Updated: Thursday, August 27, 1.40 p.m. AEST: On Thursday, a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable Australia that Anne Summers' ad had now been approved.
In 1975, journalist Anne Summers published a book that was to become a vital Australian feminist text: Damned Whores and God's Police. Now 40 years on, Facebook will not promote an upcoming event by the same name because the post contains "profane" language, according to the author.
In celebration of the book, which explores Australia's historical treatment of women, a high profile conference will be held in Sydney in September, with Senator Penny Wong attending. But when Summers' team tried to pay to boost the event on Facebook, it was knocked back.
Facebook lets users pay to promote posts for increased visibility. Boosted posts must abide by Facebook's advertising policy, which includes removing or limiting who sees a post that might be considered derogatory or hate speech.
Summers wrote on her Facebook wall on Tuesday that she wasn't sure whether it was the event's title or the word "bitch" included in a quote from former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard that was worrying the social media giant.
Gillard's quote reads: "As early as 1975, in her book Damned Whores and God's Police, feminist and author Anne Summers explained that during our nation's history, women were always categorised in one of these two roles ... As a woman wielding power, with all the complexities of modern politics, I was never going to be portrayed as a good woman. So I must be the bad woman, a scheming shrew, a heartless harridan or a lying bitch."
Here's Summers' Facebook post about the incident.
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));Dear FB friends.How do you solve a problem like this:Many years ago I wrote a book and gave it a provocative title....Posted by Anne Summers on Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Summers later wrote that her post about the incident had reached more than 224,000 people, without having to pay the platform a thing. The post has been shared more than 7,600 times.
In the past, Facebook has caused controversy by overzealously censoring content relating to women. Most notoriously, it removed photos of women breastfeeding until it updated its community standards in early 2015.