'It's not sexual content, it's cancer' – breast cancer patients protest censorship

Breast cancer patients, frustrated about being prevented from uploading images to social media of their conditions, will share pictures on social media against censorship under the motto "It's not sexual content, it's cancer." 

Photos will be uploaded every day up until October 19, International Day Against Breast Cancer. 

Ginkgo, an association in the central Catalan county of Berguedà for cancer patients and their families, is trying to help normalize breast cancer patients' situations with this new campaign. 

They have been trying to upload photos of bare female breasts for three years, but neither Instagram nor Facebook allow them because they consider it sexual content – of course, only if they are female breasts. 

One person involved in the campaign, Anna, is 43 years old and has had breast cancer. When she was diagnosed, one of her concerns was how her body would change and what her breast would look like if it were removed. 

It would have helped, she says, to see it on social media, which would normalize her situation. "These are the things we don't want to see, images that hurt us," she tells the Catalan News Agency. "But it's just a scar with a sad story behind it and everyone has scars." 

The president of Ginkgo, Aurora Fernández, says the view given to the media of breast cancer does not correspond to reality. "Breast cancer is not rosy. There are moments that are very hard and very dark." As such, she believes it is necessary to give more visibility to breast cancer and to normalize the reality of the disease.

To do this, the group has launched a complaint campaign on Facebook and Instagram, using the hashtag in Catalan #noéscontingutsexualéscàncerdemama.

This October, coinciding with International Day Against Breast Cancer on the 19th, the organization will upload a photo every day of one of them with her torso bare, but with a board covering the breasts. 

The photos are taken as if they were police mugshots in order to denounce the way they are made to feel every time their images are censored.

Members of the group even say they are censored when uploading videos explaining things like how to check for lumps to detect potential cancer. 

The promoters of the campaign hope it goes viral and gathers involvement from women all over the world.