Monday, January 05, 2009

Breastfeeding and Facebook

While I seem to be one of the ever fewer that (proudly) resists Facebook, there seems to be a bit of a hubbub over at the social network site recently-- namely, their removal of some members' breastfeeding pictures from the site.

Sadly, the argument usually goes one of two ways. If you're in favor of allowing the pictures to be shown, it's a "Hey! It's not obscene!" argument. If you're not, it's "Why would they want those up there anyway" argument. Nothing like hearing those that can't argue get angry at those who are equally deficient.

This is so cut and dry it's infuriating. Should people have the right to show pictures of themselves breastfeeding if they so choose? Absolutely. Is Facebook obligated to provide this forum for them? Absolutely not. If they want to pull the pictures, then by all means they should. No one is preventing said mothers from securing their own domains for their pictures and further, should there be a collective demand for an arena of breastfeeding photography, the market process will send Facebook to its watery grave.

3 comments:

Justin M Ross said...

Give it up Ryan and join Facebook with the rest of us! ;)

For the purpose of spreading irony, I'm posting your work here on facebook ;)

Michael said...

Thank god my girlfriends on Facebook are not breastfeeding yet. I recently discovered that there option to "see less of person x". I'm curious though how Facebook tries to remove those pictures. Do they have employees screening each photo I post?

Anonymous said...

Phat - no, FB don't screen photos. They only delete photos that have been complained about.
Or so they claim.
Ryan - the issue is that despite many complaints over pornographic images displayed on FB, these photos are *not* removed, but breastfeeding pictures are -- and promptly!
A huge part (though not all) of the controversy is the blatant double standard.
FB claim breastfeeding pictures are harmful to children, yet allow people to have pornographic profile pictures, and open groups dedicated to sex, racism, hate, pornography...
Again I say: DOUBLE STANDARDS.