
Breastfeeding women protest outside Facebook offices - Slimy
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/breastfeeding-women-protest-outside-facebook-offices/8673?tag=mantle_skin;content
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ck2
You can have all pictures of violence you want in America but absolutely no
pictures of women taking care of their babies. Society must be held back
firmly in the 19th century or the religious right might explode.

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methodin
I never thought I'd actually agree with Facebook, and even most other
instances of this censorship - but I do. These companies have every right to
do whatever they want because it is theirs - not yours. You choose to give up
those rights by using the service, and despite the fact that you do not agree
with it, you said you did by signing up and agreeing with their terms. I'm not
disillusioned by joining these services since I completely understand I have
to play within their rules. I would expect the potential for backlash at any
brick-and-mortar store if I wore a shirt with pictures of breastfeeding or a
crude image, but if I did so, it would be under that guise. I would not, then,
protest that store if they told me to leave.

If you want completely free speech then pay for a website and post all the
pictures you want, but to waste your time protesting the rights of a company
to say "I don't like these pictures on our servers and brand" is just a
ridiculous waste of energy. They have rights just as much as you do but there
is no reason they should bend to the will of a small majority of people who
are mixing personal pictures with very public ones or who post pictures for
shock effect or even out of sheer ignorance.

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hellweaver666
I'm sure people understand that. I think their point is just to make sure
Facebook are aware of how they feel on the subject. You have to remember, it's
hard for individuals to get in contact with these big FaceLess companies
without making their arguments public, that's why you see so much of this kind
of thing these days.

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herval
I'm sure many people DON'T understand that, as it's fairly normal to see
peoplecriticizing "free" companies (Facebook, Flickr, etc) for excluding them
when they clearly violate their TOS (sometimes more than once)...

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redtigerlily
Britain has the worst breastfeeding rates in Europe, USA aren't doing much
better either. In short, this is due to the introduction of commercially
available formula milk, and breastfeeding becoming "unfashionable". As you
probably know, breastmilk is the very best thing that you can give a baby, it
has a ridiculous amount of benefits.

In order for more women to choose to breastfeeding over formula feeding it
needs to become normalised again. In order to normalise breastfeeding people
have to be exposed to it more so that it is not weird and so that they are not
shocked by it. It should not be a private thing, it should be a sociable thing
like it is in many other countries around the world.

They don't remove pictures of women flashing all of their cleavage or prancing
around in pants with their hands over their boobs. THAT is offensive (and
slightly slutty). Breastfeeding is definetely not.

Breastfeeders are angry because they feel that by banning images of
breastfeeding women (most of which don't even feature nipples) facebook is
communicating the wrong moral messages. As facebook has such a large impact on
society, it is very important that they play their part in helping to promote
breastfeeding, and not making it seem an offensive & disgusting thing that
should be censored. If facebook was run by mums and not adolescent boys then
this wouldn't be happening.

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kipsfi
I guess this may seem insensitive, and I admit, I will never understand, as
I'm a young, single, childless male.

Why do you need to post these pictures? It's not that I find these pictures
offensive, but the odd time I see somebody breastfeeding in public, I do catch
myself being slightly thrown off. It seems like a very private thing. Why do
you WANT to post these pictures online?

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gallamine
I think part of the point they're protesting is the notion that breastfeeding
should be a private, personal thing. These women believe it's normal, natural
and there's no reason it shouldn't be public - like if you were to kiss or hug
your child in public.

I'm torn on the subject. There's plenty of normal, natural things that still
should be private, but is nurturing our children one of them?

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kipsfi
I guess that's part of my problem with it. The care of a child is just as
natural as the conception of a child.

Where do we draw the line? Am I aloud to post pictures of myself urinating?
Because that's natural too.

Natural != appropriate to show the public.

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rsanders
Even a single, childless male can think through the differences between
conceiving a child and supplying that child's frequent, urgent nutritive
needs. If you miss a meal, you may feel a little hungry or tired or cranky. As
best I can represent it, a baby not being fed on his schedule is much like an
adult not being supplied with _oxygen_. It's far worse than feeling a hunger
pang. And women are equipped with a constantly available, sustainable, low
cost, environmentally friendly, and energy efficient answer to this problem.
So wtf is the problem?

