Many of you may have noticed a facebook campaign recently more relevant than usual to the LGBTQ. ‘Un-Ban Dominic Scaia’ was a campaign set up because he uploaded photos onto facebook of his recent top surgery and was banned for this.
Obviously, it is not unfair for facebook to remove photographs that are considered pornography, i.e. topless women. However, they do not go around taking photos on men’s chests off the internet and banning those members; we live in a society where it is perfectly acceptable for men to be topless, which is fair enough. As a site used every day by millions of people, facebook have a right to respect people’s differences, to respect their decisions and their feelings, and not to marginalise the minorities they have within their users. Many of the people using the site, who are trans, will have had similar surgeries, and to feel as if by uploading photos afterwards they are doing something wrong, will only serve to break down self esteem and marginalise another minority even more.
What, I feel, makes it even worse, is that when his account was disabled, Dominic contacted facebook to ask why, and if it was to do with the post-op pictures, to complain. No one got back to him. So even if there had been other reasons that he had been blocked from facebook, he wouldn’t have known them, and would have been kept in the dark until the time came when he was finally unblocked. And let’s face it, the images that can so easily be stumbled upon on facebook, and especially upon the internet in general, are significantly worse than anyone, bigoted as they may be, can describe these as.
Thankfully, Dominic’s account has now been unblocked, he has been apologized to about the incident, and facebook have changed their policy regarding allowing post-op chest photographs. But that does not stop the fact that it happened in the first place. Many people think of social networking sites as a platform for speech, sharing of lives. If this was allowed to happen once, what is to say that it will not happen again, to another group, for another, equally unjustified reason? Maybe not just this policy, but many others used by facebook, need to be examined to see just how fair and justified they really are.
I have met many people recently who have been of the opinion that as a community we have nothing left to fight for. In this country we have legal equality and civil partnerships and, usually, the ability to be who we are all of the time. But it is small incidents like this, as well as large, shocking incidents such as the beating and murder of Ian Baynham in Trafalgar Square last year, that should help to push home to people who say this, that even in a Western, democratic society, yes, there is still a lot of injustice to be fought.
The campaign group can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/#/group.php?gid=240719433565&ref=ts
An article including the photo which got him banned can be found here: http://www.xtra.ca/public/National/Facebook_reevaluates_decision_to_censor_trans_mans_postop_chest_pics-8127.aspx
Saturday, October 17th, 2009, 8:20PM
by Matt (Officer)
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