"Not to put too fine a point on it, fuck you."
Can you please give me information as to if it's taken place yet, and if not, when it's supposed to?
It took place on 6/6/6 (6th June 2006). Further discussion here.
Susan: I think that LJ is asking for trouble by doing any kind of content-based censoring of images; there lies the unhappy territory of judgment calls and fuzzy lines. By far the best solution (as someone else suggested in this thread) would be to not have default icons appear on whatever search function or public page they currently appear on. (Not really being on LJ, I'm not clear on exactly where the default icons come up and the anything-goes other icons do not.) That would eliminate the entire problem, yes?
Yes, and that's an excellent idea. (Default user icons show up in two sets of places: on the user's "user info" page, and sometimes on search pages.) Unfortunately, LJ Abuse does not appear to be open to suggestions on how to fix the problem - still, I'll add this wish for a technical fix to the next letter I write to them.
Susan: But I'm having a little trouble feeling passionate about this particular struggle because (some? many? most?) of its advocates seem to want to win by defining every breast without a baby attached as sexual/obscene/etc.
I acknowledge upfront it's entirely possible that you've simply been reading a completely different subset (of the monstrous amount that has been written about this issue) than I have, and the subset you've read has included people who are in opposition to LJ Abuse/Six Apart's position because they think a naked female breast without a baby is "sexual/obscene", but with is OK.
Nevertheless: the subset I have read consists entirely of people arguing for breastfeeding to be permitted in default icons because even if SixApart/LJ Abuse has decided to define the naked female breast as obscene (while the naked male breast is decent), it's absurd that this should include pics of breastfeeding babies - since even in parts of the US where it's legally indecent to expose a female nipple, breastfeeding is (always? usually?) a legal exception.
That is, the advocates of the position that breastfeeding icons should be permitted as a default are not arguing that the female breast is obscene: SixApart/LJ Abuse are arguing that, and so are their supporters.
What I have seen being brought up as a kind of straw baby is a succession of people belonging to childfree communities on livejournal claiming that the people opposing SixApart/LJ Abuse are arguing that a female breast is sexual/obscene without a baby attached - indeed, often in those exact words.
But never an example of an actual case of this argument being used.
It's almost as if these people from cf communities really do think female breasts are indecent/obscene, and cannot conceive that anyone could think otherwise; and therefore they conclude that anyone arguing that it's okay to breastfeed in public and okay to have default pics of a woman breastfeeding, must be arguing that the indecent/obscene spectacle of a woman's breasts is only justifed with "a baby attached".
But that's mere speculation on my part.
On Monday three women went to SixApart's office in San Francisco for a "nurse-in" and were invited in to talk with Doug Bryan and Ginger Someone. Doug seems to be claiming that the problem is that he can't be "autocratic" with LJ Abuse volunteers:
I basically reiterated everything Carrie has already told Doug. I said that I think he should just tell the Live Journal Abuse team that breastfeeding icons are ok, period, end of story, as long as the baby is latched on. That is pretty clear cut. It's hard to know exactly what he is saying when he talks, but basically he said that he doesn't want to be "autocratic" with the abuse team members. He went on about how they are a volunteer staff and how they would have to hire 4-6 full time employees to replace them. He said the only person he can be "autocratic" ... with is Denise. link
If true, this doesn't speak well for Doug's ability as a manager.
Using volunteer labour is cheaper. Volunteers don't have to be paid. If that's the only reason an organisation is using volunteer labour, the organisation needs to take a long hard look at what it's using volunteer labour for.
Livejournal needs a police force. Any big community does. And in my opinion, even a bad police force can be better than none at all. I think LJ Abuse is a bad police force, but it's better than nothing.
What kind of police force it needs depends on the nature of the community. A science-fiction convention generally does just fine with volunteer security and clearly explained rules: and in many ways, livejournal used to be run very like a science-fiction convention. But it's not: it's a corporately-owned online community running on corporate servers... policed by volunteers who are, according to Doug Bryan, not under SixApart's control. That's a bad police force, and Doug's toleration of that because he doesn't feel he can lay down firm rules for volunteers that they must follow, makes him a bad manager.
