(Photo by LoudNMedia)
ORLANDO | Midnight Mascs, an Orlando burlesque group, is taking action against Meta after their Instagram account was permanently banned for violating its terms and was struck with outrageous claims.
“The day before, we had just released our new flyer for our upcoming events, and it had been gaining traction the night before, like really picking up steam,” Damien Demonia, the founder and leader of The Midnight Mascs, says. “I woke up, and all of the Instagram accounts were down. It got the Midnight Mascs account, it got my performer account, it got another one of my performers’ accounts, and it also took down one of Savoy Orlando’s Instagram accounts.”
Meta AI told Demonia that the several accounts that were taken down violated its terms, citing “illegal adoption,” “prostitution,” and “human sex trafficking.” The Instagram accounts featured nothing out of the ordinary for a burlesque performer, and the removal of the accounts led to a larger conversation.
No other major Orlando burlesque group accounts were taken down by Meta’s AI.
“It really just overall harms, as masculine-presenting lesbians always get kind of portrayed as predators or harmful people, and I feel like the ban is keeping up with that stereotype,” Demonia says. “And on top of it, it’s taking away representation from people as well when we don’t see people like us doing things like this. There is less representation out there; it’s just harming us as a whole. We don’t have a space like that.”
The ban affects not just the performers, but also the several photographers and videographers whose work was featured on the accounts. Meta deletes any account created under the name of Midnight Mascs, but Demonia has filed a case with the FSC against Meta, although no updates have been given.
“I personally just think it was a very targeted attack on our community specifically because we are very obviously LGBTQ, and on top of that, we center BIPOC people,” Demonia says. “It’s very obvious that this was a very targeted attack towards the lesbian community. Everyone else is very femme-presenting, and it can be tough to discern if they’re part of the LGBT community, if they’re queer, but we’re very obviously queer, and I think that that’s a big reason why we are targeted.”
Demonia is going the extra mile to promote the upcoming show, going to events and venues and spreading information about the event by word-of-mouth. Demonia has also opened up their personal account for business now, as that account was not affected by the ban. Above all, Demonia is advocating for this safe space to be reinstated once more.
“I think that this really leaves a lot of room for people to really hate what we’re doing. Since we’re so visibly queer, we’ve gotten a lot of hate comments, not only from straight people, but also from people in our own community,” Demonia says. “And it’s really frustrating seeing that we have a lot of people who dislike us just because we’re masculine, we can’t go and dance, and we can’t do this, and saying this and that/ I think that we just need to be more accepting as a community and then really uplift each other.”
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