Two Issues That Are Completely Unconnected. Sort Of.

[heidi]

First, it looks like the Senate doesn't have the votes some Republicans want to pass the constitutional amendment regarding "defining marriage". Which is good, because if we looked back to the definition at the time of the Founding Fathers regarding marriage, it would clearly have stated something along the lines of "marriage is between one male and one female, where said female had little to no rights to hold property, vote, tell her husband no or raise her children if her husband decided to leave her, and where said female could, after marriage, noot sue or be sued, draft or sign contracts, make wills or independently buy or sell property."

Aren't we glad that definition wasn't placed in the Constitution itself! It took far too long to remove other restrictions on personhood, and amend the constitution so that all *people* could be considered *people*, so why on earth would people now want to write something into the constitution to remove rights?

Did everyone see Jon Stewart interview Bill Bennett on TDS last night? Crooks and Liars has the video, and I gacked a minitrascript from them:

Stewart: So why not encourage gay people to join in in that family arrangement if that is what provides stability to a society?

Bennett: Well I think if gay..gay people are already members of families...

Stewart: What? (almost spitting out his drink)

Bennett: They're sons and they're daughters..

Stewart: So that's where the buck stops, that's the gay ceiling.

Bennett Look, it's a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a women.

Stewart:I disagree, I think it's a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

Which leads me to discuss something else that is a part of the human condition, and, in certain states, a civil right: the right to breastfeed a baby, wherever you are.

I'm not going to mince words - but I am going to admit that I am probably taking things personally that aren't meant as Personally Directed At Heidi As An Individual. But it really hurts me when I read posts by people who I consider friends, saying things like:

I wouldn't want to look at someone while she's breastfeeding
If I wanted to see someone eat, I'd stare at people in restaurants
Women shouldn't shove nursing into other people's faces
Breastfeeding isn't a symbol of someone's agenda and I don't respect women who use their babies for their own gratification that way
It isn't acceptable to do it in public

Bullshit. Of course it's acceptable to do it in public.
 
I've seen posts castigating "boob nazies" from people who would *never* call someone a "feminazi" and would be very offended if someone, say, deemed a woman who, say, attended a pro-choice rally a "feminzai". So, what's the difference between one pejorative and the other?

I've seen people slam on Boob Nazis as (to paraphrase) women who are ademant that "breast is best", and who pressure other women into trying nursing, and who criticize women who don't nurse.

Guess what?

While I completely understand that there are some women who do not succeed in nursing and that they shouldn't be made to feel that their bottlefeeding is damning their children, unless the physical and/or mental health of the mother makes nursing dangerous for mom and/or baby, I do believe that there is no justifiable reason for a woman to not try to nurse her newborn.

I told my cousin she was silly for not even nursing for a week when her second child was born, because she wanted to lose the twenty pounds she'd put on in that pregnancy so she could wear a sheath to a gala eight weeks later, and didn't want to be prevented from taking diet pills.

I've nursed in public, on airplanes, in restaurants, on cruise ships, in parks and bookstores, and in the middle of bloody Disney World.

And I think that it is very important to give women confidence about nursing, to make them feel that it's something that they should feel comfortable doing whenever their baby needs it. And things like the words I read on many of  your LJs - well, if you had a friend with a newborn, would you ask her not to nurse in front of you? Would you tell her it makes you feel oogy to see a baby nursing? If she nursed in front of you, in a private home or a public space, would you tell her that she was shoving her breastfeeding, or her breasts, into other people's faces?

Please, for the sake of the baby, even if you really don't like kids, please, do not tell a nursing mother that. If you work with someone who pumps milk, support her. Help her if you can. If you employ a woman who's pregnant, let her know that if she does want to pump when she comes back to work, you'll make it possible, and easy for her to do so.

The opinion of other people impacts whether a woman will continue nursing for a month, for three months, for six months, for a year, or even beyond.

