UPDATE: Thank you to everyone who immediately and profusely reported that page. Twenty minutes after this post originally was published, two hundred of you had already read it and many of you have let me know you reported the page. It has now been taken down. NICE WORK…. You are so phenomenal! But I’d still love to see your breastfeeding and nurse-in photos! Also, a HUGE thank you to whoever it was at Facebook that takes harassment of children seriously.
I have enjoyed seeing more breastfeeding photos than usual on Facebook this week. As World Breastfeeding Week comes to a close though, I am reminded of how far we still need to go on our march towards breastfeeding being normalized again as it once was since the beginning of mankind.
Even though Facebook has a wonderful policy where they allow breastfeeding photos to be posted, a lot of times individuals employed there don’t take that policy seriously. For example, a good friend of mine posted this photo on her private Facebook page:
One of her “friends” reported it as pornography, and it was promptly removed. Though you can not even see a nipple, and therefore the breast is not fully exposed, Facebook deemed this photo along with a multitude of other breastfeeding photos (that technically conform to Facebook’s guidelines) pornographic.
What is allowed on Facebook though? Well, stolen photos of stillborn babies, handicapped children, and children with life threatening diseases all being erroneously blamed on breastfeeding by an immature, disgusting page owner is apparently allowed.
I’m not going to share the photos, because they are not mine. Even though I would be defending the children and families that are being exploited by this disgusting Facebook page, I will not post screen grabs here. The images were stolen from blogs. Take this blog, for example. Atley was born with a congenital disease that has caused much suffering. The vile Facebook page’s owner stole a photo from this blog’s owner and created a disturbing story claiming the child suffered spinal injury after being dropped while breastfeeding.
I reported it.
I consider this harassment. It harasses breastfeeding mothers, children born with congenital health concerns, Atley’s entire family, and Atley himself.
Facebook however does not consider it harassment. I guess Facebook finds the photo of my friend’s baby nursing (devoid of full frontal exposure) pornography, but stealing photos from a personal blog and posting defaming, libelous information about the child and his mother is A-OK:
I reported all of the photos that were clearly stolen and were clearly harassment. None of them were removed. I reported them not because I can’t look away, not because I can’t stand people not supporting breastfeeding… I reported them because those are images of real children and those images were stolen to be used in mockery on a public page. Facebook doesn’t seem to care about those children or those families though.
Have you had a breastfeeding image removed that did not violate Facebook’s guidelines? We’d love it if you would share it with us. Find us on Facebook and post it there! World Breastfeeding Week may be coming to a close, but there’s still so much work to be done.
And besides, I find photos of babies breastfeeding endearing.