Facebook offers a service for free. They can ban you from doing anything as much as they want. They can even delete your profile: http://andreasmoser.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/life-after-facebook/ – If you don’t like it, don’t sign up or start your own Facebook.

“milk mafia” “reeks of classism” “pictures that show your baby hanging off your fully exposed chest shouldn’t be put on a social networking site” “guilt[ing] other women in the process”

Good to know the writer of this piece doesn’t believe in making other women feel bad for their choices.

If you want to argue that Facebook is a private company offering a free service, fine. If you want, even, to argue that the constant oversharing that social media permits can be harmful, fine. But why the imputation of unpleasant motives to breastfeeding women? Would you also argue that people shouldn’t put pictures of children being bottle-fed on to facebook? Of course not.

Classism is an odd accusation, incidentally. Do you really mean to suggest that working class women don’t breastfeed?

Pathetic.

I agree that we shouldn’t leap to absurd conclusions about Facebook (“Hates breast-feeding! Loves rape jokes!”) and then beat the company over the head with it.

Disagree with your conclusion, though. If pictures of breast-feeding contradict Facebook’s terms of service then fine, that’s Facebook’s decision and it has the right to take them down. However, there’s nothing wrong with a woman wanting to post a picture of herself breast-feeding. If other women feel guilty when they see the picture, that’s their problem (unless the title of the picture is “Me breast-feeding unlike you crappy parents who use bottles”). What’s she supposed to do, hide herself from view in case her life offends someone?

Oh, and if posting it on the net is “unnatural”, so is doing anything else on the net, as is eating cooked food and not sleeping in a bush.

4 – It’s odd. I can almost never predict which issues I’ll completely disagree with you on, on a first principles basis, and those to which all I really have to add is a +1.

In this case, +1.

This post seems very confused. Are you complaining about Facebook’s anti-nudity policy – which bans pictures of women’s breasts whatever the context? Or are you complaining about pro-breastfeeding groups making women feel guilty? Or are you complaining about Facebook being used for possibly unhealthy forms of social interaction? Please make your mind up.

@ 3 x

Thanks for the deep and meaningful analysis. Don’t let the door hit your arse.

This post seems incoherent. Much of it is spent implying that breastfeeding women have enacted some kind of campaign against those who don’t, but the only evidence that’s offered is a Telegraph column that points out that it’s probably best means of feeding a child. And it is. What do you want them to do? Lie to make people who don’t breastfeed feel good about themselves? Facts discriminate.

Then we have the – correct – point that Facebook is merely enforcing its anti-nudity law. But that’s exactly the point of these, er – “activists”. That the notion that nudity is by its very nature corrupting or offensive and worth concealing is dumb.

Then, to cap it off, we end on a factual error…

…a medium that, by its very purpose, can be seen by anyone.

No it can’t. Even Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t done away with privacy settings.

@ 5 TimJ

Heh, I know what you mean. Cheers for the +1, on this occasion!

Those ”contrarians” at Spiked have had a lot to say about this too.

I breastfeed, therefore I am a good mother.
Yes, it’s wrong for Facebook to censor breastfeeding photos – but why do some moms make such a public display of nursing?

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/issues/C112/

“Thanks for the deep and meaningful analysis. Don’t let the door hit your arse.”

Sorry, I guess I just see so many critical situations in day to day life, ones with horrific outcomes that when I see a non event spun and dramatised, it kind of pisses me off.

So you cant post pictures of breast feeding on facebook, try faceparty then, I recall seeing very graphic pictures on there, or try email, or try a photo album and for god sake sort all those pink and blue signs out in toyshops while your at it.

@ 11 x

I agree there’s much potential for making mountains out of molehills here. But these issues can be interesting even if they’re not massively important. And “defend the small spaces”, as they say.

I thought restoration comedies had made the display of cleavage on stage fashionable:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nell_Gwyn

“I agree there’s much potential for making mountains out of molehills here. But these issues can be interesting even if they’re not massively important. And “defend the small spaces”, as they say”

Hmm, by the sounds of it there anti-nudity policy does not make distinctions, although breast feeding has an entirely different context to posing in the nude, in both instances breasts are exposed, one could argue that as breast feeding is not sexually explicit and posing in the nude is distinctions in the policy should be made to allow one and not the other.

