Padaviya

VANCOUVER—A Vancouver woman is furious at Facebook after the company removed breastfeeding photos she posted on the social networking site.

Emma Kwasnica, 33, said since she joined Facebook in 2008, nearly 30 of her breastfeeding photos have been taken down and her account has been temporarily frozen in four separate incidents.

The latest incident occurred this past Saturday when she tried to log on, she said.

Kwasnica said Facebook removed her photos because of what it says are a violation of its policies on obscenity, nudity and sexually explicit content.

“This is a child’s right to eat, a mother’s right to nurse her child,” Kwasnica said in a telephone interview from her Vancouver home.

“There’s nothing sexually explicit in breastfeeding photos, nothing at all.”

Kwasnica said she has sent emails to Facebook, but has yet to receive an apology or any kind of response.

A spokeswoman for High Road Communications, which represents the social networking site in Canada, says Facebook reached out to Kwasnica in an email on Wednesday.

Stacie Bumbacco couldn’t provide details on the correspondence, but says the company’s global policy allows breastfeeding photos to be posted on the site.

But the policy also says photos with a fully exposed breast violates its terms and may be removed if they are reported.

Kwasnica said the incident has left her feeling confused about Facebook’s rules, pointing to a recent case in which Facebook issued a public apology to another woman in North Carolina who was in the same situation.

Television station WCNC of Charlotte, N.C., reported on its website last month that Facebook apologized to Heather Stultz after it removed a breastfeeding photo she posted on her breastfeeding support page called “Respect the Breast.”

Just as in Kwasnica’s case, WCNC reported that Stultz’s photo was initially removed because it violated Facebook’s rules on pornographic content.

Eventually, Facebook reversed its decision on the photo in question and apologized, saying the photo was removed “in error.”

“So are American women allowed to post breastfeeding photos and Canadian women aren’t?” Kwasnica said.

“It’s very confusing. It’s very vague. And the only acceptable policy at this point is to leave all breastfeeding images alone.”

A Facebook page was set up earlier this week in support of Kwasnica that has already attracted about 3,500 supporters.

Several new rape-humor pages have already popped up on Facebook in the days since the original pages were removed. Several more were never taken down in the first place, reports the Huffington Post.

The newly created pages include such “jokes” as “you know she is playing hard to get when she resists the chloroform” and “you know she’s playing hard to get when you use another roll of tape.”

Obviously, it would be next to impossible for Facebook to prevent these pages from being created. But there’s also little cause for optimism that once the pages are reported, Facebook will be diligent about deleting them.

When Facebook removed some of the offending pages last week, it made no official comment or clarification of policy. Activists responded by calling for the company to issue a formal statement that rape is never funny and that such pages will be deemed a violation of Facebook rules (which bar speech that is “hateful, threatening or incites violence.”)

Instead, Facebook has done just the opposite: released a statement clarifying that in the future, such pages will be allowed to remain as long as they are clearly labeled as humor.

If Facebook thinks this is all about a misunderstanding, they have not been paying attention. The problem has never been that feminists missed the point that the pages were intended as jokes. We never mistook them for a serious call to go out and commit rape. Our point is that sexual violence is not funny and that reducing it to a punch line perpetuates rape culture.

Statistically, someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes in America (though it is difficult to ever know the accuracy of such statistics in a society that renders so much assault invisible). Many women are harassed or assaulted in some way so regularly—from catcalls to being groped to enduring suggestive innuendo or worse from co-workers to being date-raped—that these things have become normalized as an inevitable part of the experience of being a woman. This is what it means to live in a rape culture. 60 percent of sexual assaults are not reported, often because they assume they will not be believed or taken seriously. This is a culture that allows sexual violence to happen in large part by silencing victims and treating their tales as jokes.

I’ve never met a feminist without a sense of humor, though we are often accused of never being able to “lighten up and take a joke.” This is just one way in which women are silenced in our culture–by being labeled as uptight and prudish when we actually attempt to point out misogyny. In fact, I am a huge believer in both the power and the importance of humor. Satire can be an extremely potent, especially when it takes risks. I have seen laugh-out-loud funny Onion headlines that manage to drive home a point better than any serious journalism I have encountered on some subjects.

But the fact that humor has powerful potential does not mean everything labeled as humor has an inherent value. And when so-called humor uses violence against a specific race, gender, sexual orientation or ethnicity as its punch line, at some point it crosses a line and becomes hate speech. Misogynist, racist or homophobic jokes are never “just jokes.” They reflect and reinforce actual hateful attitudes. When do we say “enough is enough”? If Facebook is bombarded by a multitude of “jokes” about violence against people of a particular race or ethnicity, will a note in the headline that this is meant to be “humorous” make those jokes okay?

Facebook’s belief that you can nullify the harms of hate speech by labeling it a “joke” is simply a cop-out. The corporation’s behavior so far has been condescending and dismissive of women’s concerns. And so we continue to call on Facebook to issue an apology and take a firm stance against the promotion of sexual violence. Anything less is simply unacceptable.

