Hey Facebook! Change Your Policies! Breastfeeding is Not Obscene!

For all you breastfeeding moms and breastfeeding advocates who have Facebook accounts, today is the day of the Mother’s International Lactation Campaign’s (M.I.L.C). second virtual “nurse-in”. They are asking, once again for breastfeeding moms and supporters to change their profile picture and status line for one day to send a message to Facebook and the world that breastfeeding is NOT obscene. You are encouraged to use any image of a nursing mother, human or otherwise as your profile picture and change your status line to “Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is NOT obscene!”

So I posted my breastfeeding photo and changed my status and now I will sit back and wait to see what happens. Will one of my Facebook friends report my photo?

Since I have never felt the need to report a photo for any reason I decided to see what would happen if I did. First I had to find an offensive photo. I didn’t want to take much time looking for one so I opted to report an unflattering photo of a friend’s friend drinking beer. Here is what happened:

First a window popped up that said, “Report a Picture: You are about to report a violation of our Terms of Use. All reports are strictly confidential (I had wondered about that). We will not remove photos just because they are unflattering (darn! So much for being able to delete horrible pics of myself in other people’s albums!).”

Then there was a drop down box for you to pick your reason for reporting the photo. Your choices are:

• Nudity or pornography
• Drug use
• Violence
• Attacks individual or group

That was it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if one of the options included

• Breastfeeding?

And then once you clicked it another window popped up that said, “Breastfeeding is not obscene. A woman breastfeeding her child is not necessarily nude and breastfeeding is not pornographic. This photo will not be removed for this reason.” Although not a perfect solution, it might be a nice start.

If Facebook really does support breastfeeding like they say they do, then they need to revise their policies and allow breastfeeding photos to be displayed on their site.  Mr. Schnitt, a Facebook representative has stated, “certainly we can agree that there is context where nudity is not obscene, but we are reviewing thousands of complaints a day. Whether it’s obscene, art or a natural act — we’d rather just leave it at nudity and draw the line there.”

I understand that with millions of users their staff can’t review every single complaint. That’s why I think there should be a disclaimer that tells users that breastfeeding photos will not be removed, just like there is a disclaimer that Facebook will not remove unflattering photos. And if some users are still offended then they will just have to deal with it. Look away. Educate your children. Find something better to get offended by. I’m offended by the Facebook event Steak and Blowjob Day 2009, but you don’t see me jumping up and down and trying to remove their content and silly picture. (Yes, this is a real event, and no I’m not hyperlinking it, you can go look for yourself).

Depending on the beholder, everyone will view and label a breastfeeding photo differently, but it comes down to an individual’s definition of modesty and personal ethics. One thing they are not is obscene.

Related posts:

1. Madonna and Child-Like Paintings Are Obscene Too?
2. Why Women Post Their Breastfeeding Photos
3. How Breastfeeding Can Change Our Body Image
4. Twitter Writes Me A Breastfeeding Post!
5. From Above As Below?

Tags: Facebook, nurse-in