, we are asking to be attacked and violated. Ignoring males is sexual solicitation, because by virtue of being female, we are asking for it. We are not humans, after all, we are objects in the world that exist for men to take out their aggression on. Of course a page full of women ignoring men must be some elaborate, pornographic scheme to solicit a certain kind of sex: these men are just trying to figure out which angle of domination will make us finally give in.

Here’s a fucking hint: We won’t.

This update has been brought to you by Radical Daughters and the rest of the admins at Bra-Busters/Boner Busters.

“Remember; Resist; Do not comply.”  – Andrea Dworkin