There is a public interest at work here. Breastfed babies are said to have
fewer short and long term medical issues. Breastfeeding might be as important
to our health (and crippling healthcare costs) as a people as bike paths,
sidewalks, healthy foods, preventative medical visits, and any of the other
many small lifestyle improvements which we are willing to spend many millions
of dollars creating and promoting. And it costs us...a worldview adjusted
ever-so-slightly back to what has been for most of our species' history
perfect normalcy.

This is an important issue. Encouraging breastfeeding, which does appear to be
the superior form of infant nutrition, requires that we normalize it. If we're
all too delicate to see tiny thumbnails of women breastfeeding floating by in
our newsfeeds, how will anybody ever survive the rather more "graphic"
occurrence of it happening next to them on the bus?

I'm willing to accept bikers in far-too-revealing spandex. I have similarly
learned to accept women breastfeeding. it's really not so bad once you
actually encounter it...which is not something you'll ever know if you're
being shielded from it by "decency" filters like Facebook's, or hearing the
implied judgment that it's indecent.

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dfxm12
"Natural and potentially life saving" is not the same as "natural". OP is
either being obtuse or trolling you.

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rsanders
I prefer to interpret the opposing party in such discussions as serving a
vital function in a Socratic dialogue. Whether or not IHBT, it's useful to
argue the issue with an opposing viewpoint.

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pron
Now this is amazing. Not because of the issue itself (both sides seem pretty
idiotic), but because Facebook has become like a government with embassies
that people protest against over social rights.

Think about it: people are now protesting a (non-democratic) corporation for
their social rights.

And another thing. This is the internet age, and people insisting on posting
their photos in whatever compromising positions for the world to see should be
at least somewhat technologically savvy. Why don't they just post their photos
on tumblr (with a link on facebook) where they can even post photos of them
having sex with their (non-minor) children?

When governments ruled the world it was hard to pick up your things and leave.
But in the age of the nanny-conglomerates, why not just go to a competitor? I
guess the answer is that the market isn't really competitive any more. Rather,
it's become (just like in the archaic state-ruled world) segmented into
influence blocs. You got a few superpowers, and lots of satellite "states".

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gjm11
> both sides seem pretty idiotic

What seems idiotic about the "pictures of breastfeeding infants should be
allowed on Facebook" side?

(The fact that they don't give up on Facebook and use something else? But
their goal isn't just to be able to post their pictures somewhere; they want
to be able to participate in Facebook, where for good or ill much of the
world's social life happens these days, without censoring themselves in
pointless ways; and they want everyone on Facebook to have that freedom.
Saying they should go elsewhere instead of protesting at Facebook would be, on
a much smaller scale, a bit like saying that people unhappy with their
country's government should emigrate rather than protesting at their
government.)

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pron
It's idiotic because it's pointless. I guess some people may be offended by it
(after all, it's public!) Say that some people are offended by photos of
people eating so Facebook decides to ban those. What's the big deal? It's not
like it's racial discrimination or anything.

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icebraining
So, it's idiotic because you personally don't feel it's a big deal?

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pron
No. It's idiotic because it is actually not a big deal.

We have women who like publishing photographs of them breastfeeding their
babies, and we have a corporation that thinks some people are offended by said
photographs, so they take them down. The women insist on their right to
publish said photographs on the very same website owned by the aforementioned
corporation, so they stage a public protest.

I find it entertaining, but I mostly think it is a nice cultural moment in the
history of the West. But it is by no means a big deal.

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slavak
This coming from a country where public urination might cause you to become a
registered sex-offender[1]. The United States has a long tradition of enmity
towards displays of sexuality or the human body.

People getting shot in the face or being thrown off the roof of a skyscraper
is just wholesome fun for the whole family, though.

[1]<http://www.economist.com/node/14164614>

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sbornia
Oh come on! Why don't they just build a www.breastfeedingpictures.com website
if they need to show their photos so hardly?

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rsanders
Why don't you build your own news aggregator site if you need to say
ridiculous things so hardly (sic)?

edit: I didn't mean this to be just snippy. My point is that the discussion is
here, not on his own blog, and he wants to have his opinion heard, so he posts
here, not on thingsithinkaboutbreastfeedingpicsonfacebook.com.

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Tichy
Startup idea: a social network for breastfeeding women :-)

