I share a lot of images of birth. Videos. Stories. Photographs.
All in an attempt to normalize what I consider to be an incredibly powerful, transformative, magical, sacred and truly fucking badass experience that many, many, many people on this planet undergo.
Imagine my sadness, disgust and anger when I received a notification that my business page on Facebook had been unpublished due to me not following Community Standards.
Let's look at this for a minute, shall we?
In 2018, an incredible person by the name of Katie Vigos (Nurse/Doula) started a campaign to have Instagram and Facebook change their policies regarding nudity when it applied to birth.
"Amongst the petition’s recommendations were calls to: recategorise all birth-related content as educational material, in its own unique category if necessary; and allow our community to post graphic images of physiological birth with the images blurred or greyed out, so users can tap to see the images and choose whether to view them."
And they did!
The policies were changed which very clearly state that photos and videos of childbirth are acceptable. And as they should be!!
The more that we see birth, the more we change the narrative from one of fear to one of excitement, the more we bring true awareness of all the possibilities and what it can look, feel, be like and the more we celebrate it for what it is!
An incredible feat of strength, resilience, and trust!
Censorship of that experience feels sexist, oppressive and unfair and I will not stand for it.
Not only does it send a message that our experiences (our raw and incredibly vulnerable ones!) are offensive to others. It also speaks volumes about how we perceive birthing folks.
Sexist and/or Objectifying Memes= totally fine
Body Shaming (IE:Memes about weight gain during a pandemic)= totally fine
Person standing in their power to birth their babies= Definitely unacceptable
If at any point, anything I share offends you, unfollow.
Please do not report images that have been shared with permission, that do not violate Community Standards and that are shared with the purpose of encouraging other birthing people, of celebrating the work we do and normalizing the birthing experiences.
I do not know if there is anything that can be done to get my page published again, but I do encourage folks to help me challenge this ridiculous censoring of a very common experience.
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