Breastfeeding is obscene. At least that’s what the social networking site Facebook appears to believe. Evidently, it is only appropriate to display breasts for sexual reasons. There are literally thousands of photos of women exposing their assets to greater or lesser extent. But we need to draw the line somewhere. It might be damaging for Facebook members, including many high school and college student, to see women using breasts for their primary purpose, to nourish their babies.
Talk about a boneheaded public relations move. As was only to be expected, women whose pictures of breastfeeding were removed promptly formed the Facebook group “Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is Not Obscene.” The group has 100,000 members and counting. Here’s their “manifesto”:
Recently, Facebook has started 'pulling a myspace' by not allowing people to post profile pictures of babies nursing. The pictures have been reported as 'obscene' and have been removed- their posters warned not to repost or fear being kicked off of Facebook.
We're wondering: what about a baby breastfeeding is obscene? Especially in comparison to MANY other pictures posted all over Facebook that really are obscene.
Facebook, we expect more from you, and we expect you to realize that nursing moms everywhere have a right to show pictures of their babies eating, just like bottle-fed babies have a right to be seen. In an effort to appease the closed-minded, you are only serving to be detrimental to babies, women, and society.
**Facebook, allow breastfeeding pictures, and stop classifying them as obscene!**
According to tech website, ars technica:
As per site policy, Facebook does not allow images depicting female nipples or areolas anywhere on the social network, though this does not include breastfeeding photos. Facebook does, however, remove photos that are reported by users as obscene, which is apparently what happened in Farley's (and other mothers') cases. Farley says that the baby covered the nipple and areola in her photos, but that apparently didn't stop other members from reporting the pictures to Facebook.
Here’s one of the offending photos, so you can judge for yourself.
Yup, that’s obscene. Sure there’s no visible nipple or areola, but OMG there is a baby eating from that breast! Small children could be emotionally scarred by just one peek.
Facebook has jumped head first into a no win situation. It is almost inevitable that the phenomenon of 100,000 women demanding more pictures of breastfeeding will lead to even greater public pressure for them to relent. The ban is unjustifiable on its face, but it is instructive about societal attitudes. Evidently no amount of cleavage is too much if it is displayed for sexual purposes, but when it comes to drinking from a breast, that’s just going too far.
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Comments
Congratulations to Facebook for protecting our innocent children from sexual content ;-)
Oh no, not a nipple . . cover my eyes from the evil! Feh!
Photos of nursing babes is the last thing Facebook needs to concern its self with. How about spending their time stopping all the perverts who troll their site, loking for underage "dates?"
Oh wait, that would actually mean doing something constructive!
Great post Amy, kudos!
-Jackie
Who is a member of "Hey Facebook - Breastfeeding is NOT Obscene!"
What is their problem? You can go to any celeb website and see countless pictures of actresses wearing virtually nothing, and no one complains. I get the sense that the folks at Facebook are afraid of these pictures, but I can't figure out why.
Thank you for sharing.
"I posted a very discreet picture of breastfeeding my first daughter on OS, and no one even noticed:)"
I'm glad no one complained about it, but I don't understand why anyone would ever consider it a reason to complain.
Who is a member of "Hey Facebook - Breastfeeding is NOT Obscene!"
Good for you! Sooner or later, they are going to have to make a different rule for breastfeeding.
I don't subscribe to the Conspiracy Theory of the Universe, nor do I believe we are Nuts and Doomed as a species. If we were we would see a lot more cars crossing the yellow line, as it were. We function pretty well.
But underneath it all...we're nuts. We slavishly watch men crush each other wearing gay apparel and speedos, but pictures of kindelech nestled against their loving mothers, getting sustenance in an ancient scene of protection and nurture is outlawed.
"We slavishly watch men crush each other wearing gay apparel and speedos, but pictures of kindelech nestled against their loving mothers, getting sustenance in an ancient scene of protection and nurture is outlawed."
I agree. Facebook says it is responding to complaints, but who are the people who would complain about this?
Facebook is irrelevant.
Amy: Talk about a boneheaded public relations move. Aren't you the person who remarked, in the context of your own online properties, that there's no such thing as bad PR?
I guarantee you the owners of Facebook are nothing less than ecstatic that there are more than 420 news stories about the Facebook ban on pictures of breastfeeding; they feel they have achieved a great victory in having gathered 100K+ members into a group called "Hey Facebook - Breastfeeding is NOT Obscene!"
The Internet is a tool. The people who use it should not themselves become tools.
It's a picture of a WWE (or some such drivel) Smackdown billboard and the bare chested men have. no. nipples.
It's the damn strangest thing I've ever seen...
