Boobie Backfire
Jun. 4th, 2006 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pandora_parrotI'm finding it rather amusing that Livejournal made such a big deal out of those breastfeeding userpics, and now tons of people have breastfeeding userpics.
Talk about backfire... :P
Talk about backfire... :P
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-04 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-04 09:42 pm (UTC)What are they afraid of?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-04 10:57 pm (UTC)The facts:
-LJ has prohibited *any* female breast or male/female genitalia in *default* userpics. This is to give them a shield against situations where, say, a mother catches little Johnny reading his friendslist, and one of his friends happens to have a picture of, say, Jenna Jameson spreading her legs for the camera or something.
-It's a formality, because you're still allowed to use any and all userpics you want--it's just that your *default* can't be anything that violates their terms (and remember, it is their webspace--the internet is not a free speech zone, it is a zone where you can form any community with any rules you like. Your right to show your naked breast is not protected--but they aren't removing it, either. They've established some basic rules to protect their company, and considering that they *could* ban nudity altogether, they're being absurdly reasonable about this whole thing. You could, if you wanted, just set your userpic to "boobies!" every single time you post.
-People are, by and large, irrational and illogical, and prone to tribal behavior. LJ establishes the new rules. Person X is affected. Person X, misunderstanding what was said and the intent behind the ruling, goes on a tirade and misrepresents the situation into something simpler and more emotionally appealing. Persons Y and Z, who have strong feelings on the issue they think Person X is being "oppressed" over, join the cause without even investigating the matter. They tell persons A, B and C about it, and the quality of information degrades even further. In a social network like Livejournal, it doesn't take long before you have thousands of uninformed, emotionally stirred-up people who've no idea what the farg they're on about, and who have developed enough inertia and group identity to be openly antagonistic to anyone who voices a contrary view (or provides some simple facts).
no subject
Date: 2006-06-04 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 03:48 am (UTC)But our opinions are basically irrelevent here. LJ is perfectly within its rights to do this--the webspace is theirs, they make the rules, and they could order everyone to have userpics with frogs in them if they wanted to.
"Should" has nothing to do with it. It doesn't mean a blessed thing.
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Date: 2006-06-05 03:51 am (UTC)Yet we can also rant, rave, bitch, moan, cry, protest, and otherwise oppose their asinine choices in this matter.
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Date: 2006-06-05 03:58 am (UTC)Frankly, I don't trust the reading comprehension and critical thinking of the average LJ user to think that most of them are angry for a really valid reason. That's just me, though--and I'm ready to reexamine my position if new, damning evidence comes to light.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-04 11:20 pm (UTC)We're not talking fetish here. This is not about pedophilia, snuff or cat o'nine tails.
We are talking letting a few people who are uptight about a perfectly normal function trying to force their "problem" on everyone else.
Living in a society where mom and dad want to make sure little Jimmy never sees a breast being put to use for it's intended purpose is just plain wrong.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 03:51 am (UTC)So, rather than a meaningless crusade against Livejournal's staff (which will accomplish nothing, and is frankly more than a bit silly to watch), why not deal with the source of the problem: namely, the state of cultural mainstream in the USA? Otherwise it's mindlessly attacking the symptom, without doing any good--in fact, vehement protests against this will only serve to rigidy the borders between those who think this censorship is good and those who don't.
There's backfire for you.
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Date: 2006-06-05 03:54 am (UTC)So I feel similarly about these LJ protests. They're fighting to keep the issue alive and under discussion, which I applaud whole-heartedly, regardless of whether or not I agree or disagree.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 04:02 am (UTC)The problem I see is that they rarely accomplish much. Living in Portland was an exercise in observing the psychology of protestors. Basically, most of the people go out there, wave a sign, chant slogans, fume in group-sanctioned ways about the injustice they are standing against, and then meet for the next protest, which continues unabated because the issue hasn't gone away.
Basically, it seems mostly fuming with little substance. Has anyone bothered to figure out how many people would have to close their accounts to noticeably affect Six Apart's bottom line? There's not enough organization here--lots of back-patting, lots of cheering each other on, lots of vocalization, and that's wonderful.
But what is it accomplishing?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 04:07 am (UTC)Before I was consciously aware of my own involvement in the GLBT minority, I learned much of the oppression GLBT folk suffer by hearing family and friends bitch and moan about "gay pride parades" and such. Protests make us realize that there is another side to an issue, and make us open our worldviews to take that into account.
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Date: 2006-06-05 04:09 am (UTC)So what else is being done? These protests are as fractious as they are visible. How is that being cleaned up into a useful social movement?
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Date: 2006-06-05 04:11 am (UTC)At least, that's what I'd recommend. Whether or not anyone is doing that is anybody's guess.
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Date: 2006-06-05 04:14 am (UTC)I'd be more inclined to sit back and watch if they seemed to know how many users LJ has, how many would have to be banned to make a serious impact, how many of those are likely to sympathize, and how best to reach them.
In other words, an actual plan. Whereas this just looks to me like useless gestures that feel good but change nothing.
*shrug*
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Date: 2006-06-05 04:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 04:19 am (UTC)If you do not understand it quantitatively, you know very little about it.
(Not advice for all occasions, but definitely applicable here)
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Date: 2006-06-05 04:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 03:55 am (UTC)Wars are won one battle at a time.
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Date: 2006-06-05 04:05 am (UTC)Wars are won one battle at a time, yes. You know what else wins wars?
