We've been framed
We've been framed
The Gashtrays Instagram account has been suspended once again.
Three weeks ago, the Gashtrays Instagram account was suspended for “harassment and bullying.” Back in December when Gashtrays was suspended for “soliciting sex”, it was awful, but it was also very on brand for us as a sex education and art business. When we asked people to complain to Instagram on our behalf in December, it felt like a feminist rallying cry – but asking people to say that Hani isn’t a bully just feels humiliating.
The process of having your Instagram account suspended is shockingly opaque: one day you just click on the app and it’s locked you out without notifying you. It gives you the option of contesting Meta’s decision, but you don’t get any information about what content has triggered the suspension, so it’s hard to know what behaviour you’re defending.
Meta do not give you a timeframe for when they will respond, inform you if they reinstate your account, or give you any feedback about how to avoid censorship in the future. Every day you just have to click on Instagram with your heart full of hope, wishing for your account to magically return and praying you don’t reach the day that Instagram permanently deletes it without your consent.
Hani has a history of responding to criticism of her work directly and respectfully. “There’s very young kids on this app that don’t even know what they’re looking at yet, I don’t think a 10 year old should see that post,” one person commented about a vulva sculpture. “That’s an interesting angle!” Hani replied. “I would argue that if we’re curating Instagram for the palettes of 10 year olds then there’s a lot more toxic content on here that should be addressed first.”
The offending post also included information about variation in the shape and size of vulvas. “I think educational content should be seen as early as possible,” Hani continued. “I personally wish I’d learned the lesson that our bodies are normal and beautiful much earlier in life.” She responds with the same level of grace to comments about vulvas with large labia being abnormal or comments shaming her for talking about sex toys and pleasure online.
But the best evidence that Hani isn’t a bully comes from the testimonial of her younger brother Freddie, who took to Instagram to say that “although she can be annoying, Hani has never been a bully.” As a younger sibling myself, I personally wouldn’t be able to give my brothers such a clean record, but that’s part of what makes Hani so amazing. She is the first person to consider all points of view in any conflict, and she has stopped me from sending countless hot-headed texts over the course of our friendship, saving me from much regret.
It does feel like Meta is particularly trigger-happy with suspending our account because we post sex education content and artwork depicting genitals and nipples. Hani built Gashtrays over the last eight years primarily through Instagram, and it is her main source of income. We’re so proud to have reached a following of nearly 29,000 people, but we also know that the larger we get the more visible we are to censors, and losing that following overnight is scary.
When Gashtrays first got taken down for bullying, we playfully wondered who was behind all this. A power-mad Instagram moderator who only likes designer vaginas? One of the incels who sends Hani unsolicited dick pics, seeking revenge because she didn’t reply? A bitter ex-lover frothing with jealousy after seeing videos of Hani grasping ceramic dicks? But the mystery still isn’t solved, and now our laughter is slowly turning into tears.
If you’d like to help us, please follow @gashtrays_backup, so we can still reach you if our main account gets censored. If you have a minute spare, please go to the Instagram app and click settings > help > report a problem > general feedback, and write a message along the lines of: “Reinstate the @gashtrays_ account, they are a body positive educational art business and have been unfairly suspended.” And if you have any advice about how to get our account back — or a sneaky link at Meta — then we would love to hear from you.
We’re also so happy to be able to get in touch with you here, and we’d love to create a stronger community off of Instagram through this newsletter. Get in touch, tell us what you’d like us to write about, send us feedback, we promise we won’t bully you. We’ll also be sending out our February newsletter soon, and we’re so excited for you all to read it.
With love and gratitude,
Helen