Photo by Denise Finzer /Feature photo by Kendra Wivell
Emma Kwasnica, childbirth educator and breastfeeding advocate, logged onto Facebook new year’s day, 2009 to find her account had been deleted.
Why? Because Facebook “does not allow photos that attack an individual or group, or that contain nudity, drug use, violence, or other violations of the Terms of Use.
What was the photo? It was Emma breastfeeding her two children a mere six hours after the birth of her second. Now look at all the other photos shown in this essay. They too have been banned by Facebook.
Photo by Emma Kwasnica
Each represents an incredibly private moment between mother and child, yes. But do they represent content that is “hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.”
Facebook says yes.
A Brief History of the Debate
Kelli Roman founded the Facebook fan group Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding Is Not Obscene after a photo of hers was deleted from her profile. Soon after, the group’s supporters hosted an online nurse-in to protest. Heather Farley, whose photo can also be found in this essay, organized the physical nurse in at Facebook, Inc. headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
Now it looks that there may be a class action lawsuit against Facebook. Those potentially leading the suit charge that while Facebook allows plenty of breast photos, it seems that breastfeeding ones have been specifically targeted for removal.
Hmmm, maybe that’s be the reason Facebook failed to return my repeated calls?
What Does Facebook Have To Say?
After the online and physical nurse-ins at Facebook headquarters, Facebook representative Barry Schnitt spoke to the press.
We agree that breastfeeding is natural and beautiful and we’re very glad to know that it is so important to some mothers to share this experience with others on Facebook. We take no action on the vast majority of breastfeeding photos because they follow the site’s Terms of Use. Photos containing a fully exposed breast (as defined by showing the nipple or areola) do violate those Terms and may be removed. 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.
Of course, Facebook does not address why the female nipple is objectionable yet the male nipple is not. Nor does Facebook explain why classic art imagery of Mary breastfeeding baby Jesus would be removed. Nor do we know why photos of mothers breastfeeding older children that show no exposed nipple or areola would present a danger to children.
Meanwhile, many legitimate groups and individual profiles display full and partial nudes and exposed breasts presented in a sexual or other non-breastfeeding related manner, yet those photos do not seem to be banned with equal frequency as breastfeeding photos.
What Is Their Policy?
It’s important to remember that Facebook itself does not choose photos for removal. Instead, they rely on community members to report photos they deem to fall outside of Terms of Service guidelines. The photos then go to a team of people within Facebook who make the final determination.
Dr. Paul Rapoport — the founder of Topfree Equal Rights Association an Ontario based group that advocates equal rights for women to go topless — believes Facebook’s policy to be random and impossible to enforce in any fair manner.
How they choose what they choose is an unanswerable question. They hire a bunch of people who don’t seem to have training. You can see from the photos that have been deleted there’s not much of a pattern to it. It’s sloppy and careless. With that kind of capricious nonsense, you can’t form any kind of rule.
In response to the Facebook bans, Paul published an entire section on his website of banned breastfeeding photos.
What Do Facebook Users Have to Say?
April Purinton posted this photo of herself tandem feeding her twins Rhys and Quin.
Photo by April Purinton
There is nothing in this photo that directly violates the guidelines Facebook determines. Yet her photo was removed with only an e-mail to let her know. She wasn’t even told which photo was removed, although it wasn’t difficult to ascertain.
“After three years of infertility and a traumatic and pre-term birth, I finally tandem nursed my babies successfully for the first time. Facebook told me this picture was offensive. And warned me that they will delete my account if I continue to break the rules.”
That same blog post includes examples of non-breastfeeding photos April found on Facebook that show the same amount of exposed breast, yet hers was singled out for removal.
The Cultural Aspects of Breastfeeding
Comments on a recent article on The Traveler’s Notebook highlight how different cultures and religions may inherently find an exposed breast to be offensive. Matador intern Heather Carreiro says she would feel uncomfortable sharing this photo with many of the people she knows from her time living and teaching in Pakistan.