It doesn't matter for me anymore. I'm done. Done nursing Catie as of last month, and done with having kids. But I am *sure* that the comments on all sorts of LJs this week have impacted the thinking of women who will have kids someday, and the partners of women who will have kids someday, and it makes me ill to think that after all the fighting for women's rights - and yes, breastfeeding is one of many women's rights - and getting legislatures to realise the importance of breastfeeding, and the importance of workplace support (as well as support from friends and family) there are so damned many people out there who still think that breastfeeding is something to hide.

Remember, if you attended Nimbus, then you've been in the company of a nursing woman - me. Jon was seven weeks old then, and I nursed him in the middle of the MWPP welcome event, and at the Draco and Slash panels, and during the movies for hours. I didn't do it to make people feel uncomfortable - but if someone had told me that my nursing in public made them uncomfortable, I might've turned or moved to another chair, but I would not have left wherever I was. Should I have? Do you really think I should have?

Think of the words you use, and support the women you know.

And now, for a completely random thing, commentary on Wired on what might happen if Google actually did get into the market for evil.

The worldwide market for evil is stratospheric, and Google is uniquely positioned to take advantage of it. They've made some halting inroads in China, but economists -- many of whom are themselves evil -- estimate that if Google abandoned its inefficient policy completely, it could capture 38 percent of the evil market. That's more than Microsoft and Lindsey Lohan combined.

Comments

[daintress.livejournal.com]

I so agree with you on breast feeding. Saying it shouldn't be done in public is ridiculous. It's been done that way for centuries. If you don't like it, avert your eyes, but don't start a crusade.

[kiffle.livejournal.com]

I'm uncomfortable around women nursing in public. I'm uncomfortable around women nursing in private (meaning, I was uncomfortable while sitting on my sister's sofa and she was feeding my niece). But that's my issue, and I just look elsewhere. I would never tell a woman not to nurse in public. However...

...unless the physical and/or mental health of the mother makes nursing dangerous for mom and/or baby, I do believe that there is no justifiable reason for a woman to not try to nurse her newborn.

I've reworded my response to this over and over, haha. Basically, I don't agree with that as I think whether or not to breastfeed is a choice and a woman shouldn't be guilted into it. Formula isn't going to harm the child, and if someone doesn't want to breastfeed, they shouldn't have to. It's possible that my opinion is a product of my own issues and admitted discomfort; I don't know. But I wouldn't want to have people saying I wasn't justified in my *choice* not to breastfeed, if that's what I chose.

[cmf.livejournal.com]

I've breastfed on planes, in malls, in restaurants. I'm discreet - I don't let my boob hang out for all to see. We're all covered as best as I can. But when my child needs to eat, he needs to eat. Now. Or would you rather listen to him shriek at the top of his lungs? Is that more comfortable for you?

And I can't even get started on the gay marriage thing. They should be allowed to marry and I can't debate it with people who don't believe that.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

Well, it depends on your definition of "harm". If a woman does not breastfeed, then the baby will not get certain protections against allergies and asthma and other illnesses, and the baby will be at higher risk of ear infections and other health issues, and the mother will not take steps to lower her risk of breast cancer.

Is it harmful to give a baby formula, in the sense that the baby will fail to thrive or become ill? Not in industrialized nations where the water is clean and the formula properly made. Is it extremely beneficial to nurse a baby, at least in the first few months? Yes, of course it is.

But part of that process means making women feel comfortable with their own bodies, and with nursing itself. Before I had Harry, I will say that the idea of other people in the delivery room made me queasy, especially the idea of men other than my husband. But in the moment, I lost all modesty and I just didn't care who saw me, or in what state. And I guess that I developed the same feeling about nursing, once it became a question of whether I'd be stuck in the house pretty much constantly for weeks on end, or whether I'd be able to do things like go out for dinner.

If someone can't breastfeed, or can't exclusively breastfeed and needs to supplement, they shouldn't be made to feel devestated and guilty about that situation.

But all women should be given the chance to learn how to feel comfortable with the process. It's good for everyone.

[ias.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, should not every child have the right to expect their mother to try and provide the best start in life for them? And breastfeeding does just that. Formula cannot and doesn't replicate the antibodies passed from mother to child, especially in the early days of breastfeeding, which helps build a child's immune system. Formula isn't poison and it wouldn't harm a child but it is second best.

