Typhoid can be spread through urine, although it’s not as common as being spread via feces -
Breastfeeding, otoh, poses no public health risks.
Maybe he was using a catheter bag?
Another difference is time. Urination, even if we include clothing adjustments and washing your hands, takes a few minutes, tops. Breastfeeding takes 20-45 minutes. And it needs to be done even more often than urination. Demanding that women remove themselves from social and shopping endeavors for that much time is, I believe, placing an undue burden on their well being and freedom of movement.
Also, to a great degree, if you have to pee and you’re in an inappropriate place, you can hold it. If you can’t, you can wear pads or undergarments or a urinary bag. So you can, without causing harm, delay your urination until you get to a bathroom.
A baby should be fed on demand, according to [insert alphabet soup of medical and world health authorities here]. They can’t hold their need without causing harm, and without causing a public disturbance.
Babies get special treatment. They actually get to pee and poop in public as well, they just wear diapers, so we don’t know when they do it (usually). They get to do this because they physically can’t hold it, and when they are hungry, they can’t wait. They get to sleep in public, which is something that we frown upon adults doing, and they even get to scream in public, another things adults aren’t supposed to do unless they are in some kind of very serious distress and need help.
If babies could wait to eat, then breastfeeding in public would be less acceptable. But they can’t, so they don’t.
As a mom who breastfed, there were times when we were in a public location when feeding time rolled around . My choices were to let my child cry from hunger or feed her.
There has never been a time or a reason that I have had to pee in public .
It is an Apples vs. Oranges analogy.
It may not be the only reason, but I’d be pretty sure that people not wishing to encounter smelly puddles of urine in public places is a major factor.
A quick Google indicates that people who urinate in public may be charged with creating a public nuisance, disorderly conduct, indecent exposure, or even littering. Some places do have laws that specifically ban the act of public urination, but in other places it’s considered to fall under these broader laws. Indecent exposure is the only one where the urine itself would seem to be irrelevant to the crime.
So by your reasoning if there ever *had *been a time when you found it necessary to pee in public it would have been acceptable to do so.
If not, your rationale is meaningless.
mmm
It’s still not food and by no Western medical standards is it used for nourishing a child.
Again, apples and oranges. That’s like force feeding your child gravel and arguing that since he’s eating it, it’s food and therefore you’re not doing anything wrong.
If a person has a medical issue and pisses themselves in public, it’s unlikely they’ll be ticketed for that.
If a person is homeless and/or transgender or for some other reason is not allowed access to a bathroom and they piss themselves in public, they’ll very likely be ticketed for that, and it’s WRONG.
I’m having trouble coming up with any other scenarios in which one would be in public and have to urinate outside of a bathroom. If you can come up with one, I’ll take a crack at it.
(Mind you, I’m the girl who will go pee behind the camper if the portajohns are gross, so I may not be the best arbiter of public urination mores…)
Breasts are already permitted to be displayed, (at least on beaches where women have persuaded courts or legislatures that allowing topless men argues in favor of topless women).
In no place in the U.S. is the public display of genitalia permitted.* Breasts are not genitals.
From the above link:
- (At least, I am unaware of any nude beaches that are not privately owned.)
Hippie Hollow, Lake Travis, Travis County, Texas. You’ll be surprised to know Austin is in Travis County.
If you drive I-80 in remote stretches of Wyoming you’ll see a few cars parked off the road with drivers facing away from the road doing something which probably isn’t just enjoying the flat view. Ditto people hiking.
If places to pee were as few and far between as good places to breastfeed, people would be peeing on every lawn and wall.
BTW I read an anecdote about William F. Buckley peeing on some grass, saying to his companion “it’s sterile.”
True. Are people routinely ticketed for such public urination? I’ve never been, and I’ve been ducked behind a bush on the side of the highway before.
I think, in general, actual enforcement of public urination laws is mostly applied to drunks, rambunctious teens and the aforementioned disenfranchised groups. Which means it’s only kinda about the hygiene issues, but also about social control. (As, of course, are anti-breastfeeding actions. The control part, that is.)
“You guys go on ahead; I see a tree that looks dry.”