It’s basically about the cultural relativism of modesty. In context of Pakistan and northern India, women — outside of posh areas — are expected to be covered. Leaving your dupatta (large scarf) at home or not using it fully cover your chest – in addition to your clothing – is seen as being close to naked. Even just seeing the contours of a woman’s body often makes people uncomfortable. With that in mind, you might be able to imagine how my sharing a link [with an exposed breast] would be kind of like sending a link to an X-rated site
007 Breastfeeding publishes a collection of person-on-the-street comments, asking people worldwide for their views on breastfeeding in public.
Breast feeding is very common in Pakistan. Even working women take babies to their working places and feed them. It is free source of pure milk, full of vitamins and protein. According to Islamic teaching, there is emphasis on mothers to adopt breast feeding for their babies up to two year duration.
Photo by Heather Farley
Coincidentally or not, the World Health Organization also suggests two-years as the optimal time for mothers to breastfeed their children.
In fact, many countries, often considered as part of the imprecisely-titled undeveloped world consider breastfeeding to be the primary form of feeding infants and young children. In Ghana, where bottle feeding is for orphans, “if a baby cries and you do not breastfeed, people draw the conclusion the baby is not yours.”
But What About the So-Called Developed World?
In the United States, Canada and Europe, we regularly see partially nude women on television, movies and in advertisements. Even children’s movies include characters who expose almost as much breast as April Purinton or Emma Kwasnica do in their photos.
Why the disparity?
Why are western, non-religion based cultures so comfortable with breasts but not breastfeeding? What is it that causes so many western women to see two years of breastfeeding as an acceptable norm for women in these developing countries and yet not for themselves?
Economics certainly can play a large role in that. Let’s say you’re working a full time job. Are facilities available for you to breastfeed your child at work? Doubtful. It’s also likely your child will be at a daycare in another part of town and thus impossible for you to breastfeed.
If you still prefer your child receive breastmilk, you will then have to pump.
Photo by Anne Hinze
Which, if you’ve never pumped, as I assume a large percentage of the population has not, can be done by hand or with a machine.
Either way, it can be time consuming and often yield frustrating results as many women who could successfully breastfeed their children often will not find the same milk yield through the pump.
Economics, though, is most certainly not the entire story.
Says Iris Marion Young in The Politics of Women’s Bodies:
Patriarchal logic defines an exclusive border between motherhood and sexuality. The virgin or the whore, the pure or the impure, the nurturer or the seducer is either asexual mother or sexualized beauty, but one precludes the other. Breasts are a scandal because they shatter the border between motherhood and sexuality.
Have we become so conditioned as a society to see the female body as purely sexual that we have lost touch with reality?
Emma Kwasnica explains her point of view. “Breasts have the primary function of feeding babies.” While breasts do play a role in initiating the reproductive process, the reality is, they are one of many erogenous zones that come into play. There’s only one part of the body that produces milk enough to sustain a child for the first year of life.
Breasts are not biologically intended to solely play a sexual role in our lives, just as childbirth cannot exist independently of the sexual act. Yet somehow images of sexuality that include pregnancy, breastfeeding or other images of motherhood are considered perverse, obscene and pornographic.
Photo by David Miller
The community led banning of honest, normal photos of motherhood and the human body hints at a much larger issue.
It shows a slice of society that seeks to disassociate humans from their nature, ultimately turning women into large, empty breasted dolls designed for sexual pleasure and caricaturing men as primarily sexual beasts who have lost the capacity for multi-faceted thought in relation to the women with whom they attempt to mate.
In truth, divorcing form from function of the human body does us all a huge disservice. Are you suddenly no longer beautiful and sexual because you have become pregnant? What happens after labor and delivery? Will a man no longer be attracted to his female partner because he’s watched her give birth or breastfeed? Surely we are far more complicated and less capricious beings than that?
Barry Schnitt claims Facebook believes breastfeeding to be natural, beautiful and healthy. Based on the photos you see here and the guidelines presented by Facebook, does his statement ring true in your ears?
