Facebook has issued an apology to a Sacramento mother who was banned from the social media website for posting breastfeeding pictures.
Kristy Kemp, who manages the support group Breastfeeding Mama Talk, was angry when she found out that several of her photos had been removed from the website. Kemp told San Francisco’s KGO-TV, “It’s not right. I’m trying to do good for mothers and I’m getting kicked off for posting pictures one of the most beautiful acts a mother can do for her kid, and it’s not right.”
The social networking giant apologized to Kemp Friday and sent a clarification about what types of photos were acceptable and which ones violated the company’s policy.
Kristy Kemp isn’t the first, and most likely won’t be the last, mother to find herself blocked or banned from Facebook for posting breastfeeding photos. In November 2012, Gina Crosley-Corcoran, a blogger at TheFeministBreeder.com, was banned after she posted a photo of her 18-month-old daughter nursing and holding a piece of bacon . The photo was removed after a commenter took a screenshot and reported Crosley-Corcoran to Facebook. She was suspended for three days.
Crosley-Corcoran didn’t get mad — she planned to get even by encouraging readers to join her in protest by posting breastfeeding pictures on their own Facebook pages.
Another breastfeeding mom, Emma Kwasnica, was also suspended from Facebook after she posted over 200 photos of herself breastfeeding . Facebook said it agreed that breastfeeding was natural and that the majority of photos were in compliance with the website’s terms, but photos that contained a fully exposed breast violated the terms. Kwasnica didn’t feel the issue was fixed, so she organized a protest outside the company’s Menlo Park headquarters. Over 60 mothers gathered to try and convince Facebook that breastfeeding — and breastfeeding photos — are not obscene.
Do you think Facebook should ban breastfeeding photos?