Very few women cannot breastfeed with good education and support, which are, on the whole, severely lacking in both the US and UK. The only women who can't breastfeed without any doubt are those who have lost large amounts of breast tissue and women with certain diseases such as HIV or medical conditions which affect their milk supply.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I so loved that Jon Stewart interview. He was just not letting him get away with any non=answer "just cause we say so and we're uncomfortable talking about the real issues" stuff.

In my experience, it's not like women aren't naturally discreet about breast-feeding. I can understand people having a moment of "is it polite to look away? Is it impolite to look?" but I think people getting used to it is the best way to get over that. The one time I remember being annoyed at a woman breastfeeding was when she came up to the counter in the store where I worked and then walked across the store and settled herself to feed so I had to bring the change over to her--but that had nothing to do with her doing it in public. It was a children's bookstore and about as breast feeding friendly as a place could get.

Personally, since I know I wasn't nursed myself I can't say I think someone should feel guilty about not doing. If I had a baby I think I would consider it the most logical choice to do it, seems like the "real thing" is naturally going to be better than a substitute formula. It's like any other personal choice, I guess. People have opinions on it and sharing your opinion isn't necessarily forcing someone to do something. If a person said they weren't going to bf because there was no reason to, for instance, I don't think it's out of line to say what advantages it has, for instance. I'd probably do that on any number of baby-related things even without having kids.

[weaverandom.livejournal.com]

IAWTC.

I've totally wanted an excuse to say that for ages.

[jadzia7667.livejournal.com]

Breastfeeding is best; there's no denying it. The child gets much more than nutrition from nursing, and there are benefits for Mom as well. Formula may not be harmful, but it's certainly not the best food for babies. That said, there are many women who can't or won't breastfeed and they have valid (non fashion related) reasons for not doing so. While I'd never harangue someone for not nursing their baby, I have to wonder at their priorities, even though it's not my place to do so. I confine my wondering to my internal self.

I'm not particularly comfortable watching someone I don't know well while she's nursing her child. Nor am I comfortable watching someone I do know well while she nurses. The venue doesn't particularly matter to me; there are discreet ways to nurse and almost all nursing mothers use those discreet methods. It's not the nursing I have issues with and it's not that I disapprove of nursing. It's that nursing is an intimate act, and people shouldn't stare at a nursing mother. So I look away until she's finished.

[jayabear.livejournal.com]

The whole not breast feeding in public thing is silly. I mean, I don't like to see it... so I don't watch. If I'm speaking to someone who is doing so whilst we are talking, I focus on her face, it's that simple.

[megd.livejournal.com]

My only thought on the whole breastfeeding thing is that they haven't banned the icons. They are asking that they aren't default images. They have a rule "no nudity or graphic violence in default icons".

I just think, well, they have a rule. I don't like the idea of starting making exceptions when you have a defined rule. Besides, it's not that hard to change icons when you post.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

But part of that process means making women feel comfortable with their own bodies, and with nursing itself.

This is kind of a silly aside, but for some reason it always strikes me when I see it. There's an episode of I Love Lucy where she's on a plane trying to smuggle 25 pounds of cheese back to the states (that crazy redhead!). Anyway, she pretends it's a baby and sticks a bonnet on it. There's this whole exchange where the stewardess asks if she's got bottles to put in a fridge or to heat up and she says no. The stewardess and the woman next to her are horrified--it's a long flight etc. etc. She winds up having to share the other woman's formula and drink some of it herself to make it look like the baby's eating it.

What always strikes me when I watch that ep now is that these woman are having this conversation in a way that makes it clear that the idea that Lucy could be nursing her baby just does not exist. I keep expecting her to just say, "I don't have a bottle, I nurse him myself." It just shows how culturally so much has changed even now that TV shows can show this or at least acknowledge it.

Granted, Lucy wasn't even allowed to use the word "pregnant" but that scene always makes me a little creeped out at how artificial the whole presentation of childbearing is.