COMMUNITY CONNECTION
Breastfeeding and childbirth tie in closely to discussions of self-esteem and body image. How does the leaning to say only certain types of bodies or body parts are appropriate for public exposure while other types must hidden play itself out both as a cultural phenomenon and on the ways we see ourselves?
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129 Comments... join the discussion!
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This is the most intelligent article I’ve read about Facebook deleting pictures of mothers breastfeeding their children (& threatening them with account deletion), and what it reveals about attitudes towards women, equality, sexuality, what’s considered obscene, and motherhood in western society and culture.
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maybe facebook should begin by not allowing people’s pages to be on public display in the first plce, it should not even be an option, it should just be, the only users really which should see are the user’s in which they permit. I think FB and other such mediums have a responsibility to ensure everyone’s privacy – the who FEED thingy is just ridiculous, I personally don’t want others ot see who I have been writing to or who has left a message on my page etc, it’s ridiculous, as far as obscene – well I’ve come across more obscenities on FB than one could even fathom, beginning with the amount of ugly feet, or arms, or outlines of penis’ in underwear or mens’ nipples etc splashed all over the place.
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Keep your shirts on.
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tipical american corporate fascism brainwashing b.s. there is nothing more natural than mother breastfeeding a child.period. you can show million human killed in most disgusting ways on american tv, but you will not see a breastfeeding. what a screwed up culture, what a f-d up society.
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Hi Scki,
Well, I’d like to think that while there are many parts to US and western culture that are indeed a mess, there are some redeeming characteristics.
That we’re able to have this conversation is one of them.
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Excellent points scki! We live in a world where the majority of “humans” are in fact IGNORANT of many things. I find it eerie that most people are okay with watching VIOLENT movies and TV shows of, say, women getting raped or hacked to death, police getting shot in the head with bullets, and gory sadistic characters preying on helpless people. Yet it’s taboo discuss psychedelics in a positive light, but alcohol & tobacco are 8-ok. Is it any wonder why there’s so much violence in this world??
Unfortunately, the madness is becoming common place and it’s like NO ONE’s using the LOGIC built into their conscience. Breast feeding is the most natural thing in the world. Just look at animals…it’s totally natural. Humans are a fucked up species!
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Dear writer,
I love you. This is a great post and very well written. I get so infuriated that something is “obscene” about breastfeeding when usually it shows WAYYYY less boob that the shirts everyone buys at walmart. The beautiful pictures here are a a lot more boobilicious than most breastfeeding situations, especially in public, and yet a woman showing no boob will get scolded while a girl in super low cut shirt gets not a negative word. Society is so messed up.
Breastmilk saves babies from tons of problems related to formula & other replacements (allergies, ear infections, asthma, obesity, diabetes, malnutrition) and for the wellbeing of our children we need to NORMALIZE healthy eating, not make it a shameful thing and encourage this disgusting hyper-sexualization of the female body.
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Titties are titties – man or woman.
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Lol. Dan, I’m not entirely sure what side of the argument that puts you on, but so you know, your comment has become my catch phrase.
I use it in more situations than perhaps people care to hear it.
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In my view breastfeeding should continue until the child reaches 8 years of age and that until at such an age level, the child would feel secure and will not have any issues of any fears of the health disorder.
This is natural.
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Brilliantly written article!
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Apparently what most of you don’t understand is that breasts are viewed as a sex object – whether there is a child slurping milk out of them or not. And the fact that there is “nothing more natural” really doesn’t change this. Women also naturally get their periods once a month, but does that mean that we should go around photographing our bloody vaginas to show off on facebook and everything will be okay? Umm, no.
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Katie,
Just because people “see” breasts as primarily sexual, doesn’t mean that they are. The reality is the primary function of breasts is to feed babies. It’s the reason we’re called mammals from the same root of the word mammary, and the use of mammary glands is one of the main ways the class is defined.
The sexual function of breasts is biologically secondary.
