The Chick-Fil-A Nurse-In
Yesterday, some central Florida mothers made their 15 minutes of fame by publically breastfeeding their babies at a local Chick-Fil-A restaurant. It all started because a young woman went there for lunch and started to breastfeed her baby at the table. A couple of other patrons complained (men, apparently) and then the restaurant manager told her to cover up or take it elsewhere, and the woman left. But she and several other mommies contacted the Chick-Fil-A and complained citing the law that indicates that women are free to breastfeed anywhere at any time. So Chick-Fil-A hosted a nurse-in where about 20 women came with their babies and breastfed in public.
Let the record show that I do not favor women breastfeeding their babies in public.
I am one of a few people who finds it just plain rude. Joe is another one. We have another friend who also finds it rather rude.
There are some objections that many people might make to my position, such as:
Objection 1: "You're just a prude!"
Maybe I am. Guess what, people - prudes have rights too, even if YOU don't think they do and even if YOU are in total disagreement with them.
Let's look at this word "prude" shall we? Be afraid, be very afraid - because every time I have looked into where these words come from and noticed how we use them today, I find that such words apply to these breastfeeding women as much as they think it applies to me.
Now then:
The word "prude" has been defined as "a person excessively concerned about propriety and decorum." OK, I think most people can agree with that definition.
But please note that this definition doesn't mention sexuality or body parts. Just propriety and decorum.
Now, let me give you a scenario here, using some fictional people in a fictional setting:
Scene: a group picnic in a public park
Characters: Frank, Kelly
Frank has no kids
Kelly has two children - one 6, one 3 months; both are present at this public event
Frank, responding to something another person said: "Fuck that, man, if that had been me, I would have...."
Kelly, who is sitting and publically nursing her 3 month old and who has told everyone around her to "just deal with it" interrupts and says this: "Hey! Frank! Language! Watch your language around my kids!"
Kelly is, by definition, a PRUDE. If she does not like the way Frank speaks in public, let her either just "deal with it" as she just told everyone else to do at the picnic where she's breastfeeding her baby, or she can go elsewhere.
If swearing in public is bad taste, then so is public breastfeeding. Fair is fair. People who object to both of these ARE prudes, by definition. Sometimes I think that most people use the word "prude" to mean "anyone who is squeamish about things I am not squeamish about." And that is just downright inaccurate. That simple.
Before anyone asks, yes, I have seen this very scenario take place in real life. I have seen a woman breastfeed in public, which a couple of people at the event do not like, and then I saw her censor the speech of another childfree person in that same public location, at the exact same event. And I thought censorship was un-American.
Why should the childfree person mind about their conduct in public if the breastfeeding mother is not going to do so? This is PUBLIC, remember. Her kids are going to have to get used to the fact that some people use salty language in public. Just Deal With It.
Just for the record, here's the etymology for the word "prude" - originally a positive term in French, meaning "wise woman", short for prude femme (modeled after preudomme, which employed homme= man ). But the French word shifted in mean to refer to "a woman too wise, too observant of decorum and propriety", and it then came into English with that shifted, negative meaning.
WISE WOMAN. HELLO!
And let me ask this, semi-rhetorically - shall we dispense with ALL propriety and decorum, just to prove that we are not slaves to prudishness? No? Then who gets to decide what is or is not proper public behavior? And this decision will be based on what credentials? Is the "mommy brigade" going to rule our public lives now, and those of us who have no kids just have to "deal with it" as if we have no right? FUCK THAT.
I know this - if I had a baby (not likely, since I don't really like kids), I would never breastfeed my child in public. I could never expose my breast in public that way, even if it was in a nonsexual way. It is just not done. I think that by NOT exposing the breast in public, that actually DOES maintain a certain amount of mystery and enticement for those moments that ARE sexual.
Objection 2: "Your viewpoint oversexualises women's breasts!"
I do not believe that the breast is a completely nonsexual organ on a woman's body. Some would try to convince me of that, but let me put it in another possible scenario that employs this kind of "the breast is not a sexual organ" thinking:
Kelly, who is married to a man named Glenn: "No one should have a problem with me nursing my baby in public! The breast is not a sexual organ anyway! It exists only to feed babies!"
Frank: "Really? Then you or Glenn won't mind if I do this (goes up to Kelly and gropes her breasts, prompting an indignant squeal from Kelly), right?"
