This rant brought to you courtesy of Delta Airlines

The BBQ Pit
1

What I am about to say may surprise some people: Women have breasts. :eek:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20805743-2703,00.html

You might have heard them referred as hooters, boobs, gazongas, honkers, headlights, rack, melons, knockers, tits, boobies, chest, tatas, juggs, bazookas, and even as dirty pillows. And although you wouldn’t know it from what passes as modern civilization, they are really nothing more than an organ for producing and delivering milk for human babies. However much we lace, enlarge, perk-up, make-up, show-off them they are still nothing but the human equivalent of cow udders.

What is surprising is that this is not a modern invention! Long before we walked upright we were already using these contraptions to feed our kids. This is something you might not have known if not for National Geographic and their scandalous photos of primitive people. Luckily, we don’t have to subject ourselves and society to this nomore. It is with much fanfarre, that we can announce that we don’t need to subject ourselves, and others to this shame. I couldn’t be happier.

OK, seriously. What the fuck is wrong with people who find offense in the sight of a baby suckling from mom’s tits? Really? Please explain it to me in small words so I can understand it.

How in the name of all things round with pointy nipples is it possible that we’ve come to the point of being offended by a boob. And a boob that has a human baby attached to it. Does that give men insta-hardons? Do women faint at the sight of the same thing they see every day in the mirror? What is it? Does it cause terrorism? Or encourage people to go out and rob banks?

Women are asked to go feed their babies in the bathroom. Or cover themselves (and the baby, obviously) with a blanket.

Going to the bathroom? To feed a baby? Are these people crazy? Would they like if they were invited to the bathroom to eat? How about their ugly face offends me, can they cover it with a blanket (preferably without eyeholes)? If their table manners offend me, can I request they go to the bathroom to eat? Do they need to stare at the boobs of breastfeeding moms? Is it mandatory?

My daughter is 16 mo, still breastfed. We went to Europe when she was a baby. Can you imagine a 20 hr traveling time without being able to breastfeed. What are you supposed to do? Feed the baby airline chicken? By the way, kudos to (most of?) Europe for their enlightened attitude towards breastfeeding.

This is not a US only problem. We are seeing a lot of that here in the Dominican Rep. Less and less women breastfeed, and less and less people are tolerant of breastfeeding in public. I just can’t wrap mind around the fact that anyone would be offended by public breastfeeding. Just can’t.

2

Me, neither. I wonder if ‘society’ will ever get over mammophobia.

3

Well, it involves public exposure of a breast, which is taboo in most social situations. For many people, uncovering one’s breasts—for whatever purpose—is still considered an act that should take place strictly in private.

Personally, I don’t mind public breastfeeding (I have the equipment myself but have never used it for its primary purpose). But not everybody feels the same way I do, and the change in social custom isn’t going to happen overnight.

Two things that IMHO would ease the transition would be (a) nursing mothers using lightweight scarves when they have to nurse in public, and (b) restoring the small lobby areas with couches that used to be common in women’s restrooms. But expecting mothers to breastfeed sitting on a restroom toilet, especially a toilet in a single-user restroom, is a reeeeeeally bad idea. Not only is it unpleasant for the mother, it’s unfair to the other people who need to use the restroom but are blocked out for 15-20 minutes while baby gets fed.
(The “it’s natural human behavior and humans have always done it” argument isn’t going to be sufficient, however, although you did handle it amusingly. There are lots of things that are natural human behavior which humans have always done that we nonetheless do not tolerate our fellow humans doing in public view. Yeah, there are valid reasons to tolerate public breastfeeding and not, say, public defecating or public masturbating, but they’re all equally natural and normal human behavior.)

4

While there are sanitary reasons why defecating and urinating should not be done in public, there is not such problem with breastfeeding anymore than there is in eating in public. There’s also a good reason why women should not feed in a bathroom, it is unsanitary. I don’t think anyone with a normal mind and body would like their food served in a bathroom, why would a baby be subjected to that?

The problem is not breastfeeding in public, the problem is the morons who find offense in that.