Now to address your comparison of a bloody vagina to breastfeeding. They’re not really comprable. Even if they are both within the category of natural, they don’t serve the same function. There are plenty of natural things we show, and plenty we don’t. The question is why do we choose to hide certain natural things while others are considered acceptable.
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I deeply appreciated this article.
The big difference between showing a bloody vagina or lactating breasts is that mothers need to be allowed to nurse however and whenever their child needs to be fed. To be constantly worrying about how feeding one’s child is going to affect a bunch of grown-ups rather than focusing on the needs of the child is simply silly.We have no need to be showing off our vagina’s publicly, bloody or not.
Until we normalize an action which is ENTIRELY normal throughout the world (i.e. breastfeeding) and practiced by all mammals, we will see bare breasts as only sexual and taboo. And yes, Katie, breasts are multi-functional, serving first as a lovely and pleasurable part of the sexual experience. But once they begin to fulfill their intended purpose (to feed a baby for however long a mother chooses to), they are no longer available in the same way.
It’s a huge and wonderful transition into maternity that separates women from maiden to mother and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
I am happy to report that after years of nursing my own three children, my breasts are again my own. They again are part of my sexual self–perhaps not as provocative to men as they once were but twice as pleasurable to my partner and me in large part due to the most amazing experience they provided me: I grew 3 beautiful kids on breast milk. I did it publicly when need be, regardless of the rude stares and comments. I never let myself forget that, world wide, nursing is often accepted and even revered.
What holier act is there than giving to a helpless infant the loving nurturance that is it’s birthright?↵ -
In case it doesn’t thread properly, this reply is to Heather who was replying to me…
ACK! Sorry for delay in response – for some reason gmail decided that replies to this comment thread were spam and so I wasn’t seeing the notifications (and I was VERY pregnant at the time and having contractions so a bit distracted – new nursling is now 6wks old and sleeping on my chest as I type).
At the root of the definition you supplied, though, is the term “sexual organs or activity”. Breasts, by biological definition, are not sexual organs (organs whose use is required in sexual reproduction – it is possible to have sex and conceive a baby without the breasts being involved at all, and their complete surgical removal has zero physiological impact on a woman’s ability to conceive naturally). Also, breastfeeding is not a sexual activity – it is a life sustaining one following a sexual activity that did not necessarily have to occur any more recently than more than half a year prior (in the case of a premature infant with some chance of survival). While breasts may be culturally seen as sexual, they are not by any standard definition sexual *organs*.
Therefore the intent of the photographer is rather irrelevant, and I would also hazard a guess that 99.999% of breastfeeding images on FB do not have *photographer* intent to arouse sexual feelings either, since they’re generally taken and posted with the clearly-not-trying-to-get-a-rise-out-of-anyone mama’s consent (if not posted by her directly).
With regards to erotic feelings of the viewer. the human brain is a strange erotic organ of its own. Some societies have fetishized the female (generally non-lactating) breast, others throughout history have fetishized other body parts – Chinese foot binding, the ring-stretched necks of I forget which tribe of indigenous people, etc. Different people are capable of getting sexually aroused by wildly different images that others would find totally innocent. Someone with a foot/shoe fetish, for instance, could get sexually aroused by a shoe catalog that didn’t show any human body parts above the ankle. Does that make the shoe catalog pornography, then?
