Meta bans ads for Virginia Woolf play in Spain over 'social topics'

A theatre in Barcelona has been banned from promoting a stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own on Instagram and Facebook because the work deals with "social topics", the Guardian reported on 21 September.

Meta's explanation

The newly reopened Teatre Raval, which seats 193 spectators, asked Meta — the parent company of both platforms — why its publicity had been blocked. The company replied that "any mention of civil rights, feminism or social reform (topics that are central to Woolf's work) are usually classified as 'social topics' by our automatic system" and are filtered out. To resolve the situation, Meta recommended removing "key words" so that the text would not appear to encourage activism.

The theatre's response

The theatre published a statement saying: "We feel obliged to speak up about the injustice and violation of our rights by not being allowed to promote a feminist work, specifically a work by Virginia Woolf who was born in 1882." It added: "What can we do? As a theatre we have to publicise our activities … and we have to make use of social media so that people are aware of cultural activities."

The production

The show is a one-woman production starring Clara Sanchis, based on a series of talks Woolf gave in 1928 at Newnham and Girton, then the only two colleges at Cambridge University that admitted women. The talks were published as an essay the following year, addressing the position of women in society and their access to education. Women had been admitted to study at Cambridge since 1869 but were not allowed to graduate with a degree until 1948.

Woolf wrote that in order to produce high-quality fiction "a woman must have money and a room of her own", and noted in her diary that she expected to be attacked as a feminist for what she had written.

Debate over moderation

Sanchis told the newspaper La Vanguardia: "We don't know if the publicity has been rejected because of the name of Virginia Woolf or because of the word feminism, or both." She added: "In any case, it's a way of erasing from the map advances that have taken centuries to achieve. We have given social media unlimited power and every day we can see how dangerous this is. It's bias and manipulation."