breastfeeding banned

[miriam_e]

LiveJournal has banned breastfeeding default icons.

Now that LiveJournal has been bought by SixApart it seems the inevitable corporate madness has begun. In the independent days if Brad made a mistake he just said oops and reversed it. Now corporate culture is faceless even here in LJ land. What will they ban next?

How to pack up and leave LJ (a tutorial)
Some oh-so-scary banned icons
Interesting comments and links over at http://www.greatestjournal.com

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Ordinarily I'd post something about how the feminists were getting their knickers in a knot again, but it strikes me that LJ isn't strictly a public space.

Surely it should be up to individual communities and/or LJ users to define what is an acceptable icon?

And for users to simply block images/users they find offensive? Hell, I do. I've killed several icons from my Flist because the freaked me out (the one-eyed cat was one).

I've seen icons depicting bestiality (Hi Sydneygothics), torture, and hardcore sex of all types. And then there are the various LJs of open zoophiles, babyfurs, tenticle-rape advocates and the like.

Surely LJ might be better chasing those kind of people than making a stand on this? I know they're being overly cautious and trying to toe the FCC line in the wake of the whole Janet Jackson thing but by taking on the breastfeeding icons all they've done that I can see is assault my sensitive eyes with a plethora of breast-feeding icons.

I never saw a one before all of this. Now I'm continually having to kill them with image-blocker at work.

/Ramble.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yeah. It is weird that they would bother. And with lots of people annoyed that they are suspending users who I believe are mostly from a breastfeeding support community for pretty damn tame icons it is surprising that they don't back down. But I guess it isn't surprising. Corporate culture almost requires never admitting you are wrong.

I always had big problems in traditional jobs because I'm always grateful when it is pointed out to me that I've made a mistake, figuring that being able to see your mistakes is half the problem solved. That's a good thing, right? Unfortunately most bosses react like a dog that sees something running and would swoop in for the attack. For the longest time I couldn't see what was happening. It is very hard for me to keep my mouth shut and not admit to mistakes and makes me very uncomfortable. Corporate culture and me don't get along.

The weirdest thing is that there are laws specifically exempting breastfeeding from nudity and decency laws... yet LJ's new owners decide otherwise.

[seaofserpent.livejournal.com]

/sigh. Disappointing.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Isn't it. I wonder why corporate culture seems to always spiral downwards. This is one of the reasons I hold out such high hopes for the file sharing and open-source communities that have grown up recently.

[metalhero.livejournal.com]

"What will they ban next?"

Words. We're gonna have to start posting in binary.

*sigh* You know, you can never just tell me about your day, can you? You have to post these things that make me get all irritated with people and the world and then I have to post my own stuff about it, which I've spent the last hour doing, so good job. But now I'm angry and I want to punch someone in the face AND I'm hungry.

But it's always "the world's getting worse," and "fuck corporations" and "religious fanatics," which I don't mind at all, but for once, just ONCE, I'd like to see you post something like,

"Well, I was having my morning cup of coffee when all of a sudden Billy burst through the door and started screaming about how a flock of seagulls had just pecked his girlfriend to death, and now they were after him and I said 'I know, they've been waiting here in the kitchen with me for the last hour,' and then I watched in sadistic glee as Billy was torn apart piece by piece as the gulls flew out the door in a furious but organized manner. Serves Billy right, that prick."

or WHATEVER happens in your everyday life.

I will say this, though. I wouldn't BAN pictures of mothers breastfeeding... but I wouldn't want to look at them for too awfully long, either. Some of those babies just look... evil.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Heheheheh :)
You are totally right.
Coincidentally I'd just been thinking about this myself (one of the reasons I posted the kettle cleaning piece).

I promise, for the sake of my mental health and that of those on my flist, that I'll post more optimistic pieces and especially more about what I'm doing.

Heheheheh You are right about babies. So many times a loving mother has said pridefully how pretty their baby is and I look and think Cripes! Scary looking little thing! I guess that's why the saying "a face only a mother could love". That said, I gotta say I LOVE babies' hands. Those little fingers and tiny fingernails make me grin like an idiot. I just have to let them grasp my own fingers. They are so damn cute! But the faces? Forget it.