Web pages shut down after ‘rape’ warning

Social media pages which were slammed for “objectifying” both male and female students in NUI Galway and GMIT have been shut down following a storm of protest from students groups in both third level institutes.

The Facebook pages, which featured photos of students taken without permission from their personal Facebook pages, and which were commented on by page viewers, were slammed by one group as being guilty of promoting a “rape culture” and were a product of a damaging “lad culture”.

The pages, such as NUIG Bird of the Day, saw administrators uploading photographs of girls, taken from their Facebook profiles without permission, resulting in outrage from a large number of students.

The issue was flagged by NUI Galway Students’ Union Equality Officer Cian Shelvin after FemSoc requested that the SU take action on these pages.

Mr Shelvin has told the auditor of FemSoc, Patricia Prieto-Blanco that he got in touch with the moderators of the ‘NUIG Bird of the Day’ page and the ‘Find NUIG’s Most Attractive Male’ page and both have since been removed.

Sean Kearns, President of NUI Galway SU stated that the SU executive will debate whether or not to lobby for the removal of these pages at the next SU council on January 20.

“We were also aggrieved to find that the NUIG Hunk of the Day has more likes and more photos than the Bird of the Day so we will be including that in the decision, too. While Bird of the Day casts a negative light, so too does the Hunk of the Day,” he said, emphasising the fact that male students are also victims of sexism.

Pages of this nature have caused much uproar among students, many of whom tried to report abuse to Facebook, only to be told that there was no abuse as the pages were not violating any of Facebook’s standards.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.