A breastfeeding workshop, pants for postpartum consolation, consent training: These are just a few of the companies and merchandise featured in adverts that Facebook has rejected, in keeping with a brand new report from the Center for Intimacy Justice.

For the report, Jackie Rotman, the nonprofit group’s founder, interviewed staff and leaders at greater than 35 firms targeted on points associated to ladies’s sexual well being — together with pelvic ache, menopause, menstruation and fertility — and surveyed dozens extra. (The survey was created in partnership with Origin, a pelvic ground bodily remedy firm.)

All 60 firms had adverts rejected by Facebook, and about half of them mentioned their accounts had been suspended in some unspecified time in the future, according to the report, which was launched on Tuesday. In most circumstances, Facebook had labeled the adverts as containing “adult content” or selling “adult products and services.”

In its promoting insurance policies, Facebook says that “ads promoting sexual and reproductive health products or services, like contraception and family planning must be targeted to people 18 years or older and must not focus on sexual pleasure.”

On its web site, Facebook offers examples of adverts that aren’t permitted (“buy our sex toys for your adult pleasure”) and people which might be (“new moisturizing lube to relieve vaginal dryness on a day to day basis” and “practice safe sex with our brand of condoms”).

Still, Ms. Rotman discovered many adverts focusing on males that have been accepted by Facebook regardless of showing to interrupt the social media platform’s coverage: an advert for condoms that guarantees “pleasure”; one for lubricant (“lotion made just for men’s alone time”); and one other for an erectile dysfunction capsule that guarantees a “wet hot American summer.”

“Right now, it’s arbitrary where they’ll say a product is or isn’t allowed in a way that we think has really sexist undertones and a lack of understanding about health,” Ms. Rotman mentioned. She mentioned that it was “a systemic problem” and added that it’s particularly detrimental to small companies.

“We welcome ads for sexual wellness products but we prohibit nudity and have specific rules about how these products can be marketed on our platform,” a spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s mum or dad firm, wrote in an e-mail. “We have provided detail to advertisers about what kinds of products and descriptions we allow in ads.”

The spokesperson added that Facebook makes errors in imposing its promoting insurance policies and that it has overturned a number of advert rejections that a few of the firms talked about within the report skilled.

One firm that has struggled to get adverts permitted by Facebook is Joylux, which sells menopausal well being merchandise, together with a tool that’s inserted into the vagina and is used to strengthen the pelvic ground.

“Our consumer is a Facebook consumer,” mentioned Colette Courtion, the chief govt of Joylux, who based the corporate in 2014. “She’s a 50-year-old woman. Facebook is the best place for her to be educated on menopause-related topics.” Ms. Courtion added that Facebook is Joylux’s prime customer-acquisition channel.

But, she mentioned, Joylux staff have lengthy been confused by Facebook’s insurance policies and the way they’re utilized.

“Because of the nature of our product, the look of it,” she mentioned, Facebook and different firms consider it’s “pornographic.”

Since 2017, Joylux’s Facebook account has been shut down twice, Ms. Courtion mentioned. The firm didn’t inform her why.

Heather Dazell, the vp of promoting at Joylux, mentioned she has discovered that “any ad going directly to our site would be automatically denied because of the word ‘vagina.’”

A spokesperson for Meta mentioned that Facebook doesn’t have a blanket ban on phrases like “menopause” or “vagina” however considers “how each ad is positioned.”

Over the years, Joylux has pulled again its strategy to Facebook adverts. But even with the adjustments Joylux has made to its copy and imagery, lots of its adverts are nonetheless rejected within the preliminary evaluation course of. Two years in the past, Joylux began working with an company that helps the corporate enchantment advert rejections. Usually, after the enchantment, the adverts are permitted.

But the method is time-consuming and costly, Ms. Courtion mentioned, and the ensuing adverts should not useful to shoppers. “We can’t show what the product looks like and we can’t say what it does,” she mentioned.

Intimate Rose, an organization in Kansas City, Mo., that sells vaginal dilators and pelvic-floor weights and wands, has confronted related points. “We’re normally always rejected,” mentioned Adrienne Fleming, the corporate’s digital media supervisor.

She offered a number of examples, together with an advert with a totally clothed, laughing couple (“live, laugh, and love again with pelvic health products from Intimate Rose,” its copy reads). Two different adverts featured movies of ladies discussing how Intimate Rose weights have helped them with incontinence. Ms. Fleming mentioned the entire adverts have been rejected as a result of Facebook categorized them as “adult products or services.”

In the adult products section of its commerce coverage, Meta provides a number of examples of things which might be banned: “sex toys, sexual enhancement products, sexually oriented adult products such as pornography, or used or worn underwear, images of nudity including partial child nudity, even if not sexual in nature.”

But the coverage states that “products such as lubricants or condoms, which do not focus on sexual pleasure or sexual enhancement” are allowed.

In an trade with Facebook that she shared with The New York Times, Ms. Fleming identified that the corporate’s merchandise should not supposed for intercourse or pleasure. In response, the Facebook consultant pointed to the commerce coverage and mentioned that the advert was appropriately rejected, and that he wouldn’t have the ability to reveal any extra particulars as a result of they could possibly be used to avoid the coverage sooner or later.

“It comes down to the reviewer’s judgment,” mentioned Aaron Wilt, one of many founders of Intimate Rose.

Businesses should not the one entities that use Facebook adverts. RNW Media, a nonprofit within the Netherlands, builds on-line communities for social change — together with Love Matters, which is targeted on sexual and reproductive well being and rights, and depends on Facebook adverts to achieve its viewers.

During a span of six years, practically 1,800 adverts that Love Matters posted to Facebook were rejected, in keeping with a report on the sustainability of journalism and information media that was introduced on the United Nations Internet Governance Forum in 2020. Most usually, the rationale was that the adverts have been categorized as “adult content” or as “sex toys.”

Michael Okun Oliech, the social media director for Love Matters Kenya, mentioned Facebook lately rejected two adverts he submitted for selling an “escort service.” One of them was about consent; the opposite was about dwelling with H.I.V.

He mentioned that the appeals course of takes him anyplace from per week to months and that he hardly ever has the chance to talk with “a real human being.” To keep away from rejection, Mr. Okun Oliech has began utilizing slang and substituting fruit emojis for phrases that describe sure physique components (a tactic that has been profitable for firms similar to Hims, which sells Viagra).

But Charlotte Petty, a human rights professional at RNW Media, is frightened concerning the penalties of being oblique or euphemistic. “There are ways we can mitigate the censorship, but at one point, we’re compromising our own work,” she mentioned.

Facebook’s advert platform has been criticized repeatedly lately. In 2018, a Washington Post investigation discovered that dozens of adverts for L.G.B.T.Q.-related occasions, firms and nonprofits have been blocked by the social community as a result of they have been deemed “political.” Facebook, which requires advertisers specializing in politics or social points to undergo a number of extra layers for advert approval, known as nearly all of the advert rejections a mistake.

In November, Meta mentioned it will stop advertisers from targeting people with promotions based mostly on their engagement with content material associated to well being, race and ethnicity, political affiliation, faith, and sexual orientation, amongst different identifiers. The instruments have been used to discriminate towards particular teams and to spam individuals.

When it involves the sexual well being and wellness firms, Ms. Rotman is hopeful that Facebook can act rapidly. “This is a fixable problem,” she mentioned. “It’s not as complicated as protecting democracy or elections. It’s about finding a way to make sure that women’s health ads aren’t being blocked. It’s simply a matter of Facebook deciding that this is something they’re going to fix.”

Ryan Mac contributed reporting.