"It's..."

[peteryoung]

I can't be alone in finding LJ Abuse's inflexible stance in the ongoing shock-horror of default breastfeeding icons just a tad Pythonesque, because this storm-in-a-teacup is just the kind of mindless adherence to inappropriate rules that the Pythons loved sending up. So, never having failed to jump on a suitably non-violent bandwagon, I gave it a few moments thought and realised where better to look for a new default icon than Agnolo Bronzino's iconic Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, painted in 1545, which famously also served as the source for Terry Gilliam's 'Python's foot' (which you'll find in the lower left corner of the painting, in all its glory under the cut).

The icon shows two female nipples, one partially exposed. The artist's positioning of Cupid's mouth and hand in this piece of classical art was deliberately provocative, and yet today the painting itself hangs on full display, for free, to all breastfed and non-breastfed people of any age in London's National Gallery. I wonder how many complaints they get. I'd call this image tasteful and hardly outrageous, though it probably displays a kind of inappropriately sexualised use of children and breasts that LJ Abuse would be right to respond to instead of coming down heavily on innocent images of breastfeeding babies as default icons. If you are offended by this icon and wish to complain about it, please do so here, but it's staying either until someone does or until LJ Abuse starts behaving reasonably (decide for yourself here). On the other hand, feel free to steal this icon and use it if so inclined.

Comments

[dougs.livejournal.com]

You seem to be missing a "T" from your title. And I don't think the apostrophe should be there either.

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

I was waiting for someone to say that, and it had to be you...

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I do my best.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Storm-in-a-G-cup surely?

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

And how long did you spend thinking that one up? :)

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Well I did have to think long and hard abotu whether to go for a smaller size [g]

[dougs.livejournal.com]

Traditionally, it's a T-cup. That would be a much larger problem.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Yes, she looks more like an A or B to me!

Lovely icon, Pete ~ thanks. *grabs* and lovely sentiment, too.

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

I've missed the great Live Journal breast-feeding icon scandal of '06. What happened?

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

jesurgislac covers the topic in some detail here.

The basics: troll (not the actual LJ name) had a rather scandalous default icon, which was reported to LJ Abuse. LJ abuse concluded the image was not sufficiently decent to be used as a default icon, and ordered troll to change it, or else.

troll got mad, and decided to get even. Lacking any direct access to LJ Abuse, troll decided (as troll's own words make clear) to go trolling for unobjectionable default icons containing some amount of nudity, about which to complain. troll hit the jackpot over at boob_nazis, a breastfeeding support group. The now terribly shocked and traumatized [or perhaps not] troll reported these terrible, scandalous, sexually explicit breastfeeding icons to LJ Abuse.

LJ Abuse, with its usual sensible and well-thought out response, decided to ban breasts, and told the various BN members to change their default icons or be suspended. When the community got a written response to a complaint about the new policy, that response said, no, of course breastfeeding isn't sexual, and of course, you have a right to keep using those images when you post to your breastfeeding community, so long as they aren't your default icons anymore, but gosh, people have a right to not run into sexually explicit material in places where they aren't expecting it*. (No, I'm not joking; this isn't a verbatim account, but it's darned close.)

A SixApart VP is now in the mix, saying basically the same things, but with a smile and much emphasis of how he's the father of several children who were all breastfed (not in public, of course - oh, the horror!)


* This argument, repeated in some of the other LJ/SA correspondence, is particularly worrisome. If the concern is, people seeing images they weren't expecting, then non-default breastfeeding icons also are in jeapardy if they are ever used outside the breastfeeding community. Moreover, the argument could easily be abused - and probably would - to apply for other icons, and other items, posted anywhere on LJ but in carefully screened private groups.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, LJ has rewritten at least one of its FAQs, to define as impermissable any image that includes any microscopic portion of a female adult human nipple or aureole.

It's been pointed out that the policy discriminates against women whose aureoles are particularly large or dark - including most members of some ethnic groups. (Also, LJ Abuse is coming down hard on people whose breastfeeding icons include shadows in the wrong places.)

It's also been pointed out that breastfeeding is explicitly exempted from U.S. nudity ordinances; that breastfeeding is considered acceptable in the E.U., the U.S., Canada, and oh, yes, California, where SixApart is based; and that in banning images of breastfeeding, LiveJournal and SixApart are ignoring U.S. legal standards of indecency and their own LJ FAQ 112 (unless they've rewritten it, too, since I last looked). The FAQ sets forth the indecency criteria established by the U.S. Supreme Court; any of a number of its criteria (including political value, and in many cases, artistic value) would serve to uphold the decency of the icons in question.

Anyhoo(ter), a number of LJ users have been suspended for refusing to change their default icons. SA says it is still carefully weighing the issue, but has declined to hold off on suspending users while it does so. It also is refusing to refund their money for unused months of paid service - a very questionable point, given that SA has done the terminating.

The story has begun to spill over into non-LJ blogs and the news media.

Many LiveJournalistas, considering this the final straw, are setting up alternate journals over on Greatest Journal.

Oh, and a delete-your-journal-and-stay-away-for-a-day strike is being planned, possibly for this Friday. I prefer Saturday, June 6 - Step apart from SixApart on 06/06/06 - but don't want to dilute the effect of the planned action, and so will probably vanish for both days. (Comments in other journals made by deleted accounts stay where they were, btw, unlike comments by suspended accounts, and no data is lost by deleting one's journal unless one fails to restore it within 30 days.)

Gosh, I've gone on and on, haven't I?

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for explaining all this in far more detail than I ever could have done. :)

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

My .. pleasure? I'd started writing up something far less concise the other night. I guess it was ripe!

[cdaae.livejournal.com]

A press release has just come out:

http://www.promom.org/bf_info/mp.html

Also lots of information here:
http://ljabuse.blogspot.com

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Incredibly minor, not to say minuscule, nitpick: Saturday's the 3/6/6 not 6/6/6....

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

*blush* Thanks. Yes, that's what I get for posting in my spleep!

Step Apart from SixApart on 06/06/06:
Because breastfeeding is not indecent, but LiveJournal's treatment of breastfeeding mothers is.

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

The trouble with censorship is that it always gets really silly really quickly, and you end up in a Mary Poppins kind of world where all naughtiness is banned.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

*nods* They don't call it the slippery slope for nothing!

Step Apart from SixApart on 06/06/06:
Because breastfeeding is not indecent, but LiveJournal's treatment of breastfeeding mothers is.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

It's fashionable to mock modern comic artists' grasp of anatomy, and compare them unfavourably to the artists of old, but...

Just how long is that cherub's neck!?