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Facebook missing the point about true obscenity
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Published: January 15, 2009
There's been a bit of an uproar lately on one of the multitudes of social networking Web sites.
Apparently, Facebook, the increasingly popular alternative to Rupert Murdoch's MySpace, is now barring the posting of photos of nursing infants, and is removing similar photos already posted.
This hasn't gone over well with the posters of those pictures, as well as with the countless others who believe that there is nothing inappropriate about mothers feeding their infant children.
According to some of the hubbub, Facebook claims that it is only responding to complaints about the photos from other users and, it insists, the problem isn't the act of nursing itself, but the depiction of an actual flesh-and-blood nipple that is vexing people. So, instead of standing up for what is right, or trying to determine a policy for when nudity is or isn't obscene, Facebook has decided to just prohibit nudity and nipples all together.
Unless, of course, it is a MALE nipple. Apparently, according to the convoluted "reasoning" of Facebook, if a nipple doesn't function, it isn't obscene. Nice double standard.
All fault for this can't be placed on Facebook's modest little shoulders, though. If only a few people complained, Facebook likely would stay silent on the matter. But this situation is further evidence of some seriously misplaced anxiety in our culture. Apparently we believe that a mother feeding her child the way God intended is obscene, yet posting pictures of a gunship using its .30 mm cannon to shred other humans into little pieces is perfectly fine. And Heaven forbid someone catch a flash of breast on Facebook when they could be playing the latest computer game in which they can use a car to obliterate pedestrians.
Folks, we have a problem, and it isn't nipples. For some reason, our society has developed an unhealthy fear of God-given body parts, even when used the way they're supposed to be used. We also have an unhealthy obsession with death and violence. It is also a complete misunderstanding of what is and isn't sexual.
According to Facebook, hordes of users find mothers nursing newborns offensive, but believe drunken college guys parading around topless and flexing their pecs on the beach is sophisticated. Only one of these two groups is trying to be provocative, and it isn't the mothers. Where does this country's psychosis over body parts come from? Whatever its origins, we sorely need a change.
To prohibit mothers from posting photos — in a private profile, no less — of themselves nursing their children just because someone might be offended seems absurd.
There are limitations to the things that should be publically depicted. But feeding babies is not sexual. And if Facebook is going to stand by its claim that nipples are obscene, then it should apply the standard to all of them, male and female.
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