Letter to LiveJournal

Jumping on the bandwagon here, because apparently LJ Abuse has their heads up their asses.

Dear LiveJournal,

I have to add my voice to what seems to be a growing chorus of confused and outraged LJers. I'm a breastfeeding mother of two, and and guessing that no one in your "abuse" committee has been in that position, or they would never conflate breastfeeding a baby with a sexual or obscene practice. Breastfeeding is the most natural way to feed a baby's body and emotional well-being. Breastfed babies grow up to be smarter and, on the whole, happier than their bottle-propped cohorts... which, I suppose, might be a reason you'd want to ban breastfeeding images -- perhaps fewer emo teens means fewer LiveJournal accounts in the future?

I'm kidding, but seriously, you guys need to get a clue. There are a lot of truly horrible default icons out there -- I've seen graphic acts of sex and violence, some drawn, but mostly actual pohotographs -- and honestly, a woman nuturing her child isn't even in the same universe as those images. If you continue in your witch-hunt of default breastfeeding icons, you're going to end up banning a goodly portion of your users who also have paid accounts (after all, we're responsible adults, not unstable emo adolescents), and I'm hoping that if logic (i.e. breastfeeding is in no way obscene) doesn't move you, perhaps financial realities might.

Regards,
Jan Andrea Heirtzler (paid account, expiring 11-2006, and if you continue this, I will certainly not be renewing!)

I have my doubts that it will actually make a difference, but good grief, how stupid can they be?

(Wonder if an Escher print qualifies as obscenity?)

PSA if you are thinking of leaving LJ

I was wondering about this myself, if LJ doesn't change their stupid breastfeeding default icon policy -- if I cancel my account, can I download all my entries? And the answer is, yes:
http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=8

So, yay. I'm going to do that now just in case. I hope the comments will also come, and that there's a way to upload everything to another blog site, but am just happy to know I can save all my meanderings to disk.

LJ's reply to my letter

Begin quoted material:

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Thank you for your feedback. Please allow me to explain, as the controversy surrounding this issue appears to stem from a misunderstanding.

LiveJournal has always placed restrictions on default userpics, as the default userpic is visible in many public areas throughout the site, including the Directory, the Schools Directory, and the profile page. These restrictions are detailed in http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=111. We feel it's important to strike a balance between the ideal of free expression and the rights of, for instance, a parent to prevent their child from seeing unsolicited material that the parent feels is non-age-appropriate or the right of an individual to be able to browse public LiveJournal spaces without being exposed to nudity or violence.

There are not blanket restrictions on default userpics depicting the act of breastfeeding, and the restrictions have nothing to do with targetting or restricting breastfeeding activism or awareness campaigns. We must hold to as clear and consistent a guideline as possible to determine the appropriateness of default userpics, in order to ensure that our standards are enforced equally for every user. Any usericon in which unclothed breasts or genitalia are visible is therefore inappropriate for use as a default icon, and when such icons are reported to the Abuse team, the user is asked to make that icon non-default. If an icon depicting the act of breastfeeding does not also depict a clearly visible unclothed breast in which the areola or nipple is visible, it does not fall into this category.

We do not prohibit people from using icons that are inappropriate for use as a default icon as a non-default icon, as the issue is not with the depiction of the icons themselves but their use in areas, again such as the Directory and the Schools Directory, which have been designated "nudity free". Non-default userpics are not held to the same standard, as they can only be visible in entries, comments, and communities, all of which are "user space" as opposed to "LiveJournal application space".

The application of this policy to icons depicting breastfeeding is not in any way intended to be a statement that breastfeeding is dirty, shameful, or obscene. We fully support our users' right to make their own decisions regarding parenting choices and styles, and we appreciate the dedication of parents who have chosen to participate in breastfeeding activism and education.

We ask only that you are willing to extend the same support and appreciation to, for instance, parents who choose to believe that it is inappropriate for their children to view unsolicited nudity in public. The physical-world analogy is not perfect in this situation; breastfeeding is indeed perfectly legal in public places, but in a public place, another parent is also able to cover a child's eyes or remove a child from the area if he or she believes that such an action is inappropriate for their child to see. We feel that the restrictions we have always placed on default usericons strike the best balance between individual expression and individual courtesy.

We do agree that in a perfect world, the issue would not arise, but unfortunately, this is not a perfect world, and we believe that our solution to the issue is a reasonable compromise between two wildly divergent points of view regarding what is and is not appropriate for LiveJournal -- not simply regarding icons depicting breastfeeding, but all material which a parent or other individual might feel is inappropriate for public.

I apologize for any miscommunications which may have given the impression that LiveJournal is in any way "against" individual parenting choices; the issue is not at all a political one. We welcome and value our pro-breastfeeding users and communities, and appreciate their dedication to and passion for their cause. However, because LiveJournal is a community with extremely varied standards and audiences, we must balance out the interests of all our users, and we have always felt these restrictions are the best possible compromise.

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So, it seems to boil down to: breastfeeding pictures aren't obscene (or at least inappropriate) as long as no nipple or areola is showing. If a nipple or areola is showing, then apparently the nurturing act of breastfeeding suddenly turns into a perverted sexual frenzy :P

I say, bullshit. If parents are offended at the possibility that their children might see a little areola during breastfeeding... then they're the perverts, I think. (Perverted meaning deviation from what's natural and normal, and I certainly feel that classifying breastfeeding -- no matter what's showing -- as offensive is perverse.) Of course, no such parents are actually involved in this, at least as far as I'm aware -- it's the LJ abuse's team that's taking that stand, and I think they're full of it, despite their reply.

I still wonder where my current icon falls in their view -- the actual photos of me nursing Sophia don't show any of my breast flesh, but the Escher print (which, I think we can agree, is art) does. Is it inappropriate?