Of course, Doug may not have been altogether honest about this: it may be that he is blaming LJ Abuse because LJ Abuse is a convenient target for user rage, and he would rather have us blame LJ Abuse than blame Six Apart. If so, that doesn't just make him a bad manager: it makes him a bad human being.
I started out to write this comment just as a link to what-else-is-being-said, but the importance of Doug's claim has struck me in the writing of it: I'll be cross-posting this.
sara: I have a livejournal as well, and feel completely against their blackout. Why? Not because I feel they are wrong, but because they have a specific goal that is ONLY for them. THEY are being 'discriminated' against. They decided to completely ignore the broader aspect of women's breasts, and focus on the 'natural', 'intended' usage.
A bunch of us who wanted to do something to show SixApart how we felt, discussed, off livejournal, what we could do - what we could ask others to do - and what we wanted to ask SixApart to do. (A necessary part of any strike action is to figure out first what you're asking for...)
But my reasons when - after discussion - I finally wrote the "this is what we want" post for focussing on the breastfeeding issue were threefold:
1. Changing the patriarchal assumption that women's bodies are sexual and men's bodies are neutral is an awfully, awfully big fight, and one that I didn't think we'd win in this one battle, whereas I was quite hopeful that we could win the specific fight about breastfeeding icons.
2. There are all sorts of good reasons why everyone (even the happily childfree, which includes me) ought to support women feeling comfortable about breastfeeding in public, and why even tiny steps backwards - such as SixApart's decision that you can't have breastfeeding pics as default icons - should be opposed. (See Bohemiancoast's post quoted above...) This applies whether you normally oppose public nudity or you are an ardent campaigner for shame-free nudity for everyone - breastmilk is usually the best milk for babies, and discouragement of public breastfeeding is generally discouragement of breastfeeding, end of story.
3. Breastfeeding icons were plainly and obviously OK as default icons under the pre-May 20th version of FAQ 111 amplifying the TOS, and FAQ 111 was evidently rewritten specifically so that LJ Abuse could get away with banning breastfeeding icons. It's a nice, clear-cut case, and when campaigning, nice clear-cut cases are good.
I'm a feminist. Ultimately, I want to destroy the patriarchy. But, to avoid being a choked-up feminist, I accept that I can only try to destroy the patriarchy in small, manageable bites.
Grr'rr.
Dave Bell: And I know I didn't specify a birth year in my birthday entry. I wonder what age-group that puts me in.
Interesting. They do have an option in stats for "gender unspecified", but they don't have an option for "age unspecified". I wonder why not?
What real-world religion requires its adherents to set certain images as their default userpics?
If there isn't one, we should invent it.
Nicole: I find it distinctly odd that idonotlikepeas would characterize LJ's policy makers in such a way. Any business that actually views its customers as an enemy is not going to get far. Customers don't like to be treated with hostility; it tends to make them want to find other people to give their money to.
Well, IDontLikePeas is tech support (I think he said upthread) not LJ Abuse, and IME tech support do sometimes perceive customers as "the enemy" - the people who are doing such awful and stupid things with the company's lovely software! And for the most part (there are a couple of exceptions) current members of LJ Abuse seem to have been steering clear of this discussion. But the exceptions have been very, very hostile.
One of the changes SixApart made to LiveJournal was perhaps more significant than it seemed at the time: the minimum age to be an LJ account holder used to be 13. There is now no lower age limit. On SixApart's front page, 6A's four products are listed as:
TypePad: The choice for professional and passionate bloggers.
MovableType: The first choice for self-hosted blogging.
Vox: The latest in personal blogging. Coming soon.
Livejournal: For young, independent bloggers.
The modal average age on Livejournal is 18. (From the stats page.) There are over 15 thousand LJers aged 13 - as near as I can tell, there are more people on LJ aged under 15 than there are over 40. This new change to the rules for default icons - and the active policing/enforcement of the new rule - is potentially a first step by SixApart to try to get adults off livejournal. (Of course, if that were so, it would be rather foolish of them to begin by attacking parents of young children.) To market it specifically at children/teenagers. The new business model for LiveJournal, with free "sponsored" accounts for targetted ads, does suggest that SixApart are looking for a malleable audience, rather than active customers.
