Saturday, August 1, 2009

Happening to Breastfeed on Facebook

If you use Facebook, you should be aware that they take it upon themselves to remove pictures that depict breastfeeding. Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt has said:
"Our policy is against nudity and we feel strongly that policy is important to keeping Facebook clean. The small number of photos we have removed are of naked women who happen to be breastfeeding. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children [over the age of 13] who use the site… Photos containing a fully exposed breast (as defined by showing the nipple or areola) do violate those terms (on obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit material) and may be removed."
Users will verify, however, that photos containing a baby feeding from a breast with no exposed nipple or areola, and no other nudity, have also been deleted.

Read what one-of those women and TopHat have said about Facebook's policy, and if you are a Facebook user, consider joining in the virtual nurse-in next week (which happens to be World Breastfeeding Week). The nurse-in is organised by the Mother's International Lactation Campaign (M.I.L.C.) and all you have to do is change your profile picture to an image of a woman breastfeeding her baby.

Enjoy the gratuitous breastfeeding photo taken by Peter Redman from Canada's National Post

5 comments:

Gina said...

I am new to your blog and have really enjoyed reading it :) I'm a tandem feeding, AP mama so have found lots of inspirational stuff here!

Gina xxx

Cave Mother said...

Wow, tandem feeding. Maybe one day if we're blessed with another child, I'll try that out! Thanks for the comment.

allgrownup said...

this is totally outrageous, I will hunt through my pics and see if I can find a b/f one for my profile picture. Pornographic?? Sexual?? Are they mad? Western views are so very warped.

willow81 said...

This happened last year also, I posted a profile photo of DD breastfeeding but nothing happened! A friend of mine has kept hers up and they didn't remove it either. My photo was probably a bit discrete though, I couldn't find any exposed breast ones!

Jessica said...

Ooh, great idea. It's NEXT week? I'll look around for some pics, too.