Lactating moms slap Facebook

The social networking site Facebook has already created a virtual world of friends and acquaintances who “gather” and update each other daily, if not hourly. Now it is becoming a gathering place for protesters, too.

For a year now, breastfeeding proponents have been signing a petition on Facebook called “Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene,” to protest the number of nursing photos deleted from the site. Some 65,000 people have signed.

Now they’re whipping out a new weapon: a virtual nurse-in.

Just like the nursing mothers who lined the sidewalks outside Applebee’s restaurants in 2007 when a waitress asked a nursing mother to cover up, breastmilk advocates are calling for troops to make an online stand today. Pro-lacto Facebook members are asked to change their profile picture for one day to an image of a nursing mom or animal, and to change their status lines that day to “Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!”

Breastfeeding moms are joining the protest like Erin Phillips, 29, of Clearwater. She plans on uploading some pictures from when she breastfed her two children, now 3 and 2.

“I just don’t understand why it’s such a huge deal,” said Phillips, who works as a birthing doula. “It’s not like the person who is putting up a picture of themselves is looking to attract anyone. It’s to show that this is what they choose to do. It’s not a sexual thing.”

Facebook spokesman Simon Axten said the site allows breastfeeding photos, but ones containing a “fully exposed breast” may be removed “to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children who use the site.”

Calling this policy “highly discriminatory,” the Mothers International Lactation Campaign was formed on Facebook. The MILC maidens are particularly peeved at the notion that breastfeeding can be seen as sexually explicit or lewd. It is protected by law in most states, including Florida.

“If women are allowed to nurse in public, they should be allowed to nurse on the Internet,” said Stephanie Knapp Muir, 40, a Canadian mother of four and Facebook member who created the MILC protest group.

Muir says they want Facebook policy to permit even a fully exposed breast. The discomfort, she suspects, is coming from the “goofy college boys that started this site.”

“Young men in their 20s think it’s really great to see a woman with cleavage selling beer, but as soon as you introduce a baby it gets that icky factor,” she said.