Is Instagram Homophobic?

Before you continue reading on, yes, this is me calling out Instagram publicly. I’m not sorry about it.

As some of you may know, I’m running The Gay Bible as part of a year-long project for my public relations class. This semester, part of my assignment is to spend $20 on promotional materials (ads), so I decided to promote a few of my posts on Instagram that would lead people to my blog.

However, doing that wasn’t as easy as you may think.

When I went to promote two of my posts, one talking about pronouns, and other talking about having a gay friend, they were both rejected for “promoting the sale or use of adult products or services.”

If you’ve been reading my blog, you should know I do not promote the sale or use of adult products or services. While I am someone who is sex-positive and encourages owning your own sexual desires, I don’t post about these things on social media because, as we all know, Instagram doesn’t like that.

One of my ads that was denied by Instagram.

As a result of this, I reached out to @Instagram and @InstagramComms on Twitter in hopes of receiving an answer. Silly of me to think they’d respond, right?

Hi @instagramComms @instagram — you’ve rejected three of my promoted posts now for “promoting adult products or services,” but I don’t see how any of these posts are doing that. What exactly am I doing wrong here?

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Originally tweeted by Aldin Sabic (@aldinsabic_) on March 18, 2021.

To no surprise, they didn’t respond.

So, I figured my age range was too low. Even though the minimum age for my target audience was 18-years-old, I bumped it up to 21. I also created an entirely new post that I was sure wouldn’t get denied: I made sure to exclude any talks about sex or adult “services,” and made it super friendly.

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The post looks great, right?

They finally let me promote it. I set my budget to $20 over 5 days, and I woke up to some new website clicks from it. Things were looking great.

That’s when things went south, again.

After only spending a single dollar, Instagram disabled my business account and restricted me from running promotions for “failing to follow our Advertising Policies.” Um, ok?

I don’t exactly know what “policies” I failed to follow, but if Instagram is disabling my account for promoting a safe space for the LGBTQ community, then that sends a different message about their platform.

I sent out another tweet to the Instagram PR team and the Instagram Twitter itself, and alas, no response. And did I mention my appeals for my two previous promoted posts mentioned earlier were rejected? Yup.

I haven’t received a response on Twitter, and considering my appeals were rejected, this only sends me, and other members of the LGBTQ community, a message that Instagram and Facebook do not support our community.

Is this surprising? Not at all. Instagram continuously allows scammers to thrive on the platform, and others to spew hate to various minority communities. They instead prefer to silence those who are trying to improve those communities and open up certain conversations that need to be had.

In short, this is sad, disrespectful, and outright homophobic behaviour. Instagram has slapped me in the face, and this post is a last resort. I refuse to be silenced for trying to do something as simple as promote a blog for a school assignment, and I will not be quiet about this until something is done.

Why You Should Be Putting Your Pronouns In Your Bio

If you’re on social media, or don’t live under a rock, you’ve probably seen people include their pronouns in their bio — whether it be on Instagram, Twitter, all the fun stuff.

If you don’t know what pronouns are, allow me to break them down for you:

If you’re a grammar nerd like myself, technically speaking, a pronoun is a word that can function by itself as a noun phrase and refers either to yourself in discourse (e.g., I, you) or someone/something mentioned (e.g., she, it, this).

Most commonly, you’ll likely stumble upon one of these three pronouns when you visit someone’s social media profile:

• She/her/hers — this means you refer to this person as she, her, or hers in discourse.
• He/him/his — this means you refer to this person as he, him, or his in discourse.
• They/them/theirs — this means you refer to this person as they, them, or theirs in discourse.

You will also see some people go by multiple pronouns, so it may look something like:

• He/they — this means you may refer to this person as he, him, his, or they, them, theirs.
• She/they — this means you may refer to this person as she, her, hers, or they, them, theirs.

Most commonly, you’ll see those who identify as non-binary use they/them or he/they or she/they pronouns. Non-binary is a term for people who aren’t comfortable being referred to as ‘man’ or ‘woman.’

Now back to the discussion at hand: most people tend to think that, if they’re cisgender, meaning they identify with the sex assigned to them at birth, why should they even disclose their pronouns if it’s “easy to tell what their gender is.”

Well, the answer is simple, yet not. The fact of the matter is, there’s no easy way to tell what someone’s gender may be or how they may identify. You don’t “look” transgender, and you don’t “look” non-binary. Assuming one’s gender simply based off appearance is offensive and perpetuates harmful stereotypes and transphobic rhetoric.

Disclosing your pronouns, whether it be in an email signature or your Instagram bio, helps normalise discussions about gender, especially for the trans and non-binary communities.

Because members of the non-binary and trans communities are often misgendered, it’s important for them to disclose their pronouns so they feel safe participating in discourse.

But doing this doesn’t and shouldn’t stop with the trans and non-binary communities.

Pronouns are an important move towards inclusivity: they allow everyone to feel safe in expressing themselves, it helps you avoid getting someone’s gender wrong, and it reduces the burden on our trans and non-binary friends so they don’t have to continuously explain their identity.

If you consider yourself an ally to the LGBTQIA* community, using your pronouns is a small move to you, but a big one that means the world to us. And when you do so, not only are you encouraging your cisgender friends to the same, but it’s a way to show members of the LGBTQIA* community that you care about their identity. It’s a badge of pride.

We as the LGBTQIA* community can only do so much when it comes to normalizing things like pronouns. And whether you’re a part of the community or not, I encourage you to put your pronouns wherever possible. With your help, we bridge the gap and open the conversation to pronouns and trans rights.