When science is “inappropriate”: Understanding and navigating participant recruitment in sex research in a society still uncomfortable with the word “breast”

In December 2018, the Queen’s Sexual Health Research Lab (SexLab) published a blog post highlighting certain problems encountered with online participant recruitment. The situation is yet to be resolved, as social media platforms continue to remove posts containing “inappropriate” words such as “sex”, thus preventing even the name of our lab and the link to our website from being posted. Pushing past these barriers requires a better understanding of the legislation regarding censorship of this nature, as well as the policies that these businesses have in place. This knowledge may inform progressive action as well as provide other options for online recruitment.  

Though it may seem that social media platforms are to blame for these censorship extremes, the problem may be grounded deeper in federal contracts. Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that everyone has the freedoms of "opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication" (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982). However, many popular social media platforms, such as Facebook and (its subsidiary) Instagram are American companies, and American policy is slightly different. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects freedom of speech and expression from government restrictions (Volokh, 2017). Further, some laws prevent private business from restricting the speech of others. For example, employment laws restrict employers from preventing discussions amongst employees concerning salaries or the organization of labor unions (Volokh, 2017).

In terms of sexual content, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution offers less ‘protection’ against categories such as obscenity and child pornography. This means that expression of this type would not be protected in judgment by the United States Supreme Court (Stone & Volokh, 2017). Deciding if an act of speech or expression is ‘obscene’ (and thus unprotected) is based on the Miller test, also known as the three-prong obscenity test. According to this test, all of the following must be satisfied in order for a ruling of “obscenity”: 1) the work involves or encourages excessive interest in sexual matters, 2) the work is clearly offensive in describing sexual conduct, and 3) the work does not contain “literary, artistic, political or scientific value” (Volokh, 2008). This test is problematic for many reasons, including the ambiguity of what is meant by “offensive”; this can lead to subjective, biased decision-making on behalf of the court. Further, there may be differences across jurisdictions in what is seen as “legally obscene” (Axelrod-Contrada, 2007).

With the US Constitution and the Miller test in mind, one may wonder how online pornographic networks are able to operate and avoid legal reprimand. An important distinction to be aware of is that although Internet pornography is not “protected” by the First amendment, the federal government it still prevented from censoring it (Vance, 2013). In other words, while a federal lawsuit could be filed against a website like Pornhub, the American government would not be able to shut down the website or prevent certain pictures or video from being published. Thus, the present situation with excessive censorship online is not due to legislation, and instead based on the beliefs of each individual business. Furthermore, while Pornhub welcomes posts containing nudity, platforms such as Facebook have contrasting beliefs about expression, and censor our content as a result.

While benefits of constraints on free expression include limiting harassment, problems ensue when businesses amplify these constraints as part of their policies. The scale of the problem can be outlined using Facebook as an example. Facebook’s Community Standards act as a major barrier to online recruitment for sex research, as they delete and flag our research-related posts under the policy of “Sexual Solicitation”. Although this policy aims to limit the threat of sexual violence and exploitation by restricting “sexually explicit language” (“Objectionable Content,” 2019), this incorrectly targets sex research labs and sexual health organizations. Sex research labs, including our own, have had posts advertising for studies removed by Facebook simply for including words such as “sex”, “genital”, “prostate”, and even “breast cancer”.

Similar trajectories play out on other public online platforms. Instagram (owned by Facebook) has virtually identical policies, though the focus of their “sexually explicit” content policy seems to be more relating to nudity (“Community Guidelines,” 2019). Twitter and Reddit are more liberal platforms in terms of their sexual content policies. Twitter’s “Sensitive Media Policy” allows the posting of “adult content” under the tenet that “[p]eople use Twitter to show what’s happening in the world” (“Sensitive Media Policy,” 2019). Thus, as long as you mark your account as “sensitive”, tweets are able to include sexual content including nudity. Reddit has a similar policy such that a wide range of “explicit” content can be posted, as long as it is labelled as ‘NSFW’ (Not Safe For Work) (“Reddit Content Policy,” 2019). Yet despite this, all of these social media platforms have removed posts from our lab regardless of what is stated in their policies.

The previous SexLab blog post on censorship mentioned that solving the social media problem involves destigmatizing sex in society and creating a “culture of acceptance” of sex and related conversations. Although these practices can be promoted by sex research, one must consider the intended timeline of change. It has been nearly one year since publication of that blog post, and little change can be noted regarding experiences with censorship in social media. In fact, the situation may even be regressing; just this week, Facebook announced that they will be strictly monitoring emojis that may be “implicitly or indirectly” sexual, including peaches and eggplants (Cuthbertson, 2019)!

