Article by Ina May Gaskin

I was pleasantly surprised to see this response to an online article featuring the group "Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!", posted by none other than Ina May Gaskin. The eloquence and relevant reply reads much like her books, so I can only assume that it is genuine. I love Ina May and think this is an excellent read, possibly the best article out there in support of our cause.

http://forums.mercurynews.com/topic/protests-mount-over-facebook-ban-on-breast-feeding-photos-bigger-turnout-online-than-in-palo-a

"Wednesday, 12/31/2008 - 12:02 p.m. PST — breast attitudes in the U.S.
Ina May Gaskin
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 1

As a midwife who helps women get started in breastfeeding, I have a few points to make. Women who want to breastfeed in the U.S. face obstacles that are as unusual as they are unnecessary, and in many ways, these obstacles are getting higher. No other country that I’m aware of has found it necessary to pass laws to protect breastfeeding women against harassment for feeding their babies in public or to mandate that employers need to provide facilities for mothers who need to pump while at work. Many hospital routines make it difficult for women to get started breastfeeding, even though they have lactation consultants on staff.

I’ve been in lots of other countries, and I’ve never heard of women being sent to public toilets to feed their babies or being threatened with arrest while feeding their babies in their own cars in a mall parking lot. (This has happened in Missouri and recently in Madison, Wisconsin). A mother in Tennessee was recently threatened with arrest by a deputy sheriff for feeding her baby in a hallway outside of a courtroom when she refused (she knew what she was doing was protected by law) to remove herself and her baby to the janitor’s closet (with cleaning supplies and no place to sit). The same deputy also threatened to call in child protective services to take custody of her baby. He had to back down when he found out that she was breaking no law. A mother in New York did lose custody of her 18-month-old for several months a few years back—all because of the ignorance of the social services in her area, who thought she ought to have weaned her child already.

This is social neurosis at the very least, and it makes me understand why some mothers want to fight back against these trends. While Facebook is based in the U.S., it is a service that is used by people around the world. I’m with the mothers who are protesting Facebook’s censoring actions in this matter. When these women signed up with Facebook, they were not presented with a list of rules specifying that female nipples were considered “indecent.” Female nipples are no more indecent than are males’, and people need to get used to that. There is no better way to take women’s nipples out of the “pudenda” category than to see one occasionally, in the context of its primary biological function.

I remember when AOL got in trouble a few years ago when it tried to censor the word “breast,” putting it on a list as a “dirty” word, without thinking that women with breast cancer might have trouble discussing their issues on the internet with such a ban in place.

Some of the language and concepts that have been put forward during this debate have been quite ugly and offensive, but Facebook hasn’t seen fit to remove all the stuff equating breastfeeding to pooping, peeing and so on. Food is not excrement, and anyone who thinks the two can be equated (even though both come from the body) needs his head examined. Ugly language and rudeness in general keep many sensitive young women from breastfeeding. Many other young women are driven to get unnecessary cosmetic surgery just so their breasts look as though they are full of milk or get chunks of them removed so breast-deprived men will quit making rude comments about them. In both situations, some of the women who succumb to these social pressures have trouble breastfeeding later on because of the damage done during the surgery. It’s sad when that’s the reason why a new mom is unable to breastfeed.

The human being is the only species which is capable of forgetting why a major organ in the female even exists. We might want to think about that for a while.

As for men being hard-wired to have a strong reaction to women’s breasts, all babies, male or female, are hard-wired to be attracted to the breast, and when we aren’t able to satisfy this need as babies, many of us are left with emotions that we find difficult to understand or deal with. The good news is that even these people can learn to deal with these. I know because I’ve helped a lot of people in this area.

Many people have commented that it is somehow harmful to children and teenagers to be exposed to the sight of a mother breastfeeding her baby in a public place. Because this is such a comparatively rare sight, I have met several Americans in recent years who were 19 or 20, who reached that age without knowing that breasts had any biological function other than as a sexual characteristic. One, now a medical student, had to ask her husband what her midwife meant when she asked if the coming baby would be breastfed. The mother-to-be faulted her parents and her society for making it possible for her to grow up with such ignorance of her body. I think that kids actually need to be taught what breasts are for; this leads to a healthier sexuality, and our country clearly has problems in this area.