The problem here is that we’re talking about an essential-to-life behavior – the feeding of a very young child. In many cases in modern life, it simply isn’t feasable for the mother to relocate to another area to feed her infant in a reasonable (to the infant and the eardrums of anyone in a 50ft radius) timespan. This is further confounded when a mother is out with several children, in a society that is so individualistic and isolating as the mainstream US culture is. It’s quite uncommon to see several Caucasian mothers shopping/doing daily chores together in public. I have Muslim neighbors with very small children and am mildly jealous of how often there seems to be another mother present to keep the mom company and provide an extra set of hands for the littlest ones – I want to get to know them but I’m physically challenged and by the time I get over there when I see them outside, they’ve gone elsewhere or indoors in the multi-family building and I’m not sure which bell to ring. I’ve noticed similar groups of several women wearing headscarves and multi-aged children with them shopping in area stores and get wistful wishing my light-skinned “liberated” peers would support each other that way too. If it were commonplace here for a mother of a breastfeeding infant to spend time out with one or more other mothers who could help with older siblings while the infant and mother retreated to a private place for a feed, I wonder if that would have a positive impact on breastfeeding rates here in the States, especially among mothers who feel too modest to nurse “anywhere, anytime” as recommended by advocates. I would be very happy help find a realistic middle ground here, maybe in more conservative countries it already happens that way as a matter of course (and not been lost like it has here)?
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I think you’ve touched on the main point! This is that American society generally sees no difference, or is unable to see the difference, between what is sexual, and what is erotic.
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I still don’t understand what anybody could find obscene in a mother breastfeeding a baby. To me is beautiful, pleasant and healthy for my baby. I respect those people that use a thing to cover themselves while they are breastfeeding but I have never used it. The pictures of breastfeeding moms radiate powerful positive energy not sex to me.
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Wow…great article and great posts and an interesting debate that we are fortunate to be able to have so openly. I think both sides are worthy of discussion.
Babies are made through a sexual experience. That statement made sound childish, but I think important to remember to understand why people have their buttons pushed by breast feeding. Unlike the rest of the mammal world we have a unique intellect that tries to comprehend our experiences and that comprehension is often fraught with many layers of complex understanding. I’m pretty sure this conversation is not happening in the Rhino world. I say this because by looking at either side simplistically only further polarizes the debate.
I think what makes breast feeding such a hot topic is that we (adults) see the baby through our own eyes and relate the breast sexually, which is not a bad thing, but incorrect to how the child is seeing the breast. Sometimes the conflict of breast feeding for new mothers is that they are also caught up in the conflict of their own and societies projections of the breast as both sexual and functional, which can make breast feeding very challenging for some moms. For a child, especially as an infant, we (the adult) assume the baby sees our breasts as purely functional which makes breast feeding at a newborn age much more acceptable. As a child ages and they look, talk, walk and remind us more and more of our adult selves. We – the adults project more on to them of how they must be feeling about the world around us and often forget that a child does not see the world the same way. Hence a two year old, 3 year old, 4 year old is still seeing the breast as a function of food, bonding and protection and safety with their mother. The older the child gets the more complex this image gets to the adult and we wonder are they (the child or mother) having any sexual experience in this very natural act? At what point and age could that happen and if it is – even if innocent is it dangerous to the child and our ideas of a healthy society? Is a sexual emotional around breast feeding healthy or not? Would a sexual emotion be an indication of a time when the autonomy of the child and their needs are changing and breast feeding should end? What happens if it is happening for a mother at the onset of breast feeding? Should she not breast feed or is it a complex layer of her understanding of her breasts and she needs to talk about that with other moms and her partner? I think this is also why images of multiple baby feedings make us so uncomfortable. Not that feeding multiple babies is wrong, but that we (adults) are projecting our own sexual ideas on to the experience and that makes us uncomfortable! It is our challenge as adults to understand these complex emotions and navigate them in healthy productive ways. Projecting our anxieties on to a mother and child, then assuming that projection is the only reality – does not save us from the work of understanding more clearly our adult sexual natures, nor does it help a starving child who will so greatly benefit from the biological and emotional benefits of breast feeding. It is sad that Facebook is not using their huge social network to have a healthy discussion. Instead they are perpetuating adult projected sexual ideas, and hang-ups, and then telling women to keep this very natural and healthy act a secret. Good for Matador Network, bad for Facebook!
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Fantastic article! I don’t understand why our society has deemed something so natural as breastfeeding ‘un-natural’ or ‘unsightly.’ I guess there are some things I’ll never understand.
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Amazing, thank you for this insightful and awareness raising article! Go breastfeeding!!!!
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