5

Unless the woman whips out her tits and swings 'em around for a bit before pulling the tassels off to feed Junior, I really don’t get how an instance of public breastfeeding can be seen as obscene.

6

I don’t know - I understand that you do need to feed an infant, but the child being breastfed was 22 months old. She could indeed have dined on airline chicken, cut into toddler-sized bites, with no problems. To watch you nurse a child in front of me would make me uncomfortable.

It may seem like the most natural thing to you. I don’t know you and quite frankly, don’t want to see it. It’s too intimate a thing to do in public.

Also, my son is 11. I don’t want him to see you expose yourself. That’s just rude to not consider all of the people around you, trapped on a plane while your almost two year old (I’m referring to the woman that filed the complaint) drinks from your exposed breast. Gross.

I breastfed my daughter in the privacy of my own home. I sure as hell didn’t keep it up for almost two years. She graduated to table food long before that. I would never had done something so personal on an airplane, and don’t understand those that think it’s OK. If you feel that breast is best fine, but pump it and give the kid a bottle. Heck, at that age, a sippy cup for that matter.

7

Right. Those are some of the “valid reasons” I was talking about. But my point was that you have to explicitly invoke those reasons in order to make a case for permitting public breastfeeding but not, say, public defecation. Just pointing out that breastfeeding is a natural human activity isn’t enough to make that case.

Because babies are unaware of the social taboos against eating food in a bathroom?

Mind you, I already went on record as opposing breastfeeding in toilet stalls, for a variety of reasons. But AFAICT, most breastfed infants have no social prejudice against eating in toilet stalls, so that’s not high on my list of reasons for opposing it.

I don’t think anybody considers public breastfeeding to be actually obscene, in the sense of deliberately lewd or pornographically provocative. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be considered indecent, immodest or improper simply because it violates social custom.

Heck, many people consider it indecent or improper to walk around barefoot in certain social settings, even though it’s generally accepted that there’s nothing obscene about feet.

Note again that I’m not agreeing with people who are opposed to public breastfeeding. I’m just pointing out that tradition and custom do support their position, and it doesn’t make sense to talk about it as though it were some spontaneous incomprehensible lunacy.

8

Let me see if I understand. The woman had been waiting for hours, while presumably no food had been served, and you expect a 22 mo kid to just be patient and wait till they take off and serve whatever passes for food in an airline (if they do serve food)? Or worse, should the mom be carrying an icebox with milk, or a medela pump? Just so they don’t offend somebody who could be permantently harmed mentally by the sight of a boob?

Excuse me, but I will choose my child over your prissiness any day of the week. As I said, some people offend me and I don’t demand they be removed from my sight.

9

That’s what those were for :smack: ? I remember them from when I was a little kid (when mom use to take me into the ladies room), but was always told they were there because “ladies need to lie down and rest” every now and then. Apparently even the girls’s bathroom at my middle and high schools had them.

10

Though I agree in general with your rant, I see no reason the mom couldn’t have brought appropriate food for a 22-month-old kid. There’s a bit of a difference in breastfeeding an infant or a toddler.

11

Your mom was essentially right, AFAIK; those ladies’-room couches were mostly for resting with menstrual cramps and similar “female troubles”. Back in the day, breastfeeding a baby even on a ladies’-room couch would probably have been seen as indecently over-public.

However, at the present time when public breastfeeding is less unheard-of but still not universally accepted, I think the ladies’-room couch would make a splendid compromise option. Breastfeeding mothers get a nice little sit-down on a comfortable seat in a peaceful, quiet area that isn’t a toilet stall, and the less avant-garde members of society aren’t confronted by nekkid boobies in a completely public place.

12

Oh, one other thing:

Well, if it’s “prissy” for them to object to you exposing your boob, isn’t it equally “prissy” for you to object to them staring at your boob?

Yes, I do understand why you feel there’s a difference between the two things, and on the whole I agree with you. I’m just pointing out that from some people’s viewpoint, you seem to be arbitrarily declaring that the rules are changed about breastfeeding not being proper public behavior, even if it offends them. So why shouldn’t they arbitrarily change the rules about boob-ogling not being proper public behavior, even if it offends you?

