February 2, 2015

Hypocrisy

One of the two main reasons why I started blogging in 2008 (one was to practice my writing) was to get rid of the hypocritical censorship that was being inflicted on me in the chat rooms. The website in question, Topix.net, would often selectively enforce its own T.o.S. when it came to "offensive" postings, so that if two people wrote a similar comment about something, one would get punished and one would not.

So at the suggestion of a cyber friend, I moved myself to the blog world, where I didn't have to deal with any censorship issues. That lasted until I decided to practice the art of self-censorship, in which I would pop a short paragraph warning people about the content of a particular post. I also applied my self-censorship to two of my blogs (one active, one not) so that people would have a choice on whether or not they wanted to visit the blog.

I bring this up because I'm now seeing firsthand the hypocritical/insidious practice of selectively censoring images/content on Facebook, and I thought it would be a good idea to share a little of my FB world with my readers.

Apparently, Facebook has a serious issue with the male body, specifically, eye candy and/or gay portrayals of everyday occurrences and/or male modeling.

There is a photographer, Michael Stokes Photography, who advertises/shares his work on Facebook and who has been threatened/harassed by Bible Thumpers (a derisive term that is used to describe some conservative Christians who go far above and way beyond the accepted definition of what a conservative Christian is) because of it. This harassment has basically resulted in him getting thrown into FB, banned from posting and threatened with having his personal & professional pages merged together.

A few weeks ago, after another atrocious banning that stemmed from showing two gay actors sharing a kiss, a friend of mine formed a page called End Abusive Actions & Features on Facebook. This page for formed with two goals in mind, to bring attention to the abuse being inflicted on Mr. Stokes (who also had a cover of a book about the Holocaust pulled as well) and the hypocritical nature of the censorship as it applies to the LGBT community.

According to Facebook, and to a greater extent, what the average user sees/experiences, unless you're a big corporation (i.e. ESPN with their annual Body Magazine issue) or an icon in the gay community (i.e. Mr. Star Trek George Takei), if you post any image that shows the positive of being a male gay person (sorry for the weird phrasing) or semi-explicit nude of a guy, you can get the photo binged and you purged for 30 days.

Unless you're showing a semi-explicit nude picture of a woman or a semi-explicit lesbian scene, then you're basically okay.

The link up above to the story is just one of a growing crop, domestically and internationally, that is asking about the lack of consistency of Facebook's Standards & Practices. In ye olden days, I honestly think that FB would probably give lip service to this kind of issue, However, since they're a publicly traded company, they have no choice but to pay attention to it.

Because, as you all know, not all publicity is good for a company, especially if its bad publicity about a legitimate problem that the company has chosen to treat in a cavalier manner.

By the way, Blogger is very consistent about what it does and does not allow on their website for content, and has actively suggested to those thinking about posting that type of content (i.e. provocative and or X/NC-17 rated) to try either WordPress or Tumblr.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what your personal view point is on certain issues within the LGBT community, what matters is that people should be able to write/show what they want and/or what they do for a living, free from harassment/threats/censorship.

(c) 2015 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

12 comments:

  1. I wouldn't want to see it, but the answer is easy - just don't visit people who do post it. We live in a free country. No one says you have to look, right?

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    1. Exactly. No one is forcing you to view anything you don't want to view. If that isn't your cup of tea (and quite frankly, it isn't mine) just scroll on by. I do that a lot with stuff that pops up in my newsfeed. I just scroll on by.

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  2. No surprise that I agree with you. If straight people can be shown kissing or posing without major nudity, then gay people should have that same latitude. FB also gets all bent out of shape over photos of women breastfeeding babies. Go figure.

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    1. Exactly. For people to get bent out of shape over something as simply as two adults kissing only shows their true emotional/maturity level.

      Suffice to say, Facebook is getting a lot of blowback over this. The photog in question is slowing having some of his pics reinstated on his timeline. This guy is quite good and these pics are magazine quality stuff.

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  3. Don't really understand why people care.

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    Replies
    1. Some passionately do to the point of becoming actively involved.

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  4. Chat rooms? Aren't they just places where childish people dump their venom more or less anonymously and without regard for dignity or reason?

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    1. Basically, yes.

      But realistically, I have met some good people who I've remained friends with on FB to this day (most of us had migrated to Facebook from the chat rooms).

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  5. Ugh. Okay, so Christian extremists are not currently engaging in much active terrorism, but still, I am just as worried about their impact on society, if not more so, than the Muslim extremists.

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    1. Personally, I'm much more worried about Muslim extremists, if only because they have a lot of good people brainwashed (like our President) into thinking what they do is a proper response to whenever they think they've been slighted.

      Delete

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