Well…it seems that some people just don’t like the fact that women are stepping up and opposing antiporn “feminist” philosophy and activism.

Either that, or Facebook happens to be on Gail Dines’ payroll.

Tonight, I stumbled on this quite disturbing and, to be frank, damn angering news from sex blogger Violet Blue posted to her Posterous blog this evening.  Seems that Facebook decided that the Our Porn, Ourselves page they hosted was a little too hot for their sensibilities, so they just removed it. Gone. Finito. Burnt. Zipped.  Nuked. Without even any appeal of explanation other than some note about “violating their Terms of Service”. (The OPO blog, on the other hand, is still active..at least for now. Thankfully, WordPress and Automatic don’t eat fruit from the tree of lunacy.)

First, here’s the notice that now appears in place of the OPO page at Facebook:

And now, here is what Violet wrote in response (including the text of an email she sent to the Facebook staff in protest):

My letter to Facebook about removing the Our Porn, Ourselves page #proporn

I just got an email from Facebook telling me that the Our Porn, Ourselves page was removed for a terms of use violation. They did not say what the alleged violation was. Take this as a win for the anti-porn trolls that had been harassing members, reporting photos that were not in violation, and were likely reporting the page for non-existent violations. (Some may remember a few weeks ago when I asked on Twitter how I could stop these people from harassing us).

As I wait for Facebook’s response, here is the letter I just sent them:

Hello,

I’m Violet Blue: bestselling and award-winning author, and educator who speaks from UCSF and UC Berkley (Boalt) to Google Inc. Tech Talks on my field of expertise — exactly what this Facebook group page was about.

My page did not violate any of the reasons stated for deletion. It was under constant attack by people who disagreed with our point of view, and constantly reported our posts and images, even though we were very careful not to violate your Terms. May I find out why the page was removed? It is my utmost priority to follow and uphold Facebook community rules and standards. With national media attention to the page, questions will be raised and I hope to be able to furnish answers. Especially with a higher minded page of over 3000 members seeking community and discussion around a topic that did not target any group, threaten anyone, or link/depict/suggest inappropriate content. In fact, I policed the posts hourly for spam and attacks on our members, of which there were many. We never posted obscenity in links or images, though innocent user photos seemed to be increasingly mysteriously removed.

I feel that our page was targeted, and that we did nothing to violate the community standards of Facebook, which we sought to uphold. Any help to find out why this has happened would be deeply appreciated. I do not want to be talking to press about this in the next few days and be left guessing. We sought a safe place to discuss sex culture in media, and that is all.

I sincerely hope we can resolve this. Salon and Examiner wrote about our page as a signifier of community organization around women’s empowerment, calling it a new movement for women’s rights. I could tell we were under attack by those who violently opposed our discussions and representation as a community intersection for enriched discussions about important women’s rights issues. This development is confusing and saddening.

This fostering of group community around female empowerment and the page topic stems from my work as a talkshow guest (Oprah), international conference speaker, and columnist for various national and international magazines and publications (Oprah Magazine, Forbes.com, MacLife, etc) and media pundit (Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Esquire, Redbook, Wired, etc).

Please help me understand what I can tell media outlets asking about this, and the over 3K member we had in the page group.

Sincere thanks,
Violet Blue

Of course, Facebook has a long earned reputation of jerking around with adult performers and sex-positive/sexually oriented pages; I could take a whole week to recite the number of Facebook pages built by adult performers who have been deleted or otherwise censored for no reason whatsoever, since none of the sites contained any nudity or even softcore sexual content whatsoever.

This has all the makings of a classical cave in to antiporn forces who simply lobbied FB to eliminate opposition to their campaign.

Whatever differences I may have with Violet Blue (and I do have many), and whatever I may have felt about the objectives of her site, this is still an outrageous act of sexual and political censorship by Facebook. I stand in total solidarity with her and all those who were members of OPO, and I will join in solidarity in any action against Facebook in protest of their capitulation.

In the meantime, I’ll see how FB responds to Violet’s letter of protest..if they do respond, that is.

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