Your Sentiments on Breast Feeding in Public

[Aractus]

It's funny how people distort morality when it suits them. So, kids can't view boobs on TV and they're being censored, kids eyes are being covered but nobody lifts a finger to prevent kids from viewing boobs in public because it's a woman feeding her baby. Boobs are boobs, regardless of where one can see them. If they legaize that, next I'm expecting to legalize public sex in the park because there will be visible boobs and apparently visible boobs are not a problem. Or, using that contradiction and knowing the double standards some kinky people apply, some of you may say it's ok to have public sex for as long the woman is feeding her baby while her lover and/or husband do her doggy style.

1. We don't censor boobs on TV in Australia. 2. Public nudity laws in Australia are antiqued and in need of being revoked anyway. But that said 3. Indigenous Australians freely practise their cultural lifestyles without issue, and you can expect to see images of this such as this one:

Moderator Notice
Image removed for nudity

Either broadcast on TV or in real life.

I'll quote from the SBS story:

Questions are being asked about how Facebook balances censorship and cultural practice after the company pulled a trailer of ABC TV’s 8MMM program citing potential 'offensive nudity'.

The trailer depicted Indigenous Australian women taking part in a traditional ceremony, showing them painted in ochre and uncovered torsos.

Facebook's removal of the content has raised questions about how the social media monolith deals with traditional cultural practices in a digital world.

Associate Professor Ruth Barcan from the University of Sydney, who specialises in nudity and feminist cultural studies of the body, says "even within one single tradition nudity can be so complicated, let alone when people across different cultural backgrounds are interpreting it.

"But in a quite simple way Facebook has a set of easily determinable rules."

Sydney's University of Technology digital studies lecturer, Dr Bhuva Narayan, says better attention must be given to digital content that involves Indigenous Australia.

"It's time for us to revisit the [amended 2010] Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library Protocols for Library Archives and Information Services in this age of digitalisation and social media."

The protocols are a guide on how information services should handle Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content in a culturally appropriate way.

Dr Narayan said the post could have been removed because Facebook’s algorithms automatically detected it or a user reported the content.

If a post is taken down for breaching policy, the page owner can republish the post, if they can prove it is acceptable content by context.

Another option is to create an 'authorised page' so "then Facebook would take a bit more care in investigating what content is questionable," said Dr Narayan.

4. Could you explain to me what the image I just posted has to do with "morality" or "public sex"? Are you really that disingenuous?

Do you realise that it would be deeply offensive to an Indigenous person if you were to tell them that their apparel is 'inappropriate'. Not only that, but it is viewed as a form of racism not just merely a form of cultural insensitivity. And if the government tried to intervene it would be a breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Cultural sensitivities aside, it's just as insensitive to a breastfeeding mother to go and impose your world-view on them, as it would be for you to tell Aboriginal people not to practise their culture where you can see it.