I think you've mistyped the number.
You're right. Good catch. My bad. I was thinking of FAQ 111, and for some reason typed FAQ 113.
Dave, many people are using pics of babies breastfeeding that aren't their own babies or their own breasts. The original people being targetted were breastfeeding mothers who were - I have no reason to think otherwise, and personal knowledge to confirm it in some cases - using icons made of a photo of themselves breastfeeding.
Following SixApart's decision that breastfeeding icons were "inappropriate" and subsequent editing of FAQ 113 to cover this decision, many people (I'm one of them) began using breastfeeding icons deliberately to protest this decision. Those icons were made from googled images available on the net. There may be copyright issues with using such images, but I don't see how it's "mendacity". I've never asserted that the icon I've been using is a pic of myself (after all, I used to regularly switch between a platypus and Mo from Dykes to Watch Out For): merely that I was using that pic to support friends who breastfeed and the issue of public breastfeeding.
DoNotSpamMe: Really? Identical? I don't think so.
Yes. Oddly enough, also, the only people who have expressed the view that Gerbilsage's original comment was not a troll post have been the people who visited from his friends-list. It's an open post: if you're not one of the seven people who have already been banned from my journal for this, you too could and can comment there to say so. But as you're commenting here without identifying your livejournal username, I suspect that your assertion that you have no connection with Gerbilsage is untrue. But this is a threadjack, and I'll have no further part in it.
Jennet: If you decided that you were unable to stay on LJ, another option would be to remove the icon as a default
You're kind of missing the point. I am not changing my default icon. Not under threat of suspension: not for any reason until SixApart change their anti-breastfeeding policy. It is because SixApart have this anti-breastfeeding policy that I am unable to stay on LJ - that's why LJ Abuse are about to suspend me. I thought that would have been clear to you after our discussion in this thread?
DoNotEverSpamMe: What gives you the impression I have been in contact with this person?
The fact that you are expressing a view identical with the view of Gerbilsage himself and of Gerbilsage's friends who came to my journal in response to the friends-locked post that one of the friends admitted Gerbilsage had written about it: and that the situation matters to you sufficiently to post about it on this blog, while claiming to be a mere random drop-in who knows no one involved.
DoNotSpamMe: If you don't like how they do business - and from all your remarks, it seems you aren't going to be content with a simple change of policy here, because you profoundly object to the way LJ conducts itself and responds to complaints - take your money somewhere else.
I can't "take my money somewhere else". I have a Permanent account on LiveJournal. What I can do is take my activity on LiveJournal somewhere else: when LJ Abuse suspend my account at 5am Tuesday 6th June, all the posts and all the comments I've ever made on LiveJournal and all the comments other people have made to me and to others on my posts, (2,464 journal entries: 31,171 posted, 31,774 received) will become inaccessible to other users of LiveJournal, until/unless SixApart change their policy on breastfeeding icons, or I upload the material to another site to which people can then change their bookmarks. Besides a mass of personal journal entries of no interest except to myself and my friends, this will include book reviews, film reviews, recipes, a lengthy dissection of Orson Scott Card's essay "On Civilisation", flash fiction, fiction recs - etc. LJ Abuse's action will thus inconvenience and annoy many people, most of whom I have no idea who they are - and by the nature of the site, I can't even leave a goodbye link to let them know how to repair their broken links, or leave posts on communities where I am a regular to let them know that this is why items from me will be inaccessible from now on. I say this not to complain: I knew this was a possibility when I changed my icon, and it's irrational to complain about known consequences that are avoidable by doing what LJ Abuse want me to do. It's a public acknowledgement in a place which SixApart cannot touch that my action is going to affect plenty of other people besides myself, and I'm sorry for that, but I'm still not going to change my icon back to something "acceptable". Because I have a Permanent account, the only way I can have any impact at all on LiveJournal is to let LJ Abuse suspend me for this, and go elsewhere. I shall miss my friends-list more than I can tell you, but I've thought for some time now that fandom is unwise in having quite so many eggs in one corporately-owned basket, and maybe it is time that we all diversified a bit anyway.
someone turned up to comment on your post soliciting support for a blackout. They told you they thought it was a pointless action, and disagreed with your stance. You told him that according to your definition, someone who comments in a 'stranger's' journal and disagrees with them, is a troll - and banned him.
That may have been why Gerbilsage told you he'd been banned: but it wasn't the truth. A couple of other people had already commented there to disagree with me, and they didn't get banned.
Gerbilsage wrote, in response to my post:Congratulations! This is the single most ridiculous development of the drama so far.
I honestly don't understand why you lot can't be respectful of the rules. They're not banning breastfeeding. They're not even banning breastfeeding avatars. They're restricting default avatars from depicting various things. That's all.
Get off your high horse.
This comment did not make me think that Gerbilsage was commenting in order to be involved discussion of the issue or of the planned action, but to start a fight. I checked his user info, and discovered (under the heading What everybody else thinks:) a collection of quotes that strongly suggested to me that Gerbilsage was definitely looking to start a fight - trolling, in fact, in the original Usenet sense of the word. In another mood, I might have let him push until he finally insulted someone and I could ban him (my usual rule for comments on my journal): but I'd already seen fights over this issue on Livejournal get ugly, and I decided I had better things to do, my last few days on LiveJournal, than to let this thread turn into a trollish trainwreck. So I banned him.
He switched to an alternate account, SaintGerbilsage, and, referring to his primary account in the third person, claimed that his primary account was not a troll. (Primary and secondary accounts had the same IP Address, and before he commented he would have seen the message "Notice! This user has turned on the option that logs your IP address when posting." I don't know who he thought he was kidding.) So I banned the alternate account, too.
He then seems to have written about what happened to him on his own livejournal - or possibly on a community - because five people from his friends-list, and two people from his friends-friends-list, then commented on my journal, to be banned, one by one. The last two - people from his friends-friends list - between them made three comments with three of the most foul and disgusting cartoons I have ever seen, of women being tortured and violated. All these comments have now been screened and all the posters have been banned.
I have reported all this to LJ Abuse, of course - but I suspect they are far too busy dealing with fresh reports of icons of women breastfeeding to deal with a report of mere trollish harassment of a user who is, in any case, under threat of suspension.
Pixxelpuss, thank you for clarifying that. (I'd like to add that I think Niall's attack on you was extremely unfair, as well as rude.)
Niall: Are you claiming that you have no connection of any description with the LJ abuse community?
In fact, it's my general impression that current members of the LJ Abuse team are mostly steering well clear of this discussion, and wisely so. In any case, as I said upthread, while I think that the LJ Abuse team is poorly trained and badly managed/supported - this particular blowup could have been avoided in several different ways - I also strongly feel that it would be wrong to blame any individual volunteer on the LJ Abuse team for what is, plainly, a structural problem.
Pixxelpuss: I find a close up image of breastfeeding to be a graphic depiction of a sexual organ, but not to be graphically sexual.
That isn't clearer than what you said upthread - it's distinctly different to what you said upthread. (I found both statements clear: but they're saying two different things.)
Jenett: I certainly am not crazy about it at work, because I am not the ideal person or most articulate in my workplace to have a discussion with teenage boys about why a breastfeeding image is different from other nudity. I'd prefer to avoid that conversation by not viewing them unintentionally, personally.
The only way anyone would be able to see that a pic 100 pixels by 100 pixels was of a woman breastfeeding would be if they were looking over your shoulder. That is in part what makes the whole thing so ridiculous to me. But it is also resolvable by a means that doesn't restrict domestic use of whatever icons you want: let Livejournal allow people to login and see no images at all, everything replaced by placeholder tags, including user icons. This avoids all the issues of filtering software and the problem of people looking over your shoulder.
Jennett, I make professional use of livejournal myself, so I see where you're coming from, but still: but complicated to explain if she had certain kinds of content show up on her screen from basic site navigation (searches, checking someone's userinfo to see their background.)
Like a woman breastfeeding a baby? I know pixxelpuss asserted that in the US, a baby at breast is considered to be a graphically sexual picture, but I'm still staring at that notion and finding it difficult to believe.
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