[ias.livejournal.com]

Very few women cannot breastfeed with good education and support

Should of course read without instead of with (that's the second time in the past 15 minutes I've typo'd with for without)

[gorgeousnerd]

Amen on both gay marriage and breastfeeding. While I never intend to have any children, I think it's completely stupid that people freak out about a mother nursing her child in public. I think it's fine if a woman chooses not to breastfeed on her own, but getting pushed into not doing it is just unacceptable. It's hard enough being a mother without being ostracized for just feeding a child.

[kiffle.livejournal.com]

I still think it's a choice. *shrug* My sister didn't breastfeed her three daughters. They're all perfectly healthy. Perhaps that isn't always the case, but I'd be livid if anyone suggested to her that she was wrong or a bad parent or whatever for making the choice she did. I don't think she should be made to feel guilty any more than a woman who *can't* breastfeed should.

I guess I just feel that pressure in either direction is wrong.

[potatomaker.livejournal.com]

The funny thing about nursing and weightloss is that you can actually lose a ton of pregnancy weight by nursing faster than with anything else. I'm glad you haven't let others deter you from doing what you think is best for you and your child. Why does it make people uncomfortable? I don't understand. I'm glad you posted about this because I know that I've met people who have complained about this sort of thing and it's the same people who act all immature when they see food from another country they don't understand. It's a form of intolerance and convenient rationalization. "It's good to support one aspect of women's right but some others are just gross" seems to be the logic at work.

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

Well, it won't surprise you to hear that I agree with you about all these topics.

However, free speech and hurt feelings are a tricky intersection -- a collision, often -- and if someone wants to express an opposition to breastfeeding in a blog, it's hard for me to object, in the same way and for the same reason I can't really object if someone wants to write fic about Snape-as-pedophile.

[kiffle.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely not saying it's not beneficial for a child to be breastfed overly purely formula-fed. I just don't think it's right to vilify a woman who chooses not to do so, any more than it's right to give a hard time to mothers nursing in public. Heidi used the words "not justifiable", and that doesn't seem right to me. Whatever a woman's personal reason for choosing not to breastfeed, it's her right to make that choice, in my opinion. Perhaps I wouldn't feel that way if I'd been a sickly child, or if anyone else in my family who wasn't breastfed had been sickly or something like that. But none of my non-breastfed family members have had any sorts of persistant illnesses, etc, so my view may be skewed.

[cleverthylacine]

You know, this kind of thing makes me very, very angry, so I debated not answering you.

But I have to say this, Heidi.

Whether or not you believe there's a justifiable reason not to breastfeed, you are not the boss of every woman in the world, and they don't have to justify themselves to me. I took a lot of shit from people like you when I was pregnant, and if the baby had lived I'd have taken a lot more of it. I happen to require psychiatric medication. They don't know that the medication is harmful to nursing babies, but it hasn't been around long enough for me to feel certain that it is NOT.

And no stranger has the RIGHT to demand to know that about me, to know why I refused to even consider the matter, because a medication that has been around less than 30 years and can fuck up your brain potentially does NOT equate to allergies--I HAVE allergies, and I could live with passing them on better than I could live with the possibility of screwing up my kid's brain, and it is NOT MY OBLIGATION TO TELL ANYONE WHY I chose not to do this, ESPECIALLY STRANGERS ON THE STREET OR THE INTERNET.

I tell you, if I ever see you harassing someone for not breastfeeding, someone that you don't know, I will say something.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

The thing is, though, that LJ changed their rule in late May after telling someone to remove her icon of a nursing baby from "default" status. So it's not enforcement of an existing rule, the rather creation of a new one.

[phoenixsong]

OK, here's an example of what I would consider "boobnazi-ism" (if you'll excuse the term for the sake of the example):

A friend of mine gave birth in September; in the months prior to giving birth she joined the BF LJ community, and was adamant that BF was the only way to go, bought completely into the idea that formula is bad, etc. etc.

