By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Jan 18 | In an apparent change of corporate mind, Facebook reinstated a Calgary man's account after suspending it last December 20th as reported by Xtra.ca:
"On Nov 25, Calgarian Dominic Scaia had surgery to remove his breasts as part of his transition process from female to male. "I was so proud of my new chest, and I wanted to show it off," he says. "Plus, a lot of people had encouraged me to do so." As an activist, Scaia uses sites like Facebook and YouTube to create awareness about transgender issues and to help others who are transitioning from female to male. After his surgery, Scaia documented his recovery by posting photos of his front torso to Facebook (most of the photos included his face). He selected one of the photos as his profile picture. On Dec 20, just hours after having changed his profile picture, Scaia tried to log onto his Facebook account, but it was disabled."
According to Facebook corporate policies; "Section 3.7 of Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities reads, "You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence." Hmm, I see, well what I'd immediately question and did was that since there are ALOT of bare-chested men & boys plastered all over Facebook, what difference did Scaia's pictures make except for a blatant trans-phobic reaction by whomever complained in the first place? It's okay to have bare-chested men as long as...?
Then there is this to consider, in many cases, Facebook will remove photos deemed in violation of its terms of use and issue a warning. But in Scaia's case, his account was disabled without notification.
Xtra's report noted that Scaia, who's been using Facebook for three years, says he's been careful to adhere closely to the social-networking site's terms of use. Since it's a male chest, I didn't see a problem with it," says Scaia, noting that biological males are allowed to post photos of their bare chests on Facebook. Scaia identified as male on his Facebook profile. "I'm a man, and I posted my chest online, and that should be allowed — period. There are thousands of transgendered people on Facebook, and I think the message this sends to them is your photos aren't safe, and that's not fair," he says.
It is more than just unfair in my humble opinion, its an outrage coupled with the corporate intransigence on dealing with Transgendered folk on an equal basis with other Facebook users. As it turned out, more than 5,000 people agreed and formed a Facebook group to protest Facebook's actions. In a video posted on his YouTube page earlier this month Scaia discusses the situation:
After nearly a month of non-stop e-mails bombarding Facebook along with the outrage from other activists and friends, a Facebook spokesman told Xtra.ca that a review team had reconsidered the decision and decided that Scaia could re-upload his images, which he has now done. The spokesman said:
"While we strive to apply our policies as consistently as possible, with over 350 million users on Facebook there may be instances when we fail to do this and we do our best to rectify these situations as swiftly as possible. We encourage Mr Scaia to upload the photos again if he would like to make them viewable on his profile."
He added: "A photo of a shirtless transgendered man would not violate our policies, assuming there was no other content in the photo that violated our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
"There are a number of reasons why photos might violate our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, including if they contain graphic content such as post-surgical imagery."
Facebook was forced to back down in a similar case in May last year, when a British woman posted photographs of her breasts following a mastectomy for cancer.
What irks me to no end is that Mr. Scaia was forced to have to undergo this ordeal because in all due likelihood, someone who has bias against LGBT folk or in particular Transgendered folk was able to engineer this stunning display of stupidity and hateful spite. By the way, here's the picture that created this uproar in the first place:
I find absolutely NOTHING that would cause me to take offence at this picture and add my voice to the chorus of persons criticising the Facebook executives who apparently felt that this was obscene enough to warrant shutting Mr. Scaia out of his Facebook account.
Shame on all of you!
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