Facebook Still Blocks "Lesbian"

For those of you who have been taking an interest in my situation with Facebook, I wanted to keep you updated with the communication between myself and a Facebook representative.

As you all know from my post yesterday (see below), I replied to the initial brush off email I received from them with this -

"I don't really understand the situation to be honest. There's no block on the words gay, bisexual or transgendered. Why is lesbian blocked out?"

And this morning I was greeted with the following response:

"We are sorry for any inconvenience this might cause. In the past we have had abuse on our site, which has led us to remove this word from being able to be displayed on ads. Let me know if you have any further questions."

Now I'm not sure about anyone else, but again this just isn't a valid response for me. I'm really not happy about this at all and I would love people to complain about this and to get some visibility over this. Are lesbians and their businesses and voices just not that important to Facebook!?

Facebook Blocks "Lesbian"

I am a Facebook user and have been for a little while. I decided to promote a site through their social ads network. Their network allows you to pay for your business to be promoted to other targeted Facebook users by way of a flyer. You pay for this out of your own money and you can decide what your ad looks like and who it goes to.

It was all going so well for me with the ads. I picked out my target audience, women in the US over 18 who like women. In Facebook there's no option to say you like lesbians, so women was the closest I could get. Anyway, everything is going fine and I type in the name of the site I want to promote 'Lesbian Gamers'. I upload a graphic and click on set budget.... but I get this odd message back about there being a 'blocked string'. What could it possibly be I wondered? I thought perhaps I'd put in an exclamation mark or something that wasn't allowed to be there, so I started messing around with things. It soon became clear to me that the 'blocked string' or 'blocked word' as it were was 'lesbian'. Yes everyone, apparently lesbian is a term that is banned on Facebook advertising.

Well you can imagine my disgust at finding that out. I couldn't believe it. I'm a proud lesbian, how dare Facebook make me feel like what I am is a vulgar term. So I decided to write to complain. This is my email:

"Hi,
I was trying to create an advert for my website Lesbian Gamers.com and I am disgusted to see that the word 'lesbian' is a blocked string on Facebook! My site is an above board, clean and friendly site and I feel morally offended that what I am, and the term used to describe me has been blacklisted on facebook. I understand that there are some people who may use the term for vulgar means, but surely cutting out Facebook users who want to promote their business is abhorrent. I'd like further information on this.
Thank you"

And the response that I received this morning was this:

"We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause. We will certainly keep your feedback in mind as we continue to improve our advertising system.

Thanks for understanding"

Well quite frankly, no I don't understand. The response seems to be a generic response sent out to ANYone. Don't they understand the political implications of this? On further research I discovered that you can't even call a Facebook page anything with the word Lesbian in it. I'm absolutely outraged that in this day and age these prehistoric notions of lesbianism still exist. Facebook has gone down in my estimation.
End of rant


UPDATE:

I have written this response to Facebook after being told that lesbian is the only word they're blocking:

"I don't really understand the situation to be honest. There's no block on the words gay, bisexual or transgendered. Why is lesbian blocked out?"

I will await their answer and let you all know.

Radha Mitchell in da Lesbian House!

Ok, so Radha Mitchell, you may be thinking who? Why does that name ring a bell? Well I'll tell you! She played a lesbian in High Art alongside Ally Sheedy, she also played a lesbian in a little known Australian indie film named 'Love and Other Catastrophes'. For those who don't watch lesbian movies (firstly why not, and secondly where are you so I can slap your ass), she was in movies such as Pitch Black, Silent Hill and Melinda and Melinda. Her new movie is Rogue which is why I'm posting about her here.

Radha has long got my ole gaydar beepin' and a hollerin'. Maybe at first it was a pure coincidence because she was a lesbian in a movie and I totally fancied the pants off her. But something about her just makes me think she's in the club. I was listening to a radio interview with her the other day and she was asked about her personal life. So ok she doesn't have to talk about that and a lot of decent stars don't, but she completely avoided it and then just said I don't like talking about who I'm sleeping with. Soooo me being the serious investigative blogger that I am (ahem), I scoured the internet trying to find any kind of mention of her being in a relationship with a guy... with a girl.. with someone! But nope, nothing at all. So I'm thinking Radha could very well use the same publicist as Jodie Foster or something.... maybe it's all in my mind, but whatever. She's cute, she's hot and when she has her original Australian accent.. mmmMMmmmm helllooooo!

