4 ms·

Is this a substantive comment? Or are you just agitating? I don't think most of us care whether or not it is a "sexual organ;" that varies by person and their

• akjainaj 10y ago
  Of course it's important whether it's a sexual organ or not. Instagram removes pictures with female nipples (and hence breasts) for the same reason they would remove a picture of a penis or a vagina: because it's a sexual organ. Feminists from the "free the nipple" initiative want to put a stop to that, and want Instagram to consider a female breast not to be a sexual organ, so pictures with breasts in them are not removed. My comment meant to say that this initiative is really stupid, because conventional wisdom says a female breast is a sexual organ, while a male breast is not. Am I not allowed to criticise it?
  • legodt 10y ago
    Breasts are for feeding children and do not have inherent sexual function. Please keep your women-objectifying views out of this. This is not an argument to censor based on sexuality, but instead to highlight the misoginy laced in your original comment.
    • akjainaj 10y ago
      Testicles are for generating children. Should I be able to post a picture of my scrotum to Instagram? Do most men get aroused at the sight of female breasts? Do most women get aroused when they have their breasts fondled/licked/etc? If the answer is yes, then female breasts are a sexual organ. This isn't even a matter of opinion.
      • jMyles 10y ago
        > Should I be able to post a picture of my scrotum to Instagram? I'm radical enough to say, "sure." Doesn't hurt me any. Sadly, we live in a society where genitals (and acts of sex) are not typically tolerated in public. That sucks. And if you want to undo that, I'm with you. Sex in public! But there's also a different standard here. Restraining your ability to display your testicles in public (for example, on Instagram) doesn't, to my knowledge, affect your capacity to get by in life. You might not realize this (or maybe you do), but for poor or homeless women, the difference between being able to breastfeed in public (and in some cases, at work) is the difference between being able to breastfeed and not, which in turn is the difference between statistical likelihood for a number of favorable health outcomes and not. There's no reason not to tolerate - in fact embrace - the display of breasts and breastfeeding in socially normal places. It is a huge help to many women.
        • akjainaj 10y ago
          How many pictures of homeless women breastfeeding babies have been taken down by Instagram? How has that affected the lives of those homeless women who, by definition, do not even own a mobile phone? I don't even understand why has all of this turned into a breastfeeding discussion, when neither the article nor I mentioned that.
          • legodt 10y ago
            This isn't about that. It's about how many women in public are put in danger when breastfeeding because people like you are unable to separate breasts from sexuality and people who believe that such a display should be censored or punished? You might not belong to that second group but the first group's opinion enables that line of thinking
            • dang 10y ago
              Please also stop.
          • dang 10y ago
    • dragonwriter 10y ago
      The evolved role of female breasts in sexual attraction and arousal is as "inherent" and biologically-based as the evolved role of the male penis in sexual intercourse. The idea that a body part having a sexual function is a good justification for banning it from being uncovered in public is dubious, and trying to spread a false narrative about breasts having no such function just so you can defend reasonable treatment of breasts without challenging this dubious social standard is fairly self-defeating.
      • jMyles 10y ago
        Thank you for this comment. This belongs in a sex education textbook.
  • yaur 10y ago
    conventional wisdom isn't the law of the land, the constitution is. It seems pretty hard to justify having different legal standards for nudity based on gender without running afoul of the 14th amendment. I don't think its "stupid" for any group to fight for their constitutional rights.
  • soundwave106 10y ago
    The problem here is that "conventional wisdom" is fluid. The concept that the female breast is a sexual-oriented organ, where modesty dictates that it should be covered or else be declared "obscene"... well that is something that has widely varied between various cultures and various time periods. Instagram applies what I would call a current United States angle in its obscenity guidelines. Yet even in the United States in the present time, the current "standard" moral code is difficult to apply in a way that can be codified by computer algorithms. One example: while exposing the female breast in the United States is "normally" seen as sexual, most people "normally" would not see it this way in the case of breastfeeding. Even within the United States, you are going to find groups that have different opinions on whether these moral codes make sense (hence, the feminists counter-argument). And then there's the rest of the world. Instagram's policy really wouldn't align well with, say, a lot of continental Europe (even Britain, which tends to lean more modest than the continent), which tends to view the breast less sexually than the US. There are also cultures that are more strict than US norms, too. To give one example, Vimeo's blocked in Indonesia (allegedly) because of more permissive nudity policies. Unfortunately, I personally don't feel there's a great solution to this that can be internationalized, unless we get to the point where algorithms can match individual moral codes and block the correct "inappropriate" photos for each users. As it stands, no matter what Instagram or others block or permit, they are bound to tick someone off...