Breasts are just for feeding babies?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve often herd feminists say that breasts shouldn’t be sexualized as their primary purpose is to feed babies. I am not sure that is true.

A woman generally gets breasts as she enters puberty, that is to say when her body starts to achieve sexual maturity. As far as I know human women are the only animal in which that is true. For every other mammal they only enlarge for pregnancy and go back to being just nipples for the rest of the time. Why would a human woman develop breasts when they don’t have any babies to feed when no other mammal does?

I think that unlike other mammals the breasts have another, equally important job, sexual attraction. The fact that a woman breasts feeds generally a year or less shows that having them for other reasons is important as well. After all a woman with 6 kids is likely to be breast feeding them for less than 12 years compared to their entire adult lifetime that they are attracting and keeping their mate. That difference in the number of years of utility achieved between feeding children and sexual attraction would seem to imply that having them maybe even more about their sexual function than their ability to serve up meals for JR.

2

Are you familiar with the cow?

3

Then neither should faces, hips, asses or legs, since they all serve other primary purposes too. Really, sex should just involve sliding your penis in and out of that vagina until you ejaculate, and nothing more.

4

Who has said this and in what context? Please provide some examples.

5

The other day, I was reading a thread about sexual fetishes, and I felt like sharing. Problem is, I don’t really have any weird fetishes. Except that I thought of one: I have a boob fetish. There is no particularly good reason for my attraction to boobs. They’re baby food dispensers, not sex organs. Hence, my fascination with boobs might be due to some infantile hangup, Freudian-style. It’s perverse, really.

Then I remembered that I share this fetish with every single man who ever lived, everywhere, ever. Since forever, everywhere. All of them. Except maybe one weirdo, once. At least the ones I’ve met. So I guess it’s not really a particularly interesting fetish. And I think getting people to stop sexualizing breasts would be like telling the wind to stop blowing, or the ocean knock it off with being wet.

I’ve never heard a feminist say that, FWIW.

6

That’s fine. My dick is mostly used for making them.

7

Yes, please, give some examples - as a feminist I’ve never heard of such a thing. Heck, even the lesbian feminists I know like to have their happy fun bags played with.

Now, I have heard the case that breasts should not be publicly fetishized to the point where we are uncomfortable when a woman breastfeeds in public because “hey, sex.” And they shouldn’t be fetishized to the point where I need to say “hey, my eyes are here!” when talking to a guy. But I’ve never heard that they shouldn’t be sexualized at all.

8

People are saying it. I don’t know. I’ve heard it dozens of times. I mean, they are saying it. Because I would never hear it if no one ever said it. And I’m the best listener there is. None better. I love listening. And I love women. Especially women with big breasts. Women love me, too.

9

Um, no. It’s not a fetish in society where women habitually go topless, for example. And in different times and places men have has a primary fetish of legs, asses, hips, necks, lips, feet, and probably just about any part of a woman’s body.

Breasts are probably the most common of these, but they are by no means the only ones.

10

A random Sparks lyric interlude…

“For months, for years,
Tits were once a source of fun and games at home
And now she says, tits are only there to feed our little Joe
So that he’ll grow”

11

Not the same thing. A cow’s udders are almost entirely mammary gland, while a woman’s breasts are mostly decorative fat. That’s why breast size and human milk production aren’t correlated.

12

I have to say I share the fetish, but it is not universal. I once had a PhD student who fetishized the flat-chested look and his wife embodied that. But yes, the breasts have been sexually selected for size, probably for tens of thousands of years and if some feminists dispute this, well that is their problem, but the facts are undeniable.

13

Of course they are a sex organ. I am not into boobs larger than average myself but a nice rack always catches my eye in an involuntary way. They tend to for even young boys. The sexual element is so strong that it is a ubiquitous in all media including the nightly news and advertising for basic goods.

Women know that just as well as men. That is why push-up bras and fancy lingerie were invented. It doesn’t even really matter if some feminists think they aren’t sexual. They titillate many men on a deeply sexual level so therefore they are.

You can’t even refer to feminists as a group either. They believe many different things. Some of them are rational and positive and some are flat-out insane. There are women’s groups that advocate masturbating while breast-feeding because it helps bonding with your infant through a strong orgasm. No, I am not going to give you a cite for that. I was unfortunate to stumble across it myself by accident. I am sure anyone here is clever enough to Google it if they want to share in the horror. It is a real but fringe feminist/mommy viewpoint.

