#Liberated + #Confidence These are words that describe Kim Kardashian West when she posts images of her beautiful body on Facebook. Her sexy naked body images have close to a half a MILLION likes. Trust me with that much traffic these images are getting reported but somehow they are still up. Even though the following image is directly against Facebook’s nudity rules “We remove photographs of people displaying genitals or focusing in on fully exposed buttocks.” Facebook keeps these images coming into news feeds because sexulizing women is important for our society to keep on oppressing women.
Source: Facebook https://www.facebook.com/KimKardashian
I wish my clients and other women could feel #Liberated and have #Confidence with their unsexual birth images. I keep thinking the world has changed and we are no longer shoving “women’s issues” behind closed doors. But then I wake up to find a message from FB saying that I have been banned for 30 days and my business page, with 22,000 followers that I worked really hard to acquire, is going to be unpublished because I posted an educational image of a baby being born. This image did not show “full buttocks” and definitely did not contain “sexual content.” The image that they removed showed a powerful woman catching her own baby standing up, there was a bit of the bottom of my clients bum, thighs, baby’s head…. and some blood.
When I posted this image on Facebook 2 weeks ago it got a lot of traffic. I think it was shared over 2,000 times and viewed by over half a million people. I got lots of messages from women that felt empowered to catch their own baby or try birthing standing up after seeing this image. I am sure my image was reported when I first posted it. But two weeks later, Facebook’s algorithms picked it up and determined it was against FB’s Community Standards around nudity, even though it is fully in the limits of the nudity criteria. This happened to me twice in November 2015 here and here over an image that also was within Facebook’s nudity requirements.
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING????????
Today I woke up to a message that my business page Apple Blossom Families would be Unpublished, this is after only being banned a handful of times since 2013, for images that were always within FB’s Community Standards. I don’t have a contact person that I can defend my image to at facebook. I just have to sit out my 30 days of silence and wait for my business page to disappear.
We need to be able to share images of our babies being born in ways that can inspire women to take charge of their births. To be able to do this we need to be able to share images that show a bit of leg and maybe a bit of blood. We need to not feel scared and oppressed by Facebook’s lack of education around women’s bodies acting in a natural way. I want to spend my days inspiring women about birth, not fighting the world’s largest social media platform when I share images of women being powerful.
How do we make CHANGE and how do we get access to the correct people so we can defend our birth images?
Please start the conversation so woman can stop feeling oppressed and can keep having education on birth choices. I know I am not alone there are 100,000 of people behind me on this. Get with the times Facebook its 2016, women are way more than sexual objects, we are amazing creatures that create life and we want to freely share it with each other so we can learn about birth in a healthy way.
You might wonder how the mother in the images feels about having her beautiful images removed from facebook. This is what she has to say and I agree censoring and shaming women for doing a very natural thing is wrong. Time for change and this is one of the first steps.
“I spent my entire pregnancy, and especially the last few weeks, looking at birth photos, watching birth videos, and reading birth stories. I would cry through them all, overcome by a mix of emotions: fear, what-ifs, anticipation, excitement. When I thought I couldn’t possibly do it, those images and stories helped me believe I could. We shared our photos and story with the belief that if we inspired or empowered even one person that it would be worth it. Unfortunately, when our photo was censored, the message was sent that we had done something wrong.
Download one of these images or make your own. Repost it to FB and use the hashtag #FbStopCensoringBirth and share, share, share. Hopefully Facebook will bring back my original posts, business page and change the way they are removing images from our feeds. Please use the @AppleBlossomFamilies in your post so Facebook knows what page they removed.
or this one….
Here are my other blog posts about being banned from Facebook back in November 2015 here and here.
#FBstopbullying #motherhood #discrimination #educationstartshere #notjustforsex #womansbodiesrock #birth #education #2016 #womenaremorethansexual #birthisbeautiful #birthisnotporn #birthphotography #birthphotographer
Here is a review of Facebook’s Community Standards around Nudity.
Want to read more interesting blog posts? How about 10 women catching their own babies.
Morag Hastings is a Doula and Birth Photographer located in Vancouver, BC Canada. Come check out more of her work on her Instagram page or feel free to email me at mailto: moraghhastings@gmail.com I would love to hear from you.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FACEBOOK
IDEA #1
This graphic was recently placed over top of my colleagues graphic birth image on the Birth Photography Facebook page .
This is concept of an overlay is an acceptable way of dealing with nudity, other than the language they have chosen. I would not describe a birth image as “graphic violence” :/ I would love for my graphic images to have an option of having a warning over top of them. That way people who don’t want to see birth images don’t have to click on the image and those who want to can learn and celebrate birth at our own discretion. But alas FB does not feel a need to work on ways to support the birth community. They are too busy fixing their algorithms so people can post sexy images without getting banned
