Breast Feeding; Obscenity or As Normal as Yawning?
I don’t want to have children. Especially not children that are borne by me. Ergo, you’d think I wouldn’t give a flying moose’s buttocks about breast feeding.
If you happened to think that, you’d be dead wrong.
Breast feeding is VERY important to me. My mother tried to breast feed me, but I gave up after a day or two of that (and with all these studies saying breast feeding your child can make your child smarter, can you imagine where I’d be if I was breast fed? And if I ate breakfast? I’d be taking over the world or something!). Breast feeding has been shown to pass through to children important antibodies that help prevent them from having wicked allergies (which I totally have), can increase their intelligence (see above), and helps the parent bound with their child (I don’t get along with my mother. At all. Case in point).
Many states (including Colorado!!!) have passed a breast feeding law, which usually states (in more official terms) that a woman has the right to breast feed anywhere that she has a right to be. Which makes sense. It is not a sexual act, it is not pornographic, it is not obscene. While I *personally* would love for it to be legal to masturbate in a nightclub, I understand why that law has not been passed. I also understand how important it is for women to feel comfortable to feed their child (which is exactly what is happening during breast feeding), wherever they are, and whenever the child is hungry.
A few years ago, LiveJournal banned breastfeeding pictures. Now, Facebook has hopped on that bandwagon, deleting pictures that have already been up for years, even if they don’t show the nipple. Their case? Breastfeeding is obscene.
As someone who has had some pictures deleted on facebook (because they were “sexually suggestive” — me riding a vacuum, fully clothed, etc. No nudity involved), I know how frustrating it can be. First your picture gets deleted (they don’t tell you which one, of course, you have to go figure it out yourself) and you get an email stating such. Then you get an email telling you you’ve misused facebook features, and your account may be deleted. This bloody well sucks. You feel angry, and frustrated, especially if you didn’t know you were violating their TOS, because they change them all the bloody time (and also, “breastfeeding” is not specifically mention, I checked). You worried that your only way of connecting with certain people from your past (or present) may be taken away from you. You feel confused, as to what you did wrong.
All this is ridiculous. I agree, there should not be pictures of penises and vaginas on facebook — there are people under 18 who have pages. However, breast feeding IS DONE IN PUBLIC on a regular basis. In lots and lots and lots of places. I think this rule is stupid, silly, random, and it puts shame onto breast feeding women. Which in my mind, is hurtful, and just plain wrong.
It is with this rant, that I put forth some information on a petition, mural, and passive protest of this new move by Facebook. Information is below,
-Essin’ Em
You’ve probably heard about Facebook’s crackdown on breastfeeding mothers – how they’ve decided that the act of nursing a child is indecent, and deleted thousands of pictures of breastfeeding moms. There have been several successful protest actions to date, including the formation of a Facebook group with over 150,000 members, and a virtual sit-in which was conducted on December 27th.
We’ve been e-mailing with Stephanie Knapp Muir (the administrator of the Facebook protest group), and we’ve come up with a powerful new way to enable anyone who is interested to support a mother’s right to breastfeed without being harassed. Please feel free to share this story with your readers, and feel free to reproduce the attached image or any images from the new protest site athttp://pregnancy.healthguru.com/applications/petition/breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding Mosaic Built from Banned Facebook Images
New York, New York, January 8th, 2009 – Facebook’s crackdown on breastfeeding mothers continues unabated, but today the community has unleashed a potent new way for moms to add their voice to the protest – one which makes use of the very images of breastfeeding that Facebook banned.
An enormous visual mosaic (which will eventually include 100,000 images) is under construction as a form of visual protest. The breastfeeding mosaic is built out of pictures submitted by people who support the cause. Images of women breastfeeding are heartily welcomed – particularly those images previously deleted by Facebook – but any type of picture can be contributed to support the effort.
While the visual mosaic is a core part of this protest effort, people who don’t want to submit an image are still strongly encouraged to add a comment or to sign the virtual petition.
When Facebook decreed that a mother nursing her child was an obscenity, and began to delete these “offensive” images from their website, they probably didn’t anticipate the stiff resistance that they’ve faced. Unfortunately, even in the face of impassioned protests, Facebook has remained stoic – and has refused to draw an official distinction between the image of a mom nursing and pornography.