I did see some nipple action on 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' last night. Is America now going so far to emulate our enemies that we will have 'nipple police' slicing movies and marking up billboards?
See 'This Film Not Yet Rated'...
So, who is more perverted? The perverted woman feeding her child or the perverts that got her tossed off for thinking that it was somehow sexual or disturbing?
I worked with a woman over 10 years ago that responded to someone throwing a fit about her breastfeeding her daughter by telling them 'I'll get to you next, wait your turn'. It hung them up... She was surprisingly very militant about breastfeeding and yet was a rather mild mannered person. I found a new affection and respect for her that day...
I would say that nursing mothers have to be fierce. They are giving to their children in a most vulnerable way and have to protect them, even if it's just with words...
I've always wanted to ask people how they think Jesus ate as a baby.
Women, all people, should get on their case.
I was in the Field Museum in Chicago three weeks ago. The lady, while at coffee, at the next table was doing something beautiful, feeding her infant, and not sixty feet from Sue, the Tyrannosaur, the the central main hall.
The appropriateness of using what we have evolved with, for and from, was not lost upon me. The real dinosaurs with the walnut sized brains, are those that see obscene, and not beauty.
Amy, take a break, a rest, come over and read some poetry at mine. And turn about is certainly fair. Critique away. I'll enjoy it.
A Happy New Year to you,
Dean
"So, who is more perverted? The perverted woman feeding her child or the perverts that got her tossed off for thinking that it was somehow sexual or disturbing?"
Very good question.
"I've always wanted to ask people how they think Jesus ate as a baby."
If it was anything like today, she was forced to nurse in the dirty ladies room at the stable.
"read some poetry at mine."
I gave it a "thumb up" as soon as you posted it. I didn't critique it because there wasn't anything about it to criticize.
I'm not convinced that the taboo against public breast-feeding is based on sexualizing it or a fear of sexualizing it. We have taboos against all sorts of perfectly healthy bodily functions when done public.
A lot of countries allow people to bring pets (especially dogs) into restaurants. America doesn't. It's not that we're anti-dog, it's that we have a very strong sense of cleanliness. Breast-feeding isn't unhealthy or germy, but it hits that same taboo spot of private, hygenic behavior we don't like to see.
C'mon Facebook, get it together will ya?
There is absolutely nothing "obscene" about breast feeding. There is also, in my humble opinion, nothing particularly "beautiful" about watching someone eat lunch (or whatever) either.
Rug-rats have been slurping away contentedly on mommy's boobies for long enough that you'd think it would be considered silly to make a fuss over it.
In two words, facebook......Grow Up!!
I read an article somewhere that claimed that some women actually orgasm DURING vaginal childbirth!
Well, let's see of the bible beaters can stop childbirth... (Well OB's would love that)
I'm all for it because if would mean less of them...
I wonder if that fundie woman with the machismo husband and the 18 kids 'came' with every child. That would potentially explain the number...
"Which people? Individual prudes or an organized group like Dodson's?"
I never considered that it might have been a group that complained. That's an intriguing (and upsetting) possibility.
There's an entire world out here that exists in spite of the internet. Try it.
Actually, I was breastfed as a baby, highly unusual in my generation, but my mother had a Master's degree in Nutrition and Home Economics and understood, when few did, the amazing nutritional properties of breast milk. In fact, more incredible facts have been discovered about the benefits of breast milk in the last two decades that are nothing short of amazing!! For example, breast milk actually accommodates to the premature baby's nutritional needs!! How incredible and wonderful the human body really is!
Lucky me to have been breastfed!! Maybe that's one of the reasons why I'm 58 years old, have more energy than most, have never been seriously ill in my entire life nor do I have any health problems now nor do I expect to...ever... and also expect to see age 100!
Somehow, I doubt I single-breastedly caused social mayhem.
Moreover, who are they? Are they an even mix of both men and women? What would have been the ratio? . . . Or perhaps it was merely the decision of a single person, the "web-master" at Facebook.
Ever since Playboy first hit the public magazine racks back in the early 1960's America has become increasingly obsessed with sex. Popular culture swims in it now. John Updike, one of America's finest authors of fiction, utilized sexual imagery right along with everyone else to help flesh out his pin-point social realism. Had he not done so, I seriously doubt that his "Rabbit, Run" novel would have drawn as much interest as it actually did.
Revulsion should arise in the face of the grotesque, such as the on-going slaughter of ordinary people in Iraq or those bedeviled countries in Africa; it should certainly not arise in reaction to what is essentially a variant of the Madonna-and-Child motif. But if it does, and apparently it has on the part of one or more individuals at the website in question, it tells us something about these people; yet what that is, I really have no idea; or I would not have any idea until I came across an "explanation" for such a ban. . . . This really is very curious.