RE: Breastfeeding in public
June 11, 2017 at 9:46 pm
(This post was last modified: June 11, 2017 at 9:50 pm by bennyboy.)
It's not strange that breasts are viewed sexually. Breasts are a secondary sexual characteristic, and our monkey brains (I mean men's) constantly assess women for potential fitness, in addition to various components of body shape: hip size, facial symmetry, etc. Hips bear babies, breasts feed them, and a well-developed face shows someone who's likely fit enough to survive long enough to raise a baby. That's probably why some muslim cultures require women to cover their faces-- because a healthy face will give a man a hard-on, and this brings him shame.
I got the ban hammer dropped at me once because I showed an assortment of nude images, including some of naked children playing on the beach. In this case, there was a 100% disconnect between my views of what is sexual or dirty, and those of others-- so much of a disconnect that the mods (and others) literally couldn't understand how I couldn't realize that those pictures of kids were dirty, sexual, inappropriate images; and that I couldn't understand how THEY could possibly view children, in any context at all, as sexual objects. They felt disturbed by my view, and I felt disturbed by theirs.
I think the breast issue is similar in a sense-- to some people, breasts in any context are so OBVIOUSLY sexual and dirty that they are not capable of getting your point; and breasts are so OBVIOUSLY non-sexual at least in the breastfeeding context that you can't really see their point.
I think in general, we are still stuck with the Victorian fascination for machinery and the consequent hatred of biology, and are still offended and embarrassed by ALL our bodily functions-- because if you shit, you're an animal, if you pee, you're an animal, and if you have sex, you're an animal. That's why almost 100% of our curse words are body words: fuck, shit, piss, bitch, cunt, dick, asshole, etc.
The solution, in my opinion, isn't just to argue that boobs are okay when breastfeeding. It's to completely stamp out the Victorian / Christian views of humans as special, and to see people (including ourselves) as animals. And that includes things we consider sexual-- there's nothing WRONG with breasts. . . or penises, or vaginas or shit, piss or semen, or vaginal blood, or anything else.
To me, the only reason we shouldn't just walk around in our birthday suits, in any context, is only about hygiene: we don't want to sit on a bus where people's bodily fluids have made contact. Women don't want to have involuntary genital contact with men while standing on a subway. That kind of thing.
I got the ban hammer dropped at me once because I showed an assortment of nude images, including some of naked children playing on the beach. In this case, there was a 100% disconnect between my views of what is sexual or dirty, and those of others-- so much of a disconnect that the mods (and others) literally couldn't understand how I couldn't realize that those pictures of kids were dirty, sexual, inappropriate images; and that I couldn't understand how THEY could possibly view children, in any context at all, as sexual objects. They felt disturbed by my view, and I felt disturbed by theirs.
I think the breast issue is similar in a sense-- to some people, breasts in any context are so OBVIOUSLY sexual and dirty that they are not capable of getting your point; and breasts are so OBVIOUSLY non-sexual at least in the breastfeeding context that you can't really see their point.
I think in general, we are still stuck with the Victorian fascination for machinery and the consequent hatred of biology, and are still offended and embarrassed by ALL our bodily functions-- because if you shit, you're an animal, if you pee, you're an animal, and if you have sex, you're an animal. That's why almost 100% of our curse words are body words: fuck, shit, piss, bitch, cunt, dick, asshole, etc.
The solution, in my opinion, isn't just to argue that boobs are okay when breastfeeding. It's to completely stamp out the Victorian / Christian views of humans as special, and to see people (including ourselves) as animals. And that includes things we consider sexual-- there's nothing WRONG with breasts. . . or penises, or vaginas or shit, piss or semen, or vaginal blood, or anything else.
To me, the only reason we shouldn't just walk around in our birthday suits, in any context, is only about hygiene: we don't want to sit on a bus where people's bodily fluids have made contact. Women don't want to have involuntary genital contact with men while standing on a subway. That kind of thing.
