I am
talking about facebook’s hypocritical and illogical terms of use policy which
forbids the publication of nude photographs, irrespective of why they are being
posted, who posts them and what they represent.
It is
hypocritical because at the same time it forbids nudity, facebook allows the
existence of commercial pages and private profiles with explicitly sexually
provocative and/or pornographic content, just because nipples and penises may
be airily covered or simply because these are paying facebook to promote their
business activities.*
And while
facebook allows and even promotes the existence of pages with explicit pornographic
content, natural looking photos of nudity that are being taken by artists and
photo reporters with the intention to inform about an activist action or a
cause, are being banned on the grounds of nudity and/or pornographic content.
Highly irrational, nevertheless part of facebook’s inviolable terms of use.
As a result, facebook deletes images, blocks accounts and permanently erases user profiles because of photos showing female breasts and other nude body parts. The same happened with my fb account as a result of a photo showing a side angle of my breasts during an interview I was giving about my participation at the World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) in Brussels, Belgium.
The WNBR
action is part of a global movement aiming at promoting the use of bicycle, a
cleaner environment and sending a message against the incrimination of the
naked body which is exactly what facebook is doing when deleting those photos
and their users’ accounts. As a matter of fact, before facebook deleted my user
account, it had previously blocked it on a number of occasions because of
photos of nude or semi-nude content from the World Naked Bike Ride in Greece, which
is self-organised by a group of activist cyclists in the city of Thessaloniki.
With the permanent erasure of my fb profile of 8 years, I lost around 1000 fb friends, photographs, articles, dialogues and important contact details, which made me feel as if losing part of my identity, since the way facebook dominates our lives today, entails that everything we do and everything we are is being recorded with or even without our consent within its ‘pages’.
And yes, by
sustaining these terms of use and by deleting photos of natural nudity or
nudity as a catalyst for a cause while at the same time allowing pornographic
material to exist through its pages, Facebook tells us that it is ok when the female body is
objectified, sexualized and pornified, but it is not ok when the same body
becomes a means for activism, political action or a canvas for self-expression.
It tells us
that it is ok for the media, the
internet and the businesses to use female bodies in a sexualized way in order
to make a profit, but it is not ok for the woman being in this body to use it as
she, herself, sees fit.
In this way, facebook perpetuates a sexist, patriarchical and discriminatory culture that is being imposed on women by so many different sides and becomes responsible for the incrimination of their naked bodies that so well feeds the modern rape culture. A culture that also feeds many other small or bigger issues that are connected with the idea of our naked bodies being something ‘dirty’ or provocative or as an object to be manipulated by and for men’s sexual desire or the industries’ beauty standards.
Sunday 23rd of August 2015 is international Go Topless
Day, an action that promotes women’s right to go topless in public just like
men, on gender equality grounds. On this occasion let’s reclaim back from
facebook our naked bodies, identities and right for freedom of expression!
I would like to invite all fb users, especially
women, whose fb accounts have been blocked or deleted for the same reasons as
mine, to post their photos under #thisismybody
or send them to christinnsa@gmail.com and I will upload them on my blog
together with this text. You can post your photos that have been censored by fb or your stories under #thisismybody on facebook, twitter or/and instagram.
See the
original story in English and in Greek on my blog, sun tousled: http://sun-tousled.blogspot.gr/
*PS: There
is so many of them but here is a few that I was able to dig up with just a few
clicks:
