A woman is taking on Facebook after she claims that the social networking site removed photos of her natural child birth because it "violated community standards".
Kim Kardashian is naked all over the Internet but @millihill is banned from Fb for posting this birth image Crazy
Milli Hill, a writer, mother and founder of Positive Birth Movement, condemned Facebook for censoring "powerful female images" of childbirth but allowed photos of Kim Kardashian's nude photos to be shown.
How come some bums are ok and some bums are not. I'm confused Facebook?
Hill, from Somerset, claims that Facebook has put a seven-day ban on her account for a photo of a woman's water birth.
Hill uploaded the photos onto the Positive Birth Movement Facebook page, an organisation she set up that she describes as a "grassroots movement offering positivity about childbirth."
The page has over 10,000 Facebook fans, and runs "positive birthing groups". She told BuzzFeed News that the groups are run by birth workers, doulas, midwives and women who are passionate about birth.
"They all run their groups for free, which shows the level of passion for positive change that exists at the moment," she said. "Most women have had enough of rising interventions, limited choices and the general imbalance of power in the birth room."
She has not received any comment from Facebook.
Hill told BuzzFeed News that she wasn't surprised by their reaction.
She said: "The timing was pretty ironic though as the Kim Kardashian pics were all over the internet, and when you put them side by side, as I did on twitter to make a point, it highlights nicely the way society (and Facebook — which simply reflects society) find women's bodies more readily acceptable when they are passive, airbrushed and sexualised than when they are powerful, active and real."
"At the end of the day, they are just two women's bottoms! But one is OK, and the other not, so it is interesting to think about why that might be," she added.
In a column for The Guardian, Hill wrote about the controversy, saying that birth was a "fundamental feminist issue". She said:
You could argue that this is simply about nudity, but I think there's more to it. Social media reflects our wider culture's issue, not with naked women, but with naked women who look real and active as opposed to air-brushed and passive. It also reflects millennia of attempts to suppress women's power, of which childbirth is perhaps the ultimate expression.
As expected, people were very unimpressed by Facebook's decision.
@millihill @JessicaValenti @AnnalisaB @beverleyturner @VagendaMagazine Oiled up, sexualised and FOR the male gaze = absolutely OK.
@millihill @JessicaValenti @AnnalisaB @beverleyturner @VagendaMagazine Facebook policies betray huge double standard.
@JennytheM @SagefemmeSB @dailydot @millihill Facebook's inaccessibility and lack of transparency or willingness to comment is unacceptable
@millihill "art?" lol. insane. AND it's Facebook is the other reason. amazing how some think Kim's a** is beautiful. child birth is.
A spokesperson from Facebook have responded to our request for a comment: "Several pictures from this Page were mistakenly taken down, but have now been restored. As our team processes more than one million reports each week, we occasionally make a mistake, and we apologize."
However, BuzzFeed News spoke to Hill who claims that although some of the photos have restored, not all of them have been. She says that the photo shown in this article has not been restored.