You can add your name to this Change.org petition to let Facebook know that we won’t let up until takes a firm policy against sexually violent hate speech: (click through to sign)

After more than three months of complaints from users, a grand total of over 200,000 petition signatures (186,000 of them on a single Change.org petition), a Twitter campaign, the withdrawal of several major advertisers and an outpouring of harsh criticism from a multitude of feminist activists and writers, Facebook has finally removed rape-humor pages from the site. Surfing Facebook, you will no longer find a page titled, “What’s 10 inches and gets girls to have sex with me? My knife.”

At least for today. Facebook’s capitulation appears to be grudging: The social media behemoth has given no indication that it will remove such pages if they reappear. Nor has its apologized for its three-month failure to act. Facebook has not even recanted its initial response to the campaign, which was to refuse to take any action against the pages, dismissively comparing them to “rude jokes” that “wouldn’t get you thrown out of a local pub.”

In response to Facebook’s apparent lack of willingness to take a firm stance against all content that endorses sexual violence, the partners behind the petition, such as Women’s Views on News, are demanding that the networking giant:

1. Make a public statement that rape is never acceptable; that promoting sexual violence and violence against women is repugnant; that Facebook will remove content that advocates rape, sexual violence, and violence against women; and that the Terms of Service/Community Standards will be updated to specify this.
2. Address in a public statement that the previous “pub joke” defense was poorly stated, explaining that alleging humor does not give a free pass to promote any hate content; that Facebook does not consider promoting violence against women or sexual assault to be a joke or funny; and that such content will be held to the same standard as any violence against any other group or individual.
3. Ask for Facebook to be transparent about the content monitoring process; to state publicly if and how many pages are removed that promote sexual violence or violence against women; and to establish relationships with experts in sexual violence and violence against women who will help identify content that needs to be removed.
4. Update the Terms of Service/Community Standards to specify that: “Content earnestly promoting violence against women or sexual violence violates Facebook’s terms of use and will accordingly be removed whenever reported.” In addition to the internal reporting system, provide a public contact email for users to register complaints about content that violates the terms of service/community standards, that will acknowledge receipt and respond with a decision on whether or not to remove.

It’s a relief to see the pages gone. But the victory means very little without a commitment from Facebook to take sexual violence seriously in the future.

And what’s all the more frustrating is that this partial victory should not have required such a massive effort. It should not have taken Facebook a second thought to realize that “jokes” about rape should be counted as speech that is hateful, threatening or incites violence–i.e., speech that is banned under Facebook’s Terms of Service. But because we live in a culture that accepts, condones and makes light of sexual violence, those conclusions are—for many people—not so obvious. And that’s why we have to keep asking the larger question: What does it mean to live in a society where it is this difficult to convince people that jokes about rape are simply not okay?

You can add your name to this Change.org petition to let Facebook know that we won’t let up until takes a firm policy against sexually violent hate speech:

Facebook is full of mixed messages when it comes to women’s issues. On one hand, groups filled with violent hate speech towards women are everywhere on the website. Yet, while Facebook seemingly has no problem with those pages existing, people like Australian photographer Christopher Rimmer have their photos taken down because they feature women breastfeeding. For those keeping score at home, that is Hate Speech, 1, Breastfeeding, 0.

Here’s a worst-case scenario for you.

Last month, someone hacked into an Australian 12-year-old girl’s Facebook profile. In the weeks since, she, her mother and her friends have been inundated with requests for information, harassed, and sent a variety of vulgar, threatening and pornographic images and messages. He’s also, allegedly, discovered the family’s address from chats with unwitting friends.

Lest you think the case is being blown out of proportion by a concerned parent, the messages the stalker has sent the mother include things like this: “f——ng give me your daughters they love me and i love them, you know you cant keep me away from them forever! i am going to be with them they are the mother of my children,” and “i will find ur girls.” See for yourself.

Recently revived woman-centric traveling music festival Lilith Fair announced yesterday that in each of its 36 host cities it would donate a dollar from every ticket sold to a women’s charity. After becoming a fan of the fest on its official Facebook page, people can vote for which organization in their town they want Lilith’s bucks to benefit. The pulldown menu includes about ten choices for most cities, most of them women’s shelters or health centers for the underserved, with a synopsis of the services each offers.

Minneapolis and Indianapolis fans are given the option of supporting Metro Women’s Center and Indianapolis Life Center, respectively—institutions whose approach to women’s reproductive health services (especially birth control and abortion) is guided by an explicitly anti-choice agenda. Several other cities, including Atlanta and Seattle, have potential beneficiaries that offer so-called abortion alternatives and faith-driven pregnancy counseling.

I am no longer surprised by offensive Facebook groups.

Last month I came across a group calling for the murder of sex workers.

Then a few weeks later I came across another group that listed reasons for punching women in the face like being on your period, refusing a threesome, having an opinion, or even breathing.

Luckily both groups were taken down, but now in their place are two new equally offensive groups:

• Its not R.A.P.E. if you scream…SURPRISE!!!
• NO…you were NOT raped by an NFL player

The “It’s not R.A.P.E. If you scream….SURPRISE” boosts that it gained 78 fans in just 2 days and currently there are a total of 148. There has not been much activity going on in the group but that doesn’t mean it isn’t offensive.