FYI the internet is censoring vital women’s health information
Censoring of women’s bodies at the hands of male-led tech platforms is showing no signs of stopping, as Cosmopolitan UK can reveal that a host of leading femtech companies are routinely having their ads blocked or accounts shadow-banned by the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Google.
Female healthcare products from sanitary items to breast pumps are being flagged by these platforms as ‘sexual’ or ‘adult content’, with brands using anatomically correct language such as ‘vulva’ or ‘vagina’ appearing to pose a particular problem in the eyes of Big Tech.
According to the brands Cosmopolitan UK spoke with, adverts showing women wearing period-proof underwear, for instance, have been denied from running across Meta and Google, and are suspected to have been shadow-banned on TikTok (one video received zero views), along with images of women breastfeeding (even where nipples are not visible). This is as well as campaigns relating to the impact of female incontinence on intimacy.
It’s become such a problem that organisations, like CensHERship, have been created solely to try and push back against the digital over-policing of women’s health and wellbeing content. Its mission statement says certain words associated with women’s health (e.g. period, vagina, vulva and others) are being restricted, causing women to “miss out on potentially life-saving information from health campaigns.” In direct contrast, products aimed at male customers to tackle health concerns such as erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation are not being subject to such bans.
Speaking to Cosmopolitan UK about their work in this space, Clio Wood and Anna O’Sullivan, co-founders of CensHERship said, “There’s a well-acknowledged gender health gap, but all too often the companies and products helping to fill the gap are facing a virtual closed door when they try to grow their businesses online.”
The double standard at play is infuriating, says Fiona Dunleavy, Global Brand Director at Elvie, best known for its pelvic floor training devices and breast pumps. “A recent creative ad of ours that featured a woman biting her lip and scrunching bedsheets with the caption ‘confidence never felt so good’ for our pelvic floor device, Elvie Trainer, was not allowed to run, but we see very explicit adverts for erectile dysfunction running as paid ads, including phrases such as ‘have longer sex’.”
According to Kelly Newton, founder of Nixi Body, a range of leak-proof underwear, period pants are yet another product being unreasonably blocked by leading online platforms. “It's terribly time consuming and frustrating when they keep banning your ads,” she explains. “As a small business owner, I’m constantly having to rethink how we can show our knickers.” Newton says she’s even resorted to showcasing her period pants on fruit instead of models, in an attempt to avoid being mislabelled as ‘sexual’ – but that also failed. “We tried to use a photo of a peach in a pair of knickers and even that got banned.”
Trying to navigate the seemingly erratic, frustrating and biased systems in place is a hurdle that Valentina Milanova, founder of Daye – a sustainable period care company that also offers at-home health test kits – says she’s been tripped up by time and time again. It’s now leaving her worried for the future of her company.
“[These issues] have been happening since the moment we started trying to advertise [our products seven years ago],” Milanova explains. “All of the large advertising platforms have very severe restrictions against women's health content. What is the impact on women if the whole of society is telling us that women's health is sexual, that it's political, that it's somehow wrong or offensive? We're not going to feel in any way empowered to have a conversation about it. Don't tell anyone about your painful period. Don't tell anyone about your vaginal infection. The gender health gap is very real.”
One sticking point in particular has been Daye’s at-home test kits, which use a tampon instead of a swab to detect 14 high-risk HPV infections or to check for STIs – and which Google categorised as ‘birth control’. Said category, in Milanova’s eyes, has become even more tightly regulated since the rolling back of Roe v Wade in America, even when it comes to trying to reach women in the UK. “Now we can't reach the people who may want to confirm that they don't have cervical cancer, or who are maybe worried about if they have an STI. Having one ad blocked also means that your advertising account gets downgraded and any future content that you publish, whether it be organic or ad-related, is restricted. Fewer people see it.”
While Google invites those who feel their content has been incorrectly flagged to appeal, Milanova says this process, in her experience, is painful and often futile. “Initially, our ad got flagged by Google's algorithm. Then we requested a human review, and we had endless email exchanges with multiple different human reviewers at Google who all kept insisting that our tampon is contraception.”
When approached by Cosmopolitan UK for comment on why women’s health brands are being penalised in this way, a Google spokesperson said, “We have long allowed ads for menstrual products in both the US and UK and in all countries where permitted by local laws. Occasionally ads may be restricted for a different reason, but if an advertiser believes there was an error in the review of their ad, they always have the option to appeal.”
On the social media front, after being presented with evidence from Daye – where an advert featuring a pregnant woman in a crop top holding an at-home vaginal microbiome test (which resembles a plastic tampon) was rejected, after being labelled ‘Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity’ – a Meta spokesperson apologised for the error but did not comment on the issue of women’s health products being incorrectly flagged more broadly. “We apologise for any confusion caused. The adverts were removed in error and have since been reinstated,” the spokesperson said. “No system is perfect and sometimes we make mistakes, but we’ll use this to retrain our system.”
Meta has a policy stating that advertisers can run ads that promote sexual health, wellness and reproductive products and services, but admits that as a global company it faces challenges when trying to orchestrate which countries (and people from which cultures) are exposed to what.
TikTok also told us that it does not remove or take action against content that discusses periods or other menstrual related issues, and that while it does not allow nudity on site there are some exceptions when it comes to showing nipples in limited situations, e.g. for educational purposes or in a medical setting.
Using anatomically correct language is something else women’s health and wellness brands have long found themselves penalised for (ironically, last year a campaign from period products brand Bodyform highlighting this was silenced on social media after being inaccurately labelled as 'sexual content'), again showing how sadly sexualised women’s bodies are – even in the context of menstruation. “On TikTok, we can't use the word vagina or vulva and [if there are] any videos of anyone in our knickers, the engagement is non-existent [due to a presumed shadow ban],” Newton explains. “The use of the correct terminology should not be getting us banned. There really is nothing sexual about period pants; over half the population has a period and we shouldn't be expected to talk in hushed tones.” When asked about language specifically in a follow-up request, TikTok did not respond prior to publication.
Elsewhere, it can feel like images deliberately intended to be sexual are acceptable (see: influencers in bikinis thriving on socials), making this silencing of healthcare posts all the more thorny and frustrating.
Dunleavy is in strong agreement with Newton, saying Elvie is constantly working hard to educate platforms on the importance of being able to discuss pelvic floor health and breastfeeding openly. “As a society we need to overcome the gendered shame and taboo nature surrounding women’s health, but this is made increasingly difficult when our efforts to shift the conversation are deemed explicit. We work closely with platforms like Meta and TikTok to address these challenges and push the boundaries, but restrictions hinder our ability to share educational content freely and quickly.”
It’s not just a feeling of women’s health being sexualised and penalised; this is all playing out as the gender health gap continues to widen, women are facing medical misogyny and gynae waiting times have more than doubled.
“I live in constant fear and pressure [thinking] that if my company doesn't succeed, it doesn't only affect me, my team and my investors, but it also means that other femtech entrepreneurs will look at what happened with Daye and say ‘Better not start a women's health company, it's too hard’,” says Milanova.
Looking ahead, Google says it has a planned editorial update to help with the categorisation of adverts coming soon. In the meantime, while we wait for ‘soon’ to come along, women and the female-led businesses trying to support them will have to endure further delays to progress.
Cosmopolitan UK has also reached out to TikTok for comment.
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