Shocking Facebook group exposed – NEWS.com.au

A SECRET Australian Facebook group where men entertain each other with graphic descriptions of rape, revenge porn and violence against women has sickened social media users, but been defended by its male members.

The website “Blokes Advice” started in Queensland in May and already has more than 200,000 men on board. Posts shared on the site include details of gang rape, advice on how to force a woman into having anal sex and invitations to bombard women with porn.

There’s even a picture of a seven-year-old girl with a runny nose juxtaposed with a picture of an 18-year-old woman with semen on her face.

The page gained attention after writer and commentator Clementine Ford shared some of the images on her Facebook page in the hope of exposing the men involved in writing or supporting the page’s most vile posts.

And over the weekend domestic violence support group Red Heart Campaign has shared some of the more explicit images, insisting that the page’s dark underbelly needs to be exposed so the men behind it are brought into the open.

“These men are out there and this behaviour has to stop,” wrote one supporter of the group.

‘TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT’

Men who belong to the group have defended the site as “a bit of a laugh” and say the posts were taken out of context.

“While I don’t condone some things that were said, I believe these men are just blowing off some steam and having a laugh,” said an anonymous writer on antifeminismaustralia.com.

It’s difficult to understand how bragging about gangbanging a woman until she cries, could be taken out of context.

Or what about this charming observation:

“If it weren’t for their vaginas, a*******, mouths and cooking and cleaning skills that they are born with then there would be no need to the woman kind.

“I personally feel dirty just being around those sausage wallets. They should be a rule they can’t come with in a meter radius of they aren’t performing sexual acts upon us.”

What context could make that OK?

SITE INTENDS TO ‘DO GOOD’

It’s not the first time the site has been called out for condoning violence against women. In May, when it first appeared, it came under fire for posts such as this savagery:

“What would you do if you saw a female in public wearing the Blokes Advice shirt? Surely a few back hands will teach em a ­lesson.”

At that time, the founder, Brock Paulke, insisted to the Daily Telegraph that violent posts were an anomaly and the site’s main aim was for men to support other men.

“I want to do good out of this group,” he said. “I’ve said on the group that we need to keep things within the rules of the group, and blokes that are breaching the rules have been removed.

“We eventually want to get things to a stage where blokes can actually help each other out, talk about issues that they usually wouldn’t, and already we’re looking at donating funds from the next round of shirts to charity.”

“Eventually”? Once they’ve got all the rape stuff out of the way?

Others echo his insistence that the site is a sort of “safe space” for men where they can say the kind of things they know would be too out-of-line to say out loud in public:

But the horror is not that men are saying these things to a woman’s face.

It’s that they’re thinking them at all.

IS IT ANY WONDER WOMEN FEAR FOR THEIR SAFETY?

It’s very difficult for men to understand why women can be so afraid of men. After all, it’s “not all men” who think like this, is it? It’s a small minority.

But when women are exposed to this sort of thinking in its wild, unedited form, and when we see that it attracts so many likes and shares and animalistic back-slaps and catcalls from men who may not verbalise these views but clearly condone them, is it any wonder women recoil?

Is it any wonder women fear a footstep behind them at night, or speaking up on social media, or standing up to the guy at the pub who makes a lewd comment?

The force of the brutality of their words is just so overwhelming. And these aren’t creepy guys in raincoats hiding in public toilets. They’re supposedly ordinary sons and husbands — and they have women who they say they love in their lives.

That’s what’s frightening.

If you recognise any of the names of the men on this site, do something. Speak to their wives, sisters, mothers or friends and let them know that something very wrong has happened that is making these men think this way.

We need to raise men who are better than this.

If you are experiencing domestic violence you have the right to be safe. Contact the Domestic Violence Support Line 24/7 on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800 Respect.

This article originally appeared on Kidspot.