A day after notorious women-only Facebook group Bad Girls Advice was shut down, one of the whistleblowers who helped get the group removed has spoken to PEDESTRIAN.TV about copping a wave of abuse from former members.
Our source, who we’ll call Kate, flagged a post defending bestiality before midday yesterday. Since then, the group has been deleted by Facebook, and Kate has copped so much abuse that her account has been suspended – the result of angry former group members reporting her profile to the same platform that took away their forum.
Kate says that the content and culture of the group had been getting worse for a long time, culminating in a toxic atmosphere where dissenting opinions would attract serious punishment, admins were afforded cult-leader status, and the 200,000+ members were told to “scroll on” if they saw anything that made them uncomfortable, rather than bringing it up for discussion.
“It used to be more about acceptance; now it’s just about one-upping each other. It’s more competitive now than anything else: girls trying to outdo each other with who can be the most fucked up.“Every week there’s a new dick pic thread, a new topless photo thread, and a thread about sex positions. It’s the same shit.“It just turned into a man-hating, sexualising club.”
The group has been the centre of a number of media storms over the last year, including the time they hounded a man who’d been rude after a date, the apparent fact that they’d traded members’ nudes as part of a peace treaty with sibling Facebook group Bloke’s Advice, and numerous accusations of condoning spousal abuse, nonconsensual nude-sharing and bullying.
So it’s surprising, both to us and to our source, that what eventually got the group nixed by Zuckerberg‘s drones was a post about a girl who’d had sex with a dog.
“It’s ridiculous that it had to get to bestiality to be removed, when previously they’d been advocating stabbing their boyfriends, and going on insane witch hunts and ruining dudes’ lives just because they didn’t want to go out on second dates with them.”
According to Kate and several other people who contacted us, the post in question was not removed by admins; in fact, they responded to complaints with a staunch “no kink-shaming” policy.
Anti-domestic violence group the Red Heart Campaign has praised Facebook for taking BGA down, applauding the end of a group that appeared to regularly condone violent abuse towards men.
Meanwhile, the response from former members to the group’s disappearance has been one of anger and mourning, with many lamenting the end of a community they felt did more good than harm. But Kate says that the culture that was developing in BGA was not a positive one: “They’re not being a safe community, they’re saying if you don’t agree with [what others post] you need to ignore it.”
She – and others who have contacted us about the group, and the new version of it that’s in the process of springing up – are wary of the environment this kind of “pack mentality” attitude creates for younger women.
And they’re also surprised at the vitriol from upset former group members, particularly those who’ve been targeting Kate:
“All I did was report a bestiality post. Facebook was the one who [took it down]. How is it so incredibly weird for them that it got shut down because of someone having sex with a dog?”
While BGA clearly started with good intentions, the negative coverage over the last twelve months does seem to something wrong with the model – especially considering that in every case, a member would have had to be disturbed enough by what she saw to break the cardinal rule of the group, and “snitch”.
Still, as Kate says:
“There’s obviously a gap in the market there for women to be able to discuss and share their sexualities with other women, obviously there is a gap, and that’s why Bad Girls Advice worked so well. But there has to be a way of doing that in a way that is actually safe, and that isn’t judgemental of anyone, and that if you’re not okay with abuse, that doesn’t make you some kind of prude.“That’s basically how I feel now, because people were saying that I was a sensitive idiot and now I feel like I’m some kind of oppressive, close-minded person just for not being okay with having sex with a dog. I can’t believe I have to say that. It is insane.”
Image: Adam Hester / Getty.