Kelly: "You masher! You beast! Why did you do that? Keep your hands off of me!"
Frank: "You just said the breast is a nonsexual organ. That puts it in a category similar to your arm or your hand, and you don't mind if I touch your arm or shake your hand, because they're 'nonsexual' body parts, right?"
Kelly, "That's not the same thing at all!"
Frank: "Well, then just admit that yes, your breasts ARE sexual every bit as much as any other body part you have is."
See, the only body part that I regard as being COMPLETELY SEXUAL and with NO other use whatsoever, is the clitoris on women and nipples on men. Men's nipples provide no milk or nourishment for a baby, and a woman's clitoris is not like the penis through which urine passes. These are the body parts that exist PURELY for sexual pleasure.
Objection 3: "It is natural, and when a breast is feeding a baby, it is a working breast and not a sexual one!"
Urination is natural too, and if Joe were to need to urinate and he pulled out his penis from his pants and wet down a bush outside the very same Chick-Fil-A where these women were nursing, do you think they'd excuse it? No. Do you think they'd say, "It's ok, it's a nonsexual working penis, so this should not be considered indecent exposure." Definitely not. Why? This is where the inherent SEXISM AGAINST MEN comes in. It's ok for a woman's body part to be considered "nonsexual" but it's NOT ok for a man's body part to be considered "nonsexual."
Joe was arrested once, many years back, because he was refused use of a restroom in a restaurant in Tampa. He had gone inside and asked to use the men's room, but the hostess told him that their restrooms were for paying customers only. So, since he really had to go, he walked around to the rear of the restaurant and urinated behind the dumpster in the back of the restaurant. And got busted.
This is tremendously unfair to men. I think a lot of mothers do not realize that these social body issues unfairly penalize men. Does anyone even THINK about these things? Does this not occur to ANYONE, EVER?
I think this business of "make exceptions for me, but not for those ICKY MEN and their ICKY PENISES and ICKY NEEDS" is a load of utter tosh and quite selfish. Oh no, this breastfeeding issue and matters of exposing of various body parts in public does NOT exist in a vaccum. But so many women, as soon as they have a baby, act like all of a sudden life and the laws and whatnot should revolve around THEM and their babies.
Um, hello, I didn't have children. I don't want to have your decision to get pregnant and the resultant activities (such as breastfeeding and changing diapers, etc) forced upon me when I am out in the public sphere.
I chose to be child-FREE. So has Joe. And we have rights too. We have the right to not see that when we are out in public.
Objection 4: "The baby needs to eat! You can't penalize the baby by not allowing his/her mother to feed him/her whenever he/she needs to eat!"
Yes, the baby needs to eat. BUT:
1: You should have thought of this situation before getting pregnant. No one forced you to have a baby.
2: In many places, women's restrooms have a little alcove with couches and armchairs where one can go and nurse in private. Why not use that private time to bond with baby?
3: By NOT having laws that protect public breastfeeding, it might actually force businesses that do not currently have nursing areas in the women's rooms to put them in there. Even those restrooms that have only 1 toilet (as opposed to 2 or 3 stalls), there is enough space to include a separate chair to sit in to nurse the child.
4: It seems to me that by having an event like the nurse-in a Chick-Fil-A, and by scurrying down there as fast as one can just to deliberately nurse one's kid in public, is politicizing the baby and baby does NOT need to be turned into a political issue when he or she is just days/weeks/months old!
If you ask me, this is where Matthew 6:1-4 comes in:
Giving to the Needy
1 "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.
3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Seeing as how I'm a Unitarian Universalist, and UUs take inspiration from ALL religious traditions INCLUDING Christianity, I say yes - Scripture applies here.
Objection 5: "You wouldn't eat your dinner in the bathroom or with a towel on your head, would you? Then don't make the baby do it!"
No, I wouldn't go in the bathroom to eat or put a towel over my head to eat.
But on the other hand, I will be 40 years old come November. I don't suck at a woman's breast when I eat. There's a word for what I and other adults are: WEANED.
Therefore WE don't need to exercise discretion when we eat.
Now, I wasn't breastfed at all by my mother; when she discovered she was pregnant, at that time she'd been smoking. She did quit as soon as the doctor told her she was pregnant, and did not smoke again until after my birth, and the doctor told her she'd be ok to breastfeed me, but she believed that there might be traces of nicotene in her milk and she didn't want to take the SLIGHTEST risk of passing it on to me.
