Flushed away: A Workshop on Disgust, Gender, and the Technical Object
What do female nipples, menstruation, bestiality, cannibalism and dismemberment have in common? They are all listed as objectionable content by Meta's community standards (i.e. Facebook and Instagram) and thus discarded through bans and removals. Although they do not explicitly label the feminine as objectionable, almost all major Western digital platforms take a similar approach.
But who determines what is considered offensive, disgusting or dirty, and what do these standards say about norms and power relations in our society? In this workshop, we will examine the complex system of content regulation that shapes our culture beyond the digital alone and question the assumptions about sexuality, the body and morality that underlie these regulations.
What do female nipples, menstruation, bestiality, cannibalism and dismemberment have in common? They are all listed as objectionable content by Meta's community standards (i.e. Facebook and Instagram) and thus discarded through bans and removals. Although they do not explicitly label the feminine as objectionable, almost all major Western digital platforms take a similar approach.
But who determines what is considered offensive, disgusting or dirty, and what do these standards say about norms and power relations in our society? In this workshop, we will examine the complex system of content regulation that shapes our culture beyond the digital alone and question the assumptions about sexuality, the body and morality that underlie these regulations.