Nothing in your response changes my point.
mmm
When men are ticketed for public urination, they’re usually actually ticketed for exposure, because even though public urination might be illegal, you might get a sympathetic judge if you decide to pursue it who will listen to “UTI, couldn’t wait,” or something.
And a man with an ounce of common sense who intends to urinate in public will be very discrete, and make sure no children are around.
With women it’s even easier to keep yourself covered once you can find a place-- sometimes getting your garments arranged is very difficult.
FWIW, I personally, when I breastfed in public tried to minimize any exposure that might offend people, just because I wasn’t in the mood for handling confrontations when I had a hungry baby.
I’ve never met a woman who made a big show of “Pulling out the boob now: here it is,” or squirted a little milk on the floor of wherever she was before feeding the baby. A woman who did that wouldn’t be doing the rest of us any favors, but like I said, that’s not how public breastfeeding goes.
If every single public building had a nice, clean breastfeeding room, then I suppose public breastfeeding might be less acceptable, but I don’t see this happening soon. I think generally as a society, we have decided that breastfeeding in public is fine, therefore special facilities are not needed, but public urination is not cool, therefore special facilities are needed. There are a few dissenters on both issues, but there are going to be dissenters on everything.
For me I distinguish where in public this is occurring. One public place is not necessarily the same as another.
For instance I am happy to see people in swimsuits at the beach yet I would not want to see someone in a swimsuit eating dinner in a fine dining restaurant I am at.
It has nothing to do with prudishness for me. I am fine with nudity and women’s breasts are great in my opinion. I am not fussed by any of it. That said I do not want to see a woman breast feeding while I am at a nice restaurant anymore than I would want to see a man lift his shirt and expose his breast while I am eating.
I think there can (or should) be time and place restrictions. Just like some places say no shoes, no shirt, no service so too I think it is fine (morally…I realize the law says otherwise) to say no breastfeeding in some places. In a park fine. In a nice restaurant no. If the woman wants to dine in such a place and bring her baby I see no reason why she can’t pump and feed the child with a bottle. My sister did this with her kids. She would breast feed as much as possible but knew there were occasions where she could not do that so she would bottle feed her kids with pumped milk on those occasions. You’ll have to take my word for it that her kids were not harmed by this.
I think equating urination to breast feeding misses the point.
I think the defense that “breast feeding is natural” and therefore should be allowed is where the error in argument lies.
Yes it is natural. So is peeing and pooping and a whole host of other things that we prefer to not to witness in public. There is nothing inherent in being “natural” that magically makes it acceptable. Indeed it tells us nothing whatsoever. It is neither here nor there by itself.
Some breastfed babies won’t take a bottle. My son wasn’t one of them, but my breast pump broke when he was five months old. At that point, he was already eating a little bit of cereal and fruit (he was really big for his age), so we just decided not to replace the pump, and get formula or actual food and water for the rare occasion that my husband took him somewhere by himself. The boychik had had formula as a newborn, because I couldn’t produce enough milk the first few weeks, so I was comfortable with that, but some parents wouldn’t be, especially people with a family history of food allergies.
Anyway, breast pumps cost money. So do bottles, and washing them is a real pain.
That said, I didn’t take an infant to a restaurant that wasn’t a “family dining” type place. But it is possible to be very discreet when breastfeeding; there are even covers made specifically for this, that are breathable for the baby, but dark, so you can’t see what’s happening under them.
If pumping and bottle-feeding works for a particular family, that’s fine, but it’s not a universal solution. Just because you “see no reason why” a woman can’t pump and bottle-feed doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of reasons you haven’t thought of.
Thanks for the info that not all babies will accept a bottle. I think I probably knew that but forgot.
I think this highlights the crux of the issue. How far should society go to accommodate women who are breast feeding? (Actually this question can apply to many things such as handicap access but breast feeding is the topic here.)
I absolutely agree some accommodation should be made but should that accommodation have no limit?
I would hope these mothers would use their good judgement like it seems you did and I know my sister did (my sister used the covers you described which I was happy for…I am fine with breasts but seeing my sister’s breast would be weird to me). Choosing appropriate restaurants, using covers and so on makes sense and I think most of society gets on fine like that.
It is just those few who either lack that decision making or set out to make a point that make it hard on everyone else.