Her daughter turned out to have reflux. However, it took some time (a few months) to determine this; and in the meantime, the BF comm was pressuring her not only to not give up on BF, but to avoid formula at all, even if the doctor recommended it. They told her to have an entire nurse-on-demand weekend to fix the problem. They told her to lie to the doctors about giving formula (that is, say she was giving formula but not actually do it). They told horror stories that if so much as a drop of formula crossed her daughter's lips, her BF relationship would be ruined forever and ever. All this, as her baby was LOSING weight, and CPS was called, and the words "failure to thrive" were bandied with CPS, and several other factors made my friend truly frighted that she would lose her child -- and she was getting overwhelming guilt that she was somehow failing her child, not doing enough to make sure BF would work. Somehow, this was obviously all HER fault, even as the symptoms indicated there was a medical issue to blame.

Eventually, the doctors diagnosed the reflux, and my friend actually found that in addition to giving the reflux meds, giving some formula in the morning meant her child would happily BF the rest of the day.

There is a line between advocating BF, and the attitude promoted by this LJ comm. I can't speak for others, but when someone mentions "boobnazis," THIS is the kind of thing that comes to my mind.

[macloudt.livejournal.com]

WORD on breastfeeding. I know several women in the UK who have been asked to leave restaurants or even park benches when breastfeeding; there's still a negative image of breastfeeding there and I've heard a lot of women call it "a filthy habit" or some such. I stopped taking my babies to my in-laws because I was asked to leave the room when breastfeeding. I've never understood why bottle feeding is "convenient" when all I had to do when my babies cried at night was stumble into their room, pick them up and whip a boob out. I had to stop breastfeeding David early for the sake of my own health and I HATED using bottles. I'm done with having babies, too, but I'll miss being pregnant and breastfeeding.

[cleverthylacine]

I've already said what I think about people who get in each other's business over breast vs bottle, though I will say that 20 years ago people believed bottle was healthier and did the same thing to breast feeding women and they don't seem to have learned from it, because they think being RIGHT (according to current data, in their own minds) gives them the right to go out of bounds on other people.

But I will say this.

Breastfeeding? Yes, absolutely appropriate to do in public. Anywhere and everywhere, if the baby needs it.

However, there is a difference between feeding your child, which is a necessary act, and making livejournal icons of the process that contravene the guidelines of the site by showing exposed nipple (isn't that supposed to be in the baby's mouth anyway) and areola, and making them the default, so that you end up using them everywhere unless you think about it. Feeding your child is a good and necessary thing. But making a default icon out of anything is saying that this is how you want to represent yourself, and making a default icon that violates rules of a site, is saying that you are doing it on purpose to p*ss people off, and I have far less sympathy for THAT motivation than I do for the motivation to take the best care of one's own baby. Especially when the comm is called boob_nazis--please, explain to me how this is not a group of people who don't want to be offensive, I want to hear that.

On gay marriage, we're on the same side.

But on this one, I'm with SixApart.

[ashavah]

And I think that it is very important to give women confidence about nursing, to make them feel that it's something that they should feel comfortable doing whenever their baby needs it. And things like the words I read on many of your LJs - well, if you had a friend with a newborn, would you ask her not to nurse in front of you? Would you tell her it makes you feel oogy to see a baby nursing? If she nursed in front of you, in a private home or a public space, would you tell her that she was shoving her breastfeeding, or her breasts, into other people's faces?

Wordy McWord.

JK

[elfundeb.livejournal.com]

On point 1:

If separation of church and state is a fundamental tenet of the Constitution, then why does it permit a religious ceremony to confer civil rights on partners, gay or straight? Our government's first error occurred in following English common law's determination of an individual's civil and economic rights (or lack thereof) on the basis of a religious event. Of course, the anti-gay-marriage folks wouldn't be any less offended, and would probably campaign to deny gays any partnership rights.

On point 2:

I recall my sister's retort, in the context of a proposed ban on breastfeeding in restaurants, except in the ladies' room: "Would you want to have your food served to you in a restaurant bathroom?" The ban failed, fortunately.