14

Well, it’s not necessarily about size. (Personally, I tend to prefer them on the smaller side, if someone puts a gun to my head and gives me the choice, but I’m really not very picky.) Even though your student had a thing for the flatter chest, I would dare to wager that he still might find that chest titillating. In other words, he still had an interest in boobs. Otherwise, the size should basically be irrelevant for him.

We do seem to have a particular cultural hangup, at our particular time and place in history, with a basically paradoxical body shape: Thin body, large boobs. Which I wish we could just get the heck over already, since it leads to such insanity as breasts implants. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is just an idiotic way of ruining a perfectly good natural boob.

In fairness, though, for the most part, it seems that this cultural fetish isn’t all that well reflected in people’s actual preferences. Most people, in practice, seem to be happy enough to be with partners with naturally occurring body shapes.

Further thoughts about how much of our boob fetishism is cultural vs natural: I have said before that the forbidden nature of boobs is no small part of what makes them so interesting. If women want their boobs less fetishized, the most effective way would probably be to take them out and parade them around as much as possible. As soon as the novelty wore off, men and other gynephiles would probably get bored with them quickly enough. Or, if not bored, exactly, at least used to them.

In societies where women habitually go topless, and no one gets worked up about it, I wonder how much is the chicken and how much is the egg. Do women in such societies walk around topless because boobs are less of a fetish, or are boobs less of a fetish because the women walk around topless?

As for the critique of feminists: Until some cites are produced, the feminists in questions are basically just alleged ones so far.

15

I remember the zoologist and sociobiologist Desmond Morris saying something about there being a correlation between the breasts and the buttocks - breasts basically resembling buttocks, but with nipples on them.

Some female primates have sexual swellings - enlarged buttock/genital area - over the course of their menstrual cycle. This is thought to be a signal of fertility and male primates are attracted to these swellings, preferring - and competing for - females with the largest swellings.

Morris linked the development of the human breast with a change in the human sexual “mating” position - from “doggy-style” to “missionary”. With the participants now typically being face-to-face, this would lead to the promotion of emotional bonding between them and subsequent benefits in terms of raising future offspring together.

16

Breasts can be used to feed babies? Who knew?

17

The point feminists are trying to make-- sometimes with poor phrasing-- is that breasts shouldn’t be sexualized over and above their purpose of feeding babies, to the point that naked breasts are illegal in public even when they are being used to feed a baby. Which I agree with.

However, I don’t think that’s really been the case since the 1970s. Almost every municipality has a statute permitting a woman to breastfeed any place she is legally allowed to be.

There are individual jerks who want to tell women to cover up, but the law is not on their side, and that should be the response, not “Hey, breasts aren’t sexual!”

FWIW, I also have met a few women who didn’t want to breastfeed, because their husbands didn’t want to “share.” That’s pretty dysfunctional, if you ask me, because an adult, who should check his emotions at the door, is letting them overrule the best interests of his child. There are reasons not to breastfeed, some very good. But that is a pretty bad one, if you ask me.

18

Question from person who doesn’t know. Do breasts just stop milk production if you aren’t breastfeeding? I always assumed you would have to do something with the milk. How do wet nurses breastfeed babies? Do they have to have just had babies themselves?

I’ve known so many people with breastfeeding issues/pain/chafed nipples etc. it’s just #3,940 of reasons I don’t particularly want to give birth. Adoption all the way.

19

Someone will come along with better information, but yes, breasts need to be “milked” (there’s got to be a better term for it) in order to continue production.

My wife had to discontinue breastfeeding Beta-chan because of the subsequent pregnancy and they dried up. Once they are stopped, it’s gone.

A friend had a baby who wasn’t breast feeding well and her husband said to the kid, “hey if you’re not using them, can I play with 'em?”

Living forever in Japan, land of small breasts, it was so weird hanging out at the community center with breast-feeding mothers. Especially since we were all down on the floor.

Every time I would go there, I’d have to remind myself, “Talk to their face or look at their kids. Never look directly into the sun.”

20

My sister had two kids 2 yrs apart and breastfed all the way through and 2 more years for the new baby while slowly weaning the eldest.

Her doctor was fine with that.