Free the nipple on social media

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]f you have a Facebook or Instagram account, it’s more than likely you’ve come across the #FreeTheNipple movement. Lesser known is the #DoIHaveBoobsNow campaign, which challenges how trans bodies fit into the world of social media censorship.

Facebook currently only allows images of chests they presume to be male to be displayed. Breasts, specifically nipples, on the bodies of women are strictly not allowed. Courtney Demone, a woman from Victoria, is challenging this. Documenting her transition from male to female, specifically her breast augmentation, she’s determining at what point of transition she’s too feminine to be revealing her body for Facebook’s standards.

The controversy surrounding breasts is particularly interesting when considered from a biological perspective. There’s very little difference between male chests and female chests, except that the latter has specialized lobules, allowing them to breastfeed. This is widely unknown, however; many presume that there are major biological differences between the two. This may seem like an innocent case of misinformation, but it can have deadly consequences. Male, for instance, can get breast cancer are often diagnosed too late simply because they neglected to check themselves.

So what exactly are we censoring? Are we censoring breastfeeding, since the only real difference between the two is the aforementioned lobules? According to a statement Facebook made a while back, they “will always allow photos of women actively engaged in breastfeeding.”

Is it the size of breasts? Surely this isn’t the case either, since men with large chests can post shirtless pictures of themselves with no consequences, yet women with small breasts get their photos removed for nudity.

The only conclusion left is that Facebook has a problem with women’s breasts and women’s breasts alone. This is especially saddening because, in 2014, Facebook replaced their previous gender-binary system where users had to choose either male or female for their profiles with a drop-down list of options. Especially huge for users was the new choice to write their own.

Unfortunately, their censoring policies remain contradictory to this progression. Demone herself described the issue as “nonsense,” saying, “Facebook allows us to input what gender we are, yet they go ahead and assign us a binary gender anyway based on our chests.” By denying some bodies the right to be displayed, Facebook both subscribes to the gender and sex binaries, and contributes to a society that disproportionately polices women’s bodies.

The implications of this are huge. Policing women’s bodies contributes to a culture run amok with slut-shaming and victim-blaming. It’s a tired old trend that has to go.

I’m in full support of lifting the ban on all nipples and breasts. The benefits are endless. Parents worried about their children being exposed to “pornographic” content should consider celebrating the effects that visibility of a variety of breast-types could have. Instead of only seeing breasts that fit the porn aesthetic — which, let’s face it, are just as accessible on the Internet as Facebook itself — they’d be exposed to a more realistic spectrum of body types, likely decreasing the insecurity experienced by children about their own developing bodies.

And they wouldn’t have the pesky problem of having to decide what counts as feminine enough and what doesn’t.

So instead of drawing arbitrary lines in the sand saying which breasts are too risque, Facebook should simply lift the ban on (what they presume to be) women’s bodies, simultaneously rejecting gender binaries and refusing to contribute to a society that shames people for having feminine anatomy.