En Passant

New Matilda gets around the Facebook censor. Image Chris Graham

 
Celeste Liddle is a wonderful Arrernte woman and proud unionist, feminist and activist. She gave a great speech about feminism and Aboriginal woman as part of International Women’s Day.

It was so good New Matilda, a progressive online  daily magazine, published it.  Because Celeste made reference in her talk about being banned from Facebook for sharing a photo of ‘topless desert women painted up for ceremony engaging in traditional dance’ New Matilda included a photo of  Aboriginal women from the remote Central Australian community of Ampilatwatja performing at a public ceremony in 2010 to protest against the Northern Territory intervention.  Here is that image:

Aboriginal women perform at public ceremony (Image Chris Graham.)

 
Both Celeste and New Matilda were banned from Facebook for this image.  The reason? Nudity was against Facebook’s community standards.  A re-post I did of the article was removed for breaching those ‘standards’ and I had to swear on 7 bibles that my other photos also did not contain nudity. A change org petition also contained the photo and Facebook removed it too.

ABC Radio’s lunchtime political show,  The World Today, ran an account of the story. You can read the transcript here.

As Celeste says, the decision to ban her over a photo of traditional Aboriginal women

“Facebook’s standards are a joke. They are blatantly racist, sexist and offensive. They show a complete lack of respect for the oldest continuing culture in the world. They also show that Facebook continually fails to address their own shortfalls in knowledge.

“Finally, they show that Facebook is more than willing to allow scurrilous bullying to continue rather than educate themselves.

Here is Facebook’s response

 
Celeste has an answer.

“Facebook’s standards are a joke. They are blatantly racist, sexist and offensive. They show a complete lack of respect for the oldest continuing culture in the world. They also show that Facebook continually fails to address their own shortfalls in knowledge.

“Finally, they show that Facebook is more than willing to allow scurrilous bullying to continue rather than educate themselves.’

This latter point refers to the fact it appears to be racist misogynistic trolls reporting the photo who got Celeste banned.

I look forward to the right taking up Celeste’s case. George Brandis? Tim Wilson? Andrew Bolt? Their silence condemns these faux friends of ‘free speech.’

As an aside, the Facebook censorship of Celeste has got the rusty lawyer in me thinking. From the Human Rights website: ‘The High Court has held that an implied freedom of political communication exists as an indispensible part of the system of representative and responsible government created by the Constitution.’ However, it is probably not applicable to Facebook and those it censors. ‘It operates as a freedom from government restraint, rather than a right conferred directly on individuals.’

It is also against some of the various Federal, State and Territory Human Rights Acts to discriminate against a person because of their political views. Discrimination can be direct – we don’t hire reds here – or indirect. An indirect example was police height restrictions in recruitment. You had to be taller than 5 foot six inches. On its face it appears non-discriminatory but in practice it is. The height requirement mainly excluded women. So why isn’t Facebook’s blanket (but not always enforced) removal of nude pictures as applied to Celeste’s article discriminatory on the basis of politics, gender and race?

Facebook’s community ‘standards’ are the ‘standards’ of rich white men who find women’s bodies offensive if they aren’t titillating them. The power Facebook has is overwhelming. This abuse of its power reflects the dominant ruling class paradigms of misogyny, racism and sexism. Facebook’s decision to censor a photo of traditional Aboriginal women and ban Celeste Liddle is Donald Trump writ small. Where is our Chicago in response?