The breastfeeding mosaic is being hosted at Pregnancy Health Guru, a site which is home to the largest library of pregnancy videos on the web. In addition to hosting the mosaic, PHG will also allow people who upload images for the protest to create personal libraries of their images, which can be stored and shared – with no risk that they’ll be deleted.
You can see the mosaic and add your pictures at the following URL: http://pregnancy.healthguru.com/applications/petition/breastfeeding.
For More Information, please contact:
Joshua Silberstein
CEO FullTurn Media
JSilberstein@FullTurnMedia.com
917-804-5728
6 Comments so far
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THANK YOU SO MUCH for posting this. I breastfed both my children and have NO CLUE why FB is doing this, other than it must be run by some crazy people who ….. I could rant forever. Thanks :)
Hmmmm. Interesting question.
Personally, I have no problem with Facebook having pictures of breastfeeding mums on there. For a start, Facebook isn’t like Myspace – you can’t go trawling through other people’s pages – you have to ‘know’ the person to see their pictures. For that reason, I’m surprised they’re so strict on any of the pictures.
Also, I’m European, so nipples don’t scare me like they seem to uptight middle Americans.
That being said, I’m DEEPLY curious about why anybody would want to post pictures of themselves breastfeeding on Facebook in the first place. I mean, WHY?
Having just become a new Dad, I’m familiar with the mechanics and impracticalities of breastfeeding. I grew up on a farm, so I am a firm believer that ‘breast is best’ because I’ve seen the benefits of breast-fed animals, who tend to thrive on Mum’s milk.
However, I’m also not entirely comfortable with the idea of a woman whipping out her boobs in public to breastfeed. If it’s done discretely, fine. However, in the middle of TGI Fridays, or something, it might make other patrons (especially if they have children present) deeply uncomfortable.
It depends how it’s done. With a shawl, or something like that, there’s nothing to worry about and most people wouldn’t even realise a woman’s breastfeeding. If she just whips her boobs out – I’m sorry, but I can understand how that would make other people feel uncomfortable and that’s REALLY not cool.
I know plenty of new mothers who are arrogant and rude about their babies. When my wife was waiting tables at TGI Fridays, a woman even started to change her baby’s diaper on the table, in front of everybody! She was kicked out of TGI Fridays and not a damn moment too soon. That sort of behaviour is just selfish and rude.
But then again, far too many Americans (especially in the ‘middle bits’) are far too uptight about things anyway. christ, they can own guns and have violent movies on at 10am, but GOD FORBID that they show a nipple on TV because that would warp children’s minds.
So I think DISCRETE breastfeeding in public is fine, I think it’s fine to have Facebook pictures of breastfeeding (although, I once again wonder WHO would post pictures like that) but I think there has to be a compromise and some consideration for other people’s thoughts and feelings as well.
With Facebook, considering you can theoretically only view your ‘friends’ pictures, there’s no problem and they should allow it. Period.
Man, This is so sad. While I am a bit of a facebook addict, they continue to disappoint me.
I agree with Roland. I have no problem with breastfeeding mothers (except the breastfeeding nazi’s) and have no problem with mothers breastfeeding in public, as long as it’s done discreetly. It’s something that is private between a mother and child, and there’s no reason to be sharing it with everyone. You mean to tell me the mothers don’t have other adorable photos of their children that they could put on Facebook?
First of all, if breastfeeding is not considered obscene by law (especially if no nipples are showing) then Facebook should allow the photos, plain and simple. Who knows, if there’s a picture of a poly triad , maybe they will ban that next because it’s immoral.It would be much better if they simply went by the legal standards.
Now to the issue of being discrete. This is pretty much what I’ve scene when I’ve observed women and their children in this activity. Most of them have the common sense to do this.
OTOH, if you say it’s ok if it’s done discretely, how the heck to you set the rules up to be clear as to what “discrete” means ? That is just such a fuzzy concept.
Jerry
(who fully supports women’s right to breast feed)
I have never seen anybody “whip out their breast” in public. The most “public” breastfeeding I ever saw was a woman in a hijab, who hid the baby under her clothes while she breastfed. Most women do that: they go somewhere where there’s very little traffic and cover their breast while the baby feeds.
If any of my “suggestive” pictures are removed, I’ll be pissed. My dad is my facebook friend; I think the pictures are fine if I’m willing to let my own father see them.