Strategy. Logistics. Revising plans. Marshalling resources. Making allies. Understanding, in direct, quantifiable terms, how much you have to gain and lose in a given situation, what risks are worth it, and how much you have to put into a risk in order for it to pay off.
If we use the war metaphor, than these and most protesters I encounter are basically a group of survivalist gun-nuts who imagine it'll be easy to hole up in the wilderness and take out incompetent Russian soldiers when they invade. They are very unlikely to encounter a situation like they imagine, and if they ever do, their defeat is a foregone conclusion.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 12:28 am (UTC)No, no, I understand. I'm not posting anything on this until I get my reply back from LJ-support, since I've only been able to find the non-LJ side of the story. But the problem here is that breastfeeding is protected, big-time, in America. It is not considered nude or obscene for a woman to breast-feed, in public, whenever and wherever. From the complainers' side, this is not about free speech or nudity, it's about something even more basic, and that's the right of motherhood.
The complaints that I do see are that some members of the LJ-team have default userpics with nipples in them. Plus, the support members have been phrasing the issue not as rules LJ arbitrarily imposes because they can, but because of FCC guidelines, and breastfeeding is protected even there. If they want, they can make a specific rule that explicitly covers breastfeeding. Yes, it'd have to be explicit, because every common-law definition of nudity is understood to exclude breastfeeding. But it's currently phrased as a legal reason, not a business decision. And if that's their reasoning, and this really is the case that it's happening, this is wrong, and I stand a good chance of cancelling my account (and encouraging other people to do so, too.)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 03:55 am (UTC)"Right of motherhood" Who granted this right? Where did it come from, and how is prohibiting LJ icons with boobies infringing on it?
"Every common law definition of nudity" So there's no society or culture anywhere in the world that considers breastfeeding to involve nudity? Then why is this even happening?
Where'd they say this was due to FCC guidelines, BTW? I've encountered a number of letters from the LJ staff and seen nothing to that effect (I'm not saying they haven't, I'm just curious to have it verified).
Also, can you please point me to an LJ-team staff member who has a default userpic that violates their ToS?
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Date: 2006-06-05 10:10 am (UTC)Sorry, perhaps I should have put these explanations in to begin with.
Rights are not "granted", they are "endowed by [our] Creator", or whatever term you wish to use. Babies have a diet consisting solely of milk. They are hungry in public, the mother has a right to care for her child. Regarding boobie icons, I believe you miss the point. Breastfeeding is not nudity. By casting it as "LJ icons with boobies", you are phrasing the topic in a disingenuous manner. Ask me how prohibiting LJ icons with breastfeeding mothers infringes a mother's rights, and I'll answer that.
Any society or culture? No, that's a twisting of the words. There are subcultures and subsocieties that consider it to be nudity, and that's the problem. But, legally, breastfeeding mothers have protection againt nudity laws. That's part of why this discussion is happening. I'll get to the other part in a moment.
Allegedly, Erin of LJ-Abuse is quoted as saying, "That's really a matter for the FCC to decide," regarding this issue. That's why I'm trying to verify all this stuff. They still haven't gotten back to me.
The other half of this issue seems to be the LJ-Abuse team in general. Upon digging more into this issue, I'm finding a lot of general and specific complaints against LJ-Abuse, in the form that these people are not employees of Six Apart, but instead volunteers with no real training, guidelines, or consistent rulings. A number of people seem to have characterized a number of Abuse team members as vindictive and unwilling to admit error.
Still awaiting LJ-Support request.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:16 pm (UTC)You could put anything in there. You could say that rights are endowed by Godzilla, or by a tiny pink alien that only you can see. You could as easily say that rights were forbidden by any such entity. It sounds good but means nothing. You only have "rights" to the extent that you can act upon them--otherwise it's completely hollow.
I think you're glossing over the degree to which breastfeeding gets a bad reaction in the mainstream. I don't claim to have numbers, but I find your assertion that it is limited to "subcultures and subsocieties" to be both suspect and vague (after all, strictly speaking, you could divide up subcultures in such a way that no one group has exactly the same agenda, but a majority agree on certain points). Speaking strictly from experience, many folks get a bit discomforted by it. I suspect this is more due to lack of exposure than anything else, but the source is less important than the behavior (at least until you start looking at how to solve the problem).
The trick here is that these aren't breastfeeding mothers.
The item in question is simply images of the mothers breastfeeding.
You can't tell me that a mother loses her ability to safely and comfortably breastfeed her child just because she's not allowed to use a picture of it as her *default* userpic on Livejournal (despite being perfectly free to use it as another userpic--they haven't banned the pictures wholesale, they simply banned using them as defaults).
As for Rahaeli's pic, it's barely visible, but it does seem to be there. Why not report this and get upset about that?
"Allegedly" direct quotes mean little. It's just "he-said she-said", and considering the signal degradation I've seen on this whole thing, I don't trust an alleged quote here.
Similar with "seem to have characterized." I don't find it at all hard to believe that people with authority on the internet might abuse it, or make mistakes and refuse to admit it--on the other hand, I also don't trust most LJ folks to even comprehend a basic written letter on the matter, and I've seen a couple of their letters. They seem eminently reasonable and polite.
*shrug* In any case, I feel like I'm beginning to spam Joyce's journal entry here. If you want to discuss this further we can take the comment exchange elsewhere. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 03:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 03:11 am (UTC)It be weird, yo.
your pride icon
Date: 2006-07-08 05:50 pm (UTC)Re: your pride icon
Date: 2006-07-08 06:45 pm (UTC)