Oh, how the mammary fixation plays out in this country. Gabrielle Redfern, a candidate for city commission in Miami Beach, was criticized “for breast-feeding her 1-year-old daughter, Elsie, during Mayor David Dermer’s recent State of the City address.” Mind you, Miami Beach allows topless sunbathing on its beaches.
Yesterday, 16 women held a “nurse-in” in support of Redfern, breast-feeding their babies at a Miami Beach Commission meeting. More below:
State law says a woman can breast-feed her child anywhere she is otherwise legally allowed to be. But even in a city where topless sunbathing is common, others say there should be limits. Yahoo News
Is part of the problem that what Gabrielle Redfern did was too earthy, too human for the cerebral, power-suit-attired, helmet-hair sphere of government?
Can any of you imagine Kay Bailey Hutchison or Maria Cantwell breastfeeding their infants on the Senate floor? Or sauntering down the aisle in pigtails and jeans?
So are basic biological, nurturing, relaxed acts and informal behaviors verboten in political settings?
I am passionate about the importance of breast-feeding. Besides the nutritional and health values of breast milk, breastfeeding builds an intimate bond between mother and child.
I also noticed that breastfeeding forced me to s-l-o-w down, and just “be” with my baby. Maybe the slowness and gentleness of breastfeeding is too informal in a room devoted to Robert’s Rules of Order and carefully chosen political speech.
A couple more things:
I’d never have made it without La Leche League, whose members also taught me so much about the gentler art of mothering. If you’re becoming a parent soon, check out this wonderful group.
One more thing about breastfeeding: It taught me what breasts are really for.
The name “La Leche League” was chosen, I understand, to use in a culture at a time when it was unacceptable to use the word “breast.” In the ’50s breastfeeding was far from the societal norm and there was a general prudishness that, thankfully, has diminished considerably over the years. In the ’90s, many more women are giving their babies the best start by breastfeeding, thanks in great part to the work of La Leche League. The organization was at the leading edge of this change.
It’s a war, basically, between the Goddess and all those who would assault and rape her. Anything remotely natural and human is forbidden by those who would detach us from Our Mother Earth and smother us in concrete and dependence upon the mortal gods of the Ruling Class.
My daughter-in-law continued to breast feed in meetings at the National Gallery in DC until my grandson hit six months and started being disruptive. She then decided to be a stay-at-home-mom because my son is able to support her and his children without her salary.
I really look forward to the day when an elected representative sits in her chair in Congress and nurses her child. Do you think I’ll live long enough for that to happen?
Wouldn’t that be wonderful? And, most ironically, it’ll be the “keep ’em barefoot and pregnant” types who will protest 🙂
For the heck of it, I cross-posted at DailyKos.
Presumably women can’t be topless at work or at the restaurant. Just playing devils advocate here – why is breastfeeding OK, but breasts aren’t, and why is footage of a birth OK, but a vagina isn’t?
This ongoing stupidity lately has really gotten me down. First of all when a woman breastfeeds in public unless you happening to ogling the mother half the time you can’t even tell she’s breast feeding. So I’ve never gotten why this is such a horrible problem when you don’t see the offending breast anyway.
So this seems simply to be the idea once again of anything remotely sexual to all these repressed lunatics. If I didn’t know better I’d say all these morons railing about all this ‘sex’ stuff are sexual deviants and any little thing like even thinking or seeing a woman breast feeding in public will set them off.
I may not have “working” breasts, but nevertheless I consider myself a “lactivist”. My son was breastfed until he was almost four, and my daughter just turned two and is going strong (my wife “tandem nursed” for about six months). I’m so glad you highlighted this issue.
As a side note, we were really disgusted recently with SNL’s Tina Fey, whom we used to really like. She made a very negative comment (as part of a “joke”) about women who nurse their kids at the airport–something about how she was disgusted to “have to see that”. Ugh, ugh, ugh!
Alan
Maverick Leftist
Here’s what I wrote to them:
I love your show and watch it every Saturday with my husband. However, Tina Fey’s comment/joke about how uncomfortable it is for her to sit next to a breastfeeding woman in the airport, ruined the whole show for me…I am normally a huge Tina Fey fan, loved Mean Girls, blah blah blah …i adore and enjoy her sharp feminist wit, but this joke really upset me. I see breastfeeding as a feminist issue alongside freedom of choice and birth options, and was really surprised and saddened to hear Tina Fey sound like John Ashcroft (remember when he covered up those statues because he couldn’t bear to be near some breasts?!?)…perhaps she would feel more comfortable if i nursed my kid outta plastic bottles with a fake rubber nipple, or maybe she should see that breastfeeding your kid is a right every woman has and she should expand her mind just a tiny little bit.
I am sad to say this, but i will not be watching Weekend Update any longer. I also refuse to let people like her stop me from nursing my children in public. In fact, i intend to flash everyone my indecent breasts just to piss them off. grrrrrrrrr.
Former Fey Fan and mother to a Future Feminist who will breastfeed wherever she damn well pleases,
Kate
I really try to breastfeed in public to show that it is normal, loving, convenient, and part of life. I don’t wear nursing shirts, i don’t flash people (on purpose 😉 but i don’t try to hide in dark corners or gross bathrooms (unless my nurslings need some quiet space to chill out). I want to be a role model for my daughter (whom i hope will breastfeed) and my son (who i hope will encourage his partner to) and other women and young girls who might not have ever seen a woman breastfeed before. I take my kids most places with me (concerts—non-smoking of course) art museums, poetry slams, political debates and rallies, symphonies, my college classes (with permission from the class and professor of course) etc. They have learned how to act in these places and others have learned that my children go with me and i can mother and nurse and change a diaper while discussing Derrida and post-modern philosophy. Breastfeeding while doing other things isn’t hard and if us women do want it all (career and motherhood) then we have to change the work place and public space to make it more friendly to breastfeeding.
Why not breastfeed your kid at a board meeting (talk about multitasking!—maybe it would change the way success is defined. Or at least, add a new definition to what is acceptable in the public political sphere. Carol Mahoney from NY is a big breastfeeding advocate in Congress.
Kate
My daughter was ten weeks early and weighed two and a half pounds when she was born. For the first few weeks she was in NICU, they wouldn’t let me nurse her. I had to express the milk and then they’d put it in the little “preemie” bottles. “She’s so small,” the (male) doctors would solemnly intone, “she needs to be using all of her energy for growing, not using it up on suckling.” Dolts. Mammary glands and mammary ducts are surrounded by smooth muscle. When the milk “lets down,” it practically squirts. Once they get it going, the kid basically just has to open her mouth and catch.
If I had any doubts about that, they were erased one day when we were on the bus and I was more-or-less discreetly nursing my daughter. For some reason, she decided to pull away from the breast. Milk shot about 6 feet down the aisle. So much for discretion.
(Once I got her home, of course, I could nurse her whenever she felt like it. On her first visit back to the docs, they marveled at how much weight she’d gained, like it was some miracle. Like I said – dolts.)