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Does a FTM Post-Op Bare Chest Photo Count as Nudity? Facebook Thinks So

Canadian Dominic Scaia, who had his breasts removed in November as part of a gender reassignment surgery, uploaded photos of his post-op chest — sans boobies — to Facebook to show off his mound-free chest. But just hours after changing his profile picture, he found his account disabled. Uh oh!

“Since it’s a male chest, I didn’t see a problem with it,” Scaia says. The site, which Scaia has been using for three years and where he identifies as male, includes this note in its terms of service: “You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.”

Which means we’re about to get into a whole discussion about what constitutes lewd photos! “This isn’t just about a Facebook account,” he says. “This is a discrimination issue, and it doesn’t just affect me; it affects all trans men, because if this happened to me, it can happen to them too. All it takes is someone reporting a photo.”

This is the post-op photo he uploaded to Facebook on Dec. 20, shortly before his account was disabled:

The most likely scenario: Someone flagged Scaia’s pic as inappropriate, a Facebook moderator agreed, and there went the account. But if men are allowed to publish photos of their bare chests on the site, why not trans men?

So far, Facebook isn’t answering questions — thrown at them by both Scaia and reporters — as to why the account was disabled.

But it has us all the more intrigued by how various social networking sites treat gender, as evidenced by these screenshots uploaded by UnionSt:

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