As If Angelina Jolie Wasn't Cool Before

Right... so I already know that Angelina Jolie is a goddess... but you have to see this clip of her at the Beowulf premiere in LA recently.
She's walking along the red carpet with Brad and stopping to let people take photos and doing the whole waving thing, when she spots a female (lesbo no doubt) in the crowd wearing an 'Adopt Me Angelina' tshirt. Angelina thinks this is hilarious clearly and climbs over the barrier and over to the fans. She tries to calm the screaming fans a little and then hugs a few of them. The girl with the tshirt takes a photo with Angelina and as if that wasn't enough, Angelina gets a sharpy.. leans in.. hand on breast area.. yeah.. you did just read that right.. hand on breast area.... and signs her tshirt.....

Angie... lesbians the world over adore you.. and this kind of thing is exactly why. Check it out here.

Ali Larter Is A Lesbian - In My Mind

Right, so Ali Larter, hot Heroes chick and cool B-Movie star (Final Destination, House on Haunted Hill, Resident Evil Extinction) never seems to be photographed with a hot guy. Ok, so that in itself doesn't make her a lesbo obviously, she's probably just really busy or just likes to keep her private life to herself right? I'm cool with that... however... she is ALWAYS photographed with her 'best friend' Amy Smart, whom she also happens to live with.



Why does nobody ever question whether the gorgeous Ali is gay? Is it because to the mainstream press she looks too 'straight'? She gets my gaydar buzzing ever so slightly and let's face it, that is always a nice feeling. Her and Amy have lived together for years and yet I've never heard a peep about her being a big ole dyke.



In my mind of course she is, along with half the other Hollywood hotties. Now if only I lived there and was part of the in crowd then I could find out whether she really is or not. There are some others that I would add to the list also, but those are for a different post.

Toys At Work and Googling Up Your Office

We've decided to Google up our office, because quite frankly we're jealous of the lucky SOB's who work for Google and get to play around with expensive toys all day.

Anyway, we have now accumulated in our office the following essential toys: A Zizzle, Grip Ball 2000, Frisbee, Juggling Balls, Basketball Hoop, Paddle Ball, Flying Helicopter Gun Thing...

Yes, myself and my team (there's only two of us but we like to call it a team anyway as their used to be four and then the others got cut), have invented many games throughout the course of the weeks we've had our extra equipment. By far our fav game to play is Frisbee, you wouldn't believe how difficult it is to get to 30 in a small office. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, why am I sharing this with you lovely readers? Well of course to put across the point that we should have some fun at work, all of us. Why work til you die when you have no fun. Bring a little bit of happiness into the workplace. If I were the boss of a large company I'd want my workers to be happy. Sure I wouldn't want them sitting online chatting all day or playing a video game whilst I was paying them.. but now and again we all need to just chill a bit and have some fun.. even the bosses.

Anyway, for no other reason than a shameless oogling moment.. here is something that makes me have fun at the office and always makes me smile.....

Never Being Out Enough

So last night me and Ms Thang decided to go enjoy some Mexican food at our local fav Mexican place and as always it was delicious, but anyway I'm sure you're not interested in what I had to eat. So what's my point? Well ok here it comes.

We're sitting there enjoying our food and at the booth across from us is a group of four lesbians. How could I tell they were lesbians, well aside from the fact they had all the dyke signs, my gaydar was just goin off the chart. Look it wasn't a huge leap though ya know, they had the short hair, the shorts, tight tees, chunky watches, big rings and all the rest of it. Oh also, one of them had her hand on her girlfriends leg under the table, but that was beside the point. So anyway, it got me to thinking about identity and how people never know I'm a lesbian because of how I look. Now, if I'm comfy being the way I am, ie not butch, not femme (at least in my mind) then how do I ever let people know I'm gay without mackin Ms Thang in the middle of the restaurant?

It's something that has annoyed me for some time. I want to be out, I want everyone to know I'm gay and proud of it, but I'm not comfy being butch. I don't give a damn if other dykes are, I'm cool with that, but I just don't feel that is who I am. This gets to me because people naturally assume I'm straight and that gets on my nerves. I was thinking about the dykes at the table across form us and everyone in the restaurant must have known they were gay and there's a real freedom in that. I bet nobody thought we were gay and for some reason that is frustrating. It reminds me of the monologue in the lesbian movie Go Fish where she's saying that she's not out to the person at the bus stop, to the person waiting in line next to her.. and it's so true. Without the tell tale signs, does gaydar really work?...