--- title: "Facebook Now Allows Calling Women Personal Property" description: "Meta's confusing new hate speech rules now explicitly allow users to make shockingly misogynistic claims on Facebook and Instagram." date: "2025-01-08" modified: "2025-01-08" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/facebook-women-hate-speech" categories: - "Future Society" tags: - "facebook" - "hate speech" - "mark zuckerberg" - "Meta" --- # Facebook Now Allows Calling Women Personal Property ![Meta's confusing new hate speech rules now explicitly allow users to make shockingly misogynistic claims on Facebook and Instagram.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* Meta's [new hate speech rules]() — or lack thereof — now allow users to make shockingly misogynistic claims on the company's social networks. A perusal of the latest update to [Meta's "hateful conduct" rules]() reveals that a number of rules that barred users from comparing minorities to inanimate objects, including references to "women as household objects or property," have been removed. As part of the tech company's transparency efforts, users are able not only to see updates to policies, but also a change log of what had been added and stricken out between updates. For its January 7, 2025 update — which went into effect seemingly just after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced yesterday a [sweeping content overhaul]() that was derided as a clear effort to curry favor with president-elect Donald Trump — Meta's confusing new rules strike out a number of formerly prohibited types of speech, much of which relates to women and gender minorities. Among the strikethroughs in the "hateful conduct" policy change log is the removal of a section barring users from comparing people to inanimate objects or "non-human states." That rule, now rescinded, banned referring to women "as household objects or property or objects in general." You don't have to a be a scholar in feminist theory to know why it's seriously messed up to refer to a woman as someone else's property — and that's without getting into the history of chattel slavery in the United States, when [white men owned and abused Black women]() for hundreds of years. In the age of Trump 2.0, the concept of a man "owning" a woman is a logical — [and terrifying]() — endpoint of the so-called "[trad wife" movement](), which seeks to reinstate traditional gender roles by will or by force. It's also the [undercurrent of the anti-choice push]() that the president-elect's cronies [hope to enact further]() once he takes office again in a few weeks. That same regressive and misogynistic energy also seems to be on display in another peculiar removal from Meta's new hateful conduct policy. While the policy used to ban "generalizations that state inferiority" based on physical appearance and sexual activity — like calling people "slut," "whore," or "pervert," per the old rules — the new overhaul now simply prohibits "insults" about character. Though the new update added language saying that users should not post allegations about another person's "sexual promiscuity or other sexual immorality," it's unclear what the difference between that addition and the exclusion of the "slut" and "whore" language would be, and we've reached out to Meta for clarification about that. Within the context of [Zuckerberg's newfound Trump fandom](), meanwhile, this policy overhaul feels very much like the "[grab 'em by the pussy]()"-era misogyny of the president-elect's 2016 campaign — and Meta has a lot of explaining to do if it wants the women who use its platforms to believe any different. **More on Meta:** [*Meta Kills AI-Generated "People" Like "Proud Black Queer Momma"*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()