Tell Facebook to #FreeTheNipple and Revise Policies Regarding Nudity!

Myself and seven of my friends were suspended by Facebook for posting this link to an article about topless protestors in Iceland supporting the #FreetheNipple movement. Please sign the petition to ask Facebook to revise its policies regarding nudity: #FreeTheNipple and allow artistic and political expression of female bodies!

To reclaim access to our accounts, we had to promise Facebook we wouldn't post nude pictures (even though we didn't in the first place!) and to confirm that we had none on our pages. We did nothing wrong. We are not criminals. But Facebook is exercising a double standard, allowing photos of topless men but censoring artful or political expressions of female bodies.



This isn't the first time Facebook has removed content from feminist activists using their bodies in non-sexual ways to normalize and desexualize the female body. Lina Esco, director of the "Free the Nipple" documentary, had her profiles deleted for posting the teaser of her film and/or for photos exposing women's nipples. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, also has a history of deleting photos of women's nipples. In fact, Scout Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, protested the censoring with a #FreeTheNipple campaign that garnered support from many. Facebook even once censored a doll's nipples!

While Facebook regularly deletes artful expressions of women's bodies and content associated with the #FreetheNipple movement, depictions of violence against women and glorification of rape is said to not violate community standards. In fact, Facebook refused to remove a video of a woman being beheaded. Feminist activist Soraya Chemaly writes that Facebook also refused to remove pages that glorify rape and other violence against women, including pages called "Raping Your Girlfriend" and a meme that showed a woman, mouth covered in tape, with a caption reading, "Don't tap her and rap her. Tape her and rape her." Images of women being frightened, humiliated, bruised, beaten, raped, gang raped, and bathed in blood are easily found on the site, Chemaly writes, but Facebook does nothing.

Facebook needs to stop mirroring mainstream norms that peg photos of women's bodies as acceptable only when they are hypersexual or violent in nature. Facebook can be a leader in changing cultural norms surrounding women's bodies by taking context into account and revising its policies and filters so that women's bodies -- and speech about their bodies -- are NOT censored.

We live in a society where men's chests are not sexualized at all, but it is only legal in 13 states for women to be topless in public or on a beach. Facebook can help change this culture.

Activist pressure convinced Facebook to allow photos of women breastfeeding (as long as you can't see any nipples); now it's time to ask Facebook to be a leader in changing the narrative surrounding the female nipple in harmless, feminist, and/or artful contexts.

Please sign the petition to ask Facebook to revise its policies regarding nudity: #FreeTheNipple and allow artistic and political expression of female bodies!