While a slightly higher percentage of women are trying to breastfeed their babies now than a generation ago, I am struck by the extreme views of people who are so repelled by the very idea of breastfeeding to the point that they forget that the human race would have died out a long time ago if their own ancestors hadn’t breastfed and been breastfed.

The recent poisoned infant formula scandal in China that killed at least six babies, put another 300,000 in the hospital and permanently damaged the kidneys of an unknown number of those who were hospitalized should give us some idea why many breastfeeding women today are feeling that breastfeeding actually needs to be seen by the larger society. Thirty years ago, virtually every Chinese woman breastfed. Now, the Chinese are imitating us, and look what it got many of them. The only child of many families (remember China’s one child only policy) now has permanent kidney damage because some people wanted to make extra profit on the infant formula and now it’s too late for these families to go back to breastfeeding.

Take a look at the FDA website if you think our infant formula companies don’t screw up in major ways, too. The FDA had to report earlier this month that their tests showed that there is melamine (an industrial chemical—the one that was added to the pet food that killed thousands of pets worldwide) in smaller amounts in the major U.S. brands of infant formula as well—not to mention batches that lack correct levels of essential ingredients such as iron, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, magnesium, or vitamin C, or those that are spoiled or contain metal or plastic fragments, or Enterobacter sakazaki which can cause sepsis, meningitis, and necrotizing enterocolitis, especially in premature or immunocompromised babies. We literally don’t know how often bottlefeeding has proven fatal to our babies, but we do know that such deaths do occur. These are serious problems, and uncounted numbers of bottlefed babies are given these substandard formulas before the problems are discovered. (Babies have to get sick before doctors notify the FDA, which then notifies the companies to make their voluntary recalls—but not before hundreds of thousands already drank the stuff). No fines are ever imposed, which probably explains why such industrial sloppiness continues to occur every year. We need to do better in this area, too, because infant formula is not going to stop being produced. Remember: babies don’t get a choice about what they eat. We adults make these choices for them.

For the European who commented on why U.S. attitudes toward nudity seem so strange: I trace much of this to the lack of breastfeeding Madonna images in U.S. Protestant and Catholic churches. So many Europeans and Latin Americans are exposed to these images as children in churches and museums that it would be impossible for people in these parts of the world to be ignorant of the primary biological function of breasts. I have found only one such image in the U.S.: it’s in St. Augustine, Florida. It’s an image that was made to be venerated. The Madonna is wearing a crown, and she’s clearly breastfeeding with no giant bib or blanket to keep anyone from knowing what she is doing. That’s right. Jesus was breastfed. If the church had thought it bad for children to see how Jesus was fed, the statue would not have been created in the first place. There might be similar images in some churches or communities in New Mexico, but I haven’t seen them yet. Muslims are less weird on this subject in general, probably because the Koran states that all babies ought to be breastfed for two years.

The weird thing is that in some Muslim countries (I’m not familiar with all), a woman’s chin, elbow, or ankle carries more sexual significance than does her breast. I’ve met several people traveling in a Muslim country in the Middle East, who were startled to see a completely veiled woman breastfeeding in public—not hiding the baby under a blanket, not trying to protect the public from a quick glimpse of nipple or areola. So the sexual stuff that is attached to female breasts in our culture goes beyond the “hard-wiring”—it’s really cultural.

I’d like to see restaurants and other public places create better places for women to feed their babies. Europeans and Latin Americans provide these, and everyone seems to be happier for it. These countries seem to produce people who aren’t so resentful of the existence of babies as many of us are here, and I think it’s because they build in a little space for them and don’t heap insults on women who sometimes find it necessary to leave home with their little ones."
 

(slightly revised) excerpt from

http://www.thedoctorstv.com/forums/171-Feedback/topics/4391-Breastfeeding-in-public