A prominent medical practitioner has claimed that Twitter has removed ads with the word “vagina” on a gynecology book.
Dr. Jennifer Gunter who is a Canadian gynecologist and a New York Times contributor made her claims on Twitter on Tuesday. She wrote that adverts made by her publishers were blocked because they used the word vagina in their promotional tweets of the new book. The book in question is known as “The Vagina Bible.”
Dr. Jennifer Gunter uses Twitter to correct myths about gynecology. As she complained, she tagged Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey. (Good advocacy lesson here. You tag the right people in your strategic communication). The author argues that vagina is not a dirty word. I agree with her 100%.
“Our societal inability to say vagina like we say elbow is one reason I insisted on VAGINA in the title,” tweeted Dr. Jennifer Gunter.
I am just thinking, how many of us can use the word “vagina” the same way as in when you refer to your hands, head or stomach among other parts of the body. This keeps me thinking.
“When we’re not allowed to say a word the implication is it’s dirty or shameful. Not being able to buy an ad because of the word vagina for a book about vaginas is ridiculous,” Jennifer added on Twitter.
“We aren’t allowed to say the name of this book in the ad, but trust us you want it!” her publisher wrote on Twitter.
Director of communications at Vida Engstrand later confirmed that Twitter, Instagram and Facebook all of them removed any ads posted by the company which had the word vagina.
Apparently, I’ve also learnt that the word “vaginal” and “OB/GYN” are also considered “offensive”.
Clarification from Twitter on this matter:
We did not take action on Promoted Tweets from this account because of references to sexual organs as those are permitted within our rules. The rejection of some of the promoted content from the account was due to a combination of human error and violations, including the use of profanity and adult products.
