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UPDATE: 2pm on Monday November 30th.    (To find the original post click here)

I posted my new censored image of a baby being born in it’s amniotic sac to my Facebook page this morning, with an explanation that the image was for educational purposes and it did meet Facebook’s community standards.  My post lasted about four hours before they took the post down, along with a giving me a SEVEN day ban and a request of my photo ID to prove I am a real person. (I wasn’t expecting that.)

The biggest problem I have is, there is no way I can defend my image. Facebook just keep coming back with more restrictions. I am starting to feel very oppressed. I have a hard time being silenced, it doesn’t come naturally to me. It makes me want to scream from the hill tops “I didn’t do anything wrong!!!!!! There is no vulva in this picture. Someone please take an anatomy class!!!!!!”

I know other pages who over time have stopped sharing ‘graphic’ breastfeeding and birth images, because the hassle of being banned is too much work. I completely understand why they would feel that way. When Facebook bans you, they make sure you know if you keep getting banned, they will remove your account permanently. Which is scary because there is no way you can defend yourself. All those years of hard work building your business page would be gone just like that.

I can deal with a week of not having a voice on Facebook, truthfully it might be nice to have the break. The real issue is the censoring of natural events related to birth and breastfeeding. How can they remove an image that is so natural, when they keep so many graphic sexualized images in peoples news feeds. Birth images are real life and Facebook is doing what it can to keep these images of normal healthy birth out of our news feeds. Why? Is it because woman are still being oppressed in the media?  I know it is hard to believe this is still happening in the 21st century.

My good friend just texted me this…

Maybe we should photoshop a baby’s head coming out of her butt and see what facebook has to say. 🙂

My friend had a response from Facebook within an hour, saying that this image was not a violation of Facebook’s community standards. At the same time it has been hours and hours and I still can’t access my account because they are checking to see if I am a real person (I did get my account back 14 hours later but I am still silenced for 7 days.)  All of this for posting an image with no exposed genitals or buttocks just a baby half born in it’s caul.

The message I am getting is that women should only be celebrated as sexy and beautiful, not life giving and life sustaining creatures, because lets face it that is gross. Many women give many years of their lives to birth and raising their babies. For many, many years women have been oppressed in our societies to hide the things associated with pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. Recently a news anchor, in my community, was being harassed for wearing tight fitting clothing around her pregnant body on the evening news. This happened in March of this year, in Vancouver B.C., Canada. She admitted, on air, that the comments got to her head, even though she is a confidant woman. These subtle responses to a pregnant woman’s body really affect the way we perceive woman’s bodies.

What would happen if we praised women for doing these natural life events? What if we treated every woman as a goddess as she birthed her baby, and celebrated how amazing her body was for growing a human and passing it through her body with all of her inner strength? What if when we saw a woman breastfeeding we told her she was a rock star and gave her a thumbs up?

Do you think our sons and daughters would grow up to think that women’s bodies should only be used for sexual purposes? Or do you think our kids would see a woman’s body as life giving and life sustaining. Do you think when our kids hear words like vulva, breast and birth, the images that popped into their heads would be beautiful and happy instead of disgust and fear?

How do we make this change happen???? We can start by standing up to the largest social online network, Facebook, and say “No this is not OK. We will not be silenced when it comes to birth and breastfeeding. Women’s bodies should be celebrated for all the wondrous things it can do.”

Send a message to Facebook and let them know we will not put up with the censoring of women’s bodies. Facebook seems to understand how to censor nudity when it comes to sexualized images; it’s about time they learn about pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. They need to educate their staff or scanning software, to properly determine what meets the Facebook community standards around woman’s bodies and it’s functions.

Once I am back in a week I will do more censoring of my caul image with the hopes that more people will read this post. Do you think this will be enough?

Download this image, repost it to FB and use the hashtag #FbStopCensoringWomen and share, share, share. Hopefully they will bring back my original post with the caul image and change the way they remove images when it comes to birth. Please use the @AppleBlossomFamilies in your post so Facebook knows where the original image is from.