One could also argue ( no doubt someone out there would ) that as urinating is not sexually explicit its ok for them to post pictures of them doing so to..some will blow there tops at that comment but take it as you will, facebook have decided upon an anti-nudity policy without exceptions most likely in the intention of avoiding complications, if one wishes to remain a user of the site respect there wishes.

@ 14 x

Yes, I agree – most likely breast-feeding wasn’t even taken into consideration when they made the policy. It’s their policy and it’s not horribly prejudiced, I think people can take it or leave it.

Ben @ 8:

“That the notion that nudity is by its very nature corrupting or offensive and worth concealing is dumb.”

I’m not sure what you mean by nudity being offensive “by its very nature”, but since a lot of people are in fact offended by it, surely it follows that nudity is in fact offensive? Unless you can think of a better way of testing for offensiveness than looking at whether or not people are offended by something.

XXX -

A fair point. And, indeed, I can’t.

To rephrase, nudity “offends” people more or less depending on its context. No one wants to see goatse as they’re travelling around Facebook but I’m sure 99.8% of people would cope with the existence of photos of women breastfeeding. A blanket “anti-nudity” policy is convenient, I guess, but a little strange.

@ 17 BenSix

I suspect it’s the convenience they’ve gone for, along with erring on the side of caution.

The reason Facebook bans breast-feeding photos while allowing rape jokes, btw, is simply that its policy on text is far more geared around freedom of expression than its policy on images. In other words, they’re different scenarios, and anyone trying to manufacture outrage by cherry-picking a “good” example of one and comparing it to a “bad” example of the other is being extremely dishonest about Facebook’s policy and attitude to these issues.

Seems a bit harsh to suggest that any woman who posts a picture of herself breastfeeding is trying to make other women feel guilty about not breastfeeding. What if a woman posts a picture of herself teaching her child to knit, or visiting a museum with them? Should we assume she’s trying to guilt trip mothers who don’t teach their children to knit, or visit museums with them?

As for this line of thinking that goes: Facebook can have whatever policy they like, so if they want to ban pictures of breastfeeding women, that’s fine – I don’t get it. Why is it unreasonable to disapprove of a company’s policies and suggest it should adopt different ones? Just because a person, or company, or government, or whatever is legally entitled to do X, doesn’t mean no-one has a right to suggest they *shouldn’t* do it.

17 Ben Six.

Hmm. 99.8% of people would be ok seeing pictures of women breastfeeding? Not convinced. A much smaller proportion of people are ok with women breastfeeding in public places. Unless a) the Facebook audience is much more tolerant and/or b) photos are different from reality, 99.8% seems to be rather on the high side.

I heard it that pictures of babies on breasts were OK, but breasts exposed with baby not attached were the ones that were getting banned.

Is it ””wrong” to find the sight of a breast exposed after the child has come off as (on occasion) quite an erotic vision?
I still remember this happening 25 years ago in Nepal as I walked past a market stall tended by beautiful youngTibetan mother. She smiled at me.

@14. x: “Hmm, by the sounds of it there anti-nudity policy does not make distinctions, although breast feeding has an entirely different context to posing in the nude, in both instances breasts are exposed, one could argue that as breast feeding is not sexually explicit and posing in the nude is distinctions in the policy should be made to allow one and not the other.”

Just consider site management convenience if you were trying to sign up the web connected world to your advertising delivery agency. The “no nipples” policy is an administrative one, not a censorship policy. I do not use Facebook, thus ignorant, but what is their policy on publishing bathtub shots of naked children? Do they adopt the convenience option?

Hmm. 99.8% of people would be ok seeing pictures of women breastfeeding? Not convinced.

No – they’d be okay with having it on Facebook. I’m not crazy about pictures of my friends’ awful drunken gurning but the sight is not so traumatic that I can’t click to the next photo or use the convenient “hide story” feature.

99.8 might be a tad hyberbolic, I’ll admit, but “huge majority” would serve the same purpose.

Breastfeeding is not obscene and shouldn’t be seen as obscene anywhere! If anyone has a problem with it, then go shove it!