This is why etiquette conventions usually need to be altered fairly slowly and carefully, with oodles of compromise and mutual understanding. Once individuals start deciding that their own definition of “decent behavior” is the only one that matters and anyone who disagrees about it is just being “prissy” or “phobic” or “moronic”, civil society is headed for some turbulence.

13

I don’t mind them staring at my boobs anymore than I mind them staring at my nose. I just want to know why they have to stare at something that offends them. If a breast offends them then just stop looking and mind your own goddam business.

14

It is still unhygienic, and more dangerous than a grown up eating in a toilet stall. Which is why I objected to it, if you pay closer attention to my post.

15

And I suppose the mothers’ feelings don’t matter?

16

Did you read what I wrote?

Did you read what I wrote?

Golly, if you high-strung hos get your backs up like this when somebody who basically agrees with your position merely offers a few polite caveats, it’s no wonder you fly completely off the handle about people who actually disagree with you.

17

Breast milk is appropriate food for a toddler.

I still breastfeed my 23 month old, and I’ll tell you this much. It’d be a whole lot more embarrassing for me if I tried to go too terribly long between feedings, as I’d have two rather large wet spots on my blouse. (I don’t know though…maybe the audience would applaud a wet t-shirt contestant over a nursing toddler.)

Not to mention the confused tantrum my daughter would throw if she was sleepy and nothing but the boob would do.

18

That’s exactly the point I was going to make. Sure, a tiny infant has to be fed and if you can’t give a bottle for whatever reason, that’s one thing. But a 22 month old? Surely you could have some crackers or fruit or whatever it is little children snack on nowadays?

I’m really neither her nor there on public breast feeding. I think like any presumably personal (ish) action, one should be discrete when doing it in public. That doesn’t mean you need to hop into the bathroom stall, but perhaps sitting away from the main traffic area in Starbucks or perhaps covering yourself and the little one with a sheerish blanky/covering of some sort. My friend is about to pop with child any day now and I’m going to pick her up one of these. She is, for the most part, somewhat modest and this will allow her to discretely feed her (sure to be) adorable little one and not just put herself out there.

But yeah, I’d saying the defining factor in this case is the 22 month thing. At that age, I’m sure the child is eating something besides breast milk. And I can’t imagine someone traveling with a kid that age without a bag of the kid’s stuff. Why not throw some snacks in there?

19

Well, maybe they feel that as long as they’ve already been offended by inadvertently seeing a bare breast in public, they might as well make up for it as best they can with the erotic excitement of deliberate boob-ogling. Who knows? Once social conventions start going through a transition period like this, it’s hard to tell what behavior people will suddenly consider acceptable.

I heard a story about a friend’s friend who started breastfeeding in front of a stranger who seemed like a perfectly respectable middle-aged gentleman, but who then opened his fly and started spanking the monkey while staring at her breast, saying with a smile “If you can show that, why can’t I show this?” I hope and trust that’s only an urban legend, but I wouldn’t bet large amounts of money on it. Shocked or offended people can act very weird, especially where nudity of some sort is involved.

20

Whatever the age of the child, both mother and child will be uncomfortable if a feeding session passes and the child is not fed. The child because it’s accustomed to being fed and cuddled at set times, and the mom because overfull breasts hurt terribly (speaking from experience here). I personally think that 22 months is really pushing the limit for breast feeding, but I don’t know everything about the case. Yes, the mother COULD have expressed the milk, if she had the equipment with her and if she was able to express milk at all (I tried it, didn’t work for me). However, where could she have gone to do this? In a bathroom? There’s good sanitary reasons why that’s not appropriate, and just about anywhere else is, again, in public.

When I was nursing, about a quarter of a century ago, I used a light receiving blanket pinned to my shoulder to cover up my breast and my daughter’s face. I also wore pullover shirts exclusively, so I just had to pull my shirt up a bit, I didn’t have to unfasten my shirt. I did get a few requests from other women to watch, as they really enjoyed the sight of a nursing baby. It’s a very sweet sight, and I always let them. I don’t know how I would have handled such a request from a man.