[Peace-discuss] Anti-lactating feminazis

[Regina Cassidy]

Sorry, David.  I don't get your point.

>>> David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> 09/07/06 9:06 AM >>>
To coin a phrase, you can't make this stuff up. JB
just has to be left-wing agent provocateur trying to
make right-wingers look utterly ridiculous. If so,
he's doing a wonderful job.

Column: The war on breasts: Where feminism and
motherhood are forced to do battle

John Bambenek

Posted: 9/7/06

A couple of months ago the cover of BabyTalk magazine
showed a picture of a breast-feeding child with his
mother, breast and all. Controversy ensued as critics
charged BabyTalk with inappropriate exposure of
breasts and one reader describing the image as
"disgusting". Controversy about breast-feeding is not
foreign to Champaign either. In 2000, a 32 year-old
mother temporarily lost custody of her child on sex
abuse charges for breast-feeding longer than the state
cared for. 

Earlier this summer, breast-feeding mothers were
harassed by staff at Sholem pool for breast-feeding in
public. Women caring for their children have been
harassed in restaurants, parks and pretty much
anywhere you find children congregating. 

The law is quite clear that breast-feeding is not
indecent or sexual. The medical community and
community health advocates have concluded
breast-feeding is what is best for the baby (and
usually the mother). However, there is still
tremendous public pressure against breast-feeding. 

Despite the fact I see more boobs walking across the
Quad, or for that matter watching C-SPAN, somehow
breast-feeding is apparently too much for this
promiscuous college town. After all, Champaign County
does have a syphilis epidemic for a reason. A society
that uses breasts to sell every conceivable product on
the market is horrified by the concept of a breast
being used for its designed biological purpose. 

It could seem plausible to blame the religious right;
After all, they were responsible for the protests over
the infamous Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction of
2004. However, the religious right is generally more
child-friendly than those on the other part of the
political spectrum. The religious right supports women
having children in the first place, as opposed to the
left which supports slaughtering them on the altar of
abortion. 

Here is a more reasonable theory about the source of
resistance to breast-feeding: It collides head-on with
radical feminism. When former Harvard President
Lawrence Summers suggested there are biological
differences between men and women, he was run out of
town. Breast-feeding is the ultimate expression, next
to child-birth, that women are indeed different from
men. My Google image search for "lactating men" turned
up no pictures of breast-feeding men. It did turn up a
rather disturbing movie from the Netherlands that I
would rather not talk about. 

When feminism began as a philosophical movement, the
idea was that men and women were entitled to equal
respect and dignity. Neither I nor legitimate
Christianity has a problem with that proposition. At
some point a certain sect of feminists decided that to
have equality they had to insist there were absolutely
no differences between men and women. Instead of
respecting men as men and women as women, the entire
idea of gender had to be recreated. 

The result is "Sex in the City" feminism, where women
supposedly find fulfillment in acting like men. Or at
least like sex-crazed seventh grade boys. 

There is nothing in Christianity that comes into
conflict with breast-feeding. "Sex in the City"
feminism, on the other hand, has much to fear from
breast-feeding. That is why you will hear those people
label breast-feeding mothers as "nursing Nazis." 

Breast-feeding in public is a reminder of a reality
that resonates on the deepest level for women: their
maternal nature. It is a giving of one's body for the
benefit of another and comes in direct conflict to the
selfish nature of "Sex in the City" feminism and
society at large. It is rubbing the reality of the
maternal nature of women in their collective faces and
some do not want to put up with it. They would rather
have breasts be viewed as purely sexual objects. 

In short, "Sex in the City" feminism and
breast-feeding cannot coexist. 

On September 9th, 2006, the La Leche League of
Champaign-Urbana will host a breast-feeding awareness
walk at Meadowbrook Park in Urbana at 9:30am. It is a
sad statement about our society that there are
awareness walks on a perfectly normal biological
process; nevertheless, come out and support
motherhood. 

You would not be where you are without a mother who,
odds are, breast-fed you. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright 2006 The Daily Illini 

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