While waiting for the world to change, we reached out to other sex research labs with hopes of discovering different ways of bypassing these tight social media restrictions. Unfortunately, substituting “inappropriate” words for “nice” words remains the only present strategy: one lab focusing on couples and sexual health wrote back that successful posting to Facebook and Google only came about when replacing the word “sex” with “intimacy”. A note on this word replacement from us sex researchers though: although these words can be related together in theme, they do not mean exactly the same thing. Likewise, a lab focusing on orgasm research must replace the word “genitals” with “private body parts”, and feels that this is “ridiculous”.

It does seem ridiculous, doesn’t it? Words related to sex are not always obscene or used with malicious intent, but social media restrictions would have you think so. However, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter state that exceptions to their policies exist if the content has a medical or educational purpose (“Community Guidelines,” 2019; “Objectionable Content,” 2019; “Sensitive Media Policy,” 2019). Perhaps the censorship problem can then be attributed to a current lack of a ‘contact-person’ to whom we could explain the lack of malicious intent (and presence of medical purpose) in our “sexually explicit” advertisements. Could these multi-billion-dollar companies not afford to hire individuals to fill these roles? This may be a point of attack! 

Indeed, positive change to Facebook censorship policy has historically come about from the rallying together of large numbers of people in opposition. For example, protests began in 2008 in reaction to Facebook flagging and removing images of women breastfeeding (Ibrahim, 2010). The protests included 11,000 women changing their profile pictures for one day to images of them breastfeeding, and a group rallying at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto. Their efforts were successful, as Facebook now permits posting of most breastfeeding images (Ibrahim, 2010). What if sex researchers worldwide were to ban together to help stamp out these critical recruitment obstacles? 

From a legal angle, there are no grounds for taking Facebook to court for their censorship, as its policies align with the Miller test component of the United States Constitution. As mentioned earlier, the Miller test for labelling speech and expression as ‘obscene’ involves subjective decision making by the legislative body. Thus, perhaps this portion of the Constitution needs revisiting! That said, the United States Constitution is quite resistant to change, as seen with other controversial matters, such as resistance against developing gun control policies. Nevertheless, there is also evidence that change is possible. The most recent amendment, which regulates the timeline of changes to congress members’ salaries, was ratified in May 1992 (“27th Amendment,” 2019). Interestingly, this amendment has been attributed to a paper written by a college student (Bomboy, 2019)! Furthermore, perhaps we can tackle censorship by reconsidering the Constitution at the level of the Miller test: with the grey area around what exactly is ‘obscene’, we could request for a higher degree of specificity in their measure of what is considered ‘offensive’, of ‘scientific value’, or of ‘excessive interest in sexual matters”.  

Lastly, an entirely different idea may be to try using platforms that are directly related to sex, such as Tinder, Grindr, or Pornhub. It is unlikely that SexLab content would be flagged here for being “too sexy”! In addition, advertising through these platforms would maintain the benefit of reaching large audiences. Unfortunately, when we are unable to reach larger populations, sex researchers run into trouble. People who participate in sex research are already a small proportion of the general population, and they differ from those who would not participate. Without any advertising through these main social media platforms, we would presumably be getting an even smaller and less representative sample of the population. 

These barriers to sex research recruitment compromise people’s psychological and physiological health outcomes, as advancements in sexual health through research becomes slowed. Thus, not only is this issue of importance to researchers interested in studying these topics, but also the general public, and the health and well-being of society. It is time that sex researchers ban together to stand up against artificial intelligence labelling our scientific endeavors as “inappropriate”!

Fortunately, now that we are equipped with awareness of these businesses policies and constitutions, novel solutions can begin to be uncovered. The next step may be to affect change through lobbying individual businesses (such as Facebook) or the US Constitution. We can also begin to discuss new strategies, including seeking other online platforms. Let us know your thoughts by responding to our Twitter post!

Cynthia Sedlezky

3rd Year BSc Psychology, Queen’s University

References

27th Amendment. (2019). Retrieved October 24, 2019, from National Constitution Centre website: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xxvii

Axelrod-Contrada, J. (2007). Reno V. ACLU: Internet Censorship. Retrieved from https://books.google.ca/books?id=fCBedGMyadkC

Bomboy, S. (2019, May 7). How a C-grade college term paper led to a constitutional amendment. National Constitution Centre. Retrieved from https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/how-a-c-grade-college-term-paper-led-to-a-constitutional-amendment

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Community Guidelines. (2019). Retrieved October 31, 2019, from Instagram website: https://help.instagram.com/477434105621119

Cuthbertson, A. (2019). Facebook and Instagram Censor “Sexual” Emoji and Stop Links to Private Pornography Sites. Independent.

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Objectionable Content. (2019). Retrieved October 30, 2019, from Facebook website: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/objectionable_content

Reddit Content Policy. (2019). Retrieved November 1, 2019, from Reddit website: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy

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Stone, G. R., & Volokh, E. (2017). Interactive Constitution: The meaning of free speech.

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