RWN Goes All “Miss Manners” On You: Breast-Feeding In Public

09 Jun, 2005 by John Hawkins

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You can tell it’s a relatively slow summer when breast feeding starts to become a topic of interest in the blogosphere. First it was Vox Popoli and now The Corner.

Well, never let it be said that a relatively unimportant non-political subject was discussed on political blogs without John Hawkins chipping in his two cents!

What inspired me to jump in was this dumb comment posted in an email to the Corner:

“I’m a conservative American but I think too many Americans are confusing the sexual aspects of the breast (which are real) with the feeding aspects of the breast.”

This is a common argument, but it’s the equivalent of saying urinating or defecating in public is OK because it’s not sexual. No, those activities should be done in private, just like breast feeding.

Sure, some women don’t like hearing that because it’s more convenient to sit down and breast-feed in public than to go to the bathroom. Well, it would also be more convenient to whip out a towel and pee right into the fountain at the mall rather than go to the bathroom, but guys don’t do that, right?

To me, breast feeding is the much less awful equivalent of the handful of 70 year old guys at the gym I used to go to, who, unlike anybody else there, seemed to always be walking around the locker room completely naked. Sure, it’s a locker room and you’re allowed to do that, but that doesn’t mean you should.

Same deal with breast-feeding. Yes, you are allowed to do it in public, but you probably shouldn’t.