Facebook’s decision to remove photos of breast-feeding mothers off of the site has become quite the controversy. This past weekend there was a large protest at Facebook’s offices in Palo Alto.
A group 80,000+ strong has organized itself on Facebook under the name Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!(Official petition to Facebook). Besides the actual protest that took place at Facebook headquarters, the group staged their own virtual protest by simultaneously changing their profile to a breastfeeding picture.
The group had this to say about their recent sit-in protest on the breast-feeding photo ban:
M.I.L.C. EVENT A HUGE SUCCESS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On December 27th, 2008 over 11 000 people participated in our first ever M.I.L.C. (Mothers International Lactation Campaign) event.Participants from around the globe joined our virtual protest of Facebooks discriminatory practice of arbitrarily and randomly removing breastfeeding pictures from member profiles and albums, classifying them as obscene content.We raised our collective voices in opposition to Facebook by posting a breastfeeding image as our profile picture and changing our status line to: Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!
In addition to our virtual nurse-in, a live nurse-in was held at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto CA. Both events caught the attention of media world wide.
Many members received warnings and had photos removed during and after the event. Some examples of these photos can be found here:
http://www.tera.ca/photos6.htmlOur movement for equality and fairness continues, and with your support and passion, we will succeed. We are over 76 000 strong, with new members joining by the minute. Keep spreading the word, and inviting your friends.
This is an issue of critical importance not just for nursing mothers and their children, but all of us fighting for gender equality and freedom.
My heartfelt thanks to those of you on the front lines and who shared your words of encouragement and support, for the practical assistance in the planning stages and to the journalists and writers who felt the issue “news worthy”.
Our event was a success in many measures… but we still have far to go.
Comments
5 Responses to “Protests Over Facebook Ban on Breastfeeding Photos”
hahahaha
M.I.L.C. = “Moms I’d Like to Censor”?
Whether you agree or disagree with censoring the photos or not, why in the world would these women want to display the phootos in the first place!!!
Facebook is a place for keeping in touch with friends and for gods sake coworkers and your husbands buddies are on there. Do you reallly want them seeing your half dollar areolas???
this is such a waste of time. ladies this is not your personal page, it’s fb’s space. if you want to be on there then you have to play by their rules. yes, they are setting a huge precedent and probably wasting countless hours policing this matter, but yes its still their site and their rules. get your own site or obey the rules of the community.
Great comments so far. I say let the FB community decide what’s obscene and what is not. This is after all why there is a “report abuse” button right? If the community deems is obscene then so be it.
I can’t believe there was a sit in protest for this. OMG! Why would a woman want that photo on the site in the first place. Does it speak more to the fact that these women feel oppressed and don’t want another thing taken away from them?
I’d like to see the makeup of the women who actually support this. They are all probably just weird people in general. The kind that put granola bars in their kids lunches and let the bushes grow down there forever. Yes, this is a generalization. Yes, you are laughing because in the end this is silly stuff.