This is also aimed at Neverfly..

Originally Posted by
Ascended
Really just where did you get this idea from? It seems more than clear to everybody else that Neverfly was explaining that mothers should be allowed to breast feed in normal establishments without being forced to go into a rest room to do it in private, he never mentioned anything about urinating. He was very articulate in his point, one that seems fair and reasonable that I'm sure most right thinking people would agree with, so really why or how have you managed to get hold of the wrong end of the stick?
Is it that you are really so unaware of the problems that some mothers face in being banished to feed their children in private because of proprietors banning women from feeding their children in public? If this is the case let me firmly assure to you that this practice does take as many mothers can confirm.
Did you not read his posts? At all?
Did you miss the part where
he said that he can't whip it out and pee in public and women should perform such bodily functions such as breastfeeding in public? He likes to pee in private, and he expressed some comments about how he'd imagine women would want to breastfeed in private,
because he likes to pee in private. Because you know, breastfeeding and peeing are both bodily functions and so, are somewhat the same.. In his mind perhaps. I don't know about you, but as a thinking person, I don't view peeing and breastfeeding as being in the same league. And then he goes on to talk about women's sense of entitlement when it comes to their breasts and breastfeeding. In other words, if he can't pee in public, then women should not feel entitled because they have breasts to just apparently flop them out in public and feed their baby. In short, men can't whip their penis out in public and take a "whizz" in public, women should afford the public the same courtesy and either find somewhere private to breastfeed or apparently plan ahead - for those poor women who can't express, well, they can stuff the baby under a shawl and hide in shame while feeding their child.
Having been a woman who was harassed by people for breastfeeding on a beach, while wearing a bikini no less (wearing a skimpy bikini was not offensive, moving aside one part of the bikini while baby fed and baby's head covered the area and nothing was showing, was apparently offensive to one woman), I found Neverfly's comments to be insulting, overbearing and outdated. It is the belief that the breast is wholly sexual and does not serve a purpose aside from pleasing men. I find the comparison in the argument that breastfeeding is akin to peeing to be insulting. Feeding a child is not like peeing. I don't think it is fair and reasonable and it is that kind of argument that is often used against breastfeeding women in public in that they are told 'I can't pee in public, you shouldn't be taking out your boob in public'. And it is offensive.
To equate it to
a sense of entitlement is even more offensive. Perhaps he thinks women take their tops off while breastfeeding in public or flop them both out onto the table and say 'voila'? As someone who has breastfed in public, it is stressful. Women don't flop out their boobs in public and plonk the baby on it. It is something we try to do without no one noticing and do it quickly so the baby can be fed and the screaming can stop. The only entitlement that exists in breastfeeding is for the child. Because a child is entitled to be fed. But to say that women shouldn't complain because normally they would complain if people stared at their boobs, so they shouldn't complain about breastfeeding in public. We don't take our tops off to breastfeed. We don't lift up our clothes and expose our breasts far and wide when we breastfeed. Usually, all you will see is the baby in front of the woman's chest and that is it. It's not as if she's standing there lifts up her top, drops her maternity bra and shakes her boobs for all to see. Maternity bra's themselves are designed and built so that feeding is discreet, with side panels that shield what the baby's head does not block. And in no way, shape or form is it the same as whipping out one's genitals and peeing, which is the exact argument Neverfly tried to use in this discussion, or
comparing breastfeeding to the urgency of needing to poo when one has "the runs" - which he also tried to say in this discussion.
It is attitudes like those expressed by Neverfly is why women are harassed when they try to breastfeed in public.
My favourite part is when he said that the baby can simply wait.
Here is a little something that perhaps he and others do not know or understand when it comes to breastfeeding. The breast can refill very quickly. When the baby starts to cry because it wants to feed, the woman's milk comes down. Literally, her breasts fill. The baby's cry acts almost like a trigger for this to happen. If you let the baby cry as you frantically run around looking for somewhere apparently private to feed or you let the baby wait, the baby screams more and what often happens, especially in the early months after the baby is born, the milk will start to leak out. She cannot control it. So what we do is use breast pads, to help soak this up, but sometimes, the nightmare happens and the pads aren't enough and it leaks down your top. Imagine this happening to a woman in public and it makes it 10 times worse than it should be. However, for the most part, women won't wait that long because their baby's usually cannot wait that long. Prolonged crying prior to feeding makes breastfeeding quite hard, because the baby will then gulp and usually be still grizzly as the it tries to get as much in as it can quickly, and in those early days, it can make attaching the baby quite tricky and makes breastfeeding quite painful, which then leads to issues like the baby puking immediately after or getting a stomach ache or the mother being even more stressed which can screw up the flow, her nipples and her mind as well.
And I can assure you, a child writhing in hunger when trying to feed it because you were too busy running around trying to find somewhere private and then trying to place shawls over yourself and blindly trying to place baby to the breast makes it an even bigger spectacle than it would have been if she just placed the baby at her chest and quickly reached under her collar to unclip the maternity bra and move the bottom of her top out a bit so the baby quite literally moves his head under and attaches or if she is wearing a maternity top, she just lifts the flap up slightly for the same thing to happen and usually no one would even know. But to compare that to peeing in public or the baby's need to be fed as being comparable to diarrhea? Come on!
These are the problems women face when breastfeeding. We don't do it because it's a sexual turn on and we get off on having men ogle our breasts in public. Far from it. We do it because it is best for our child.
So perhaps before you have a go at me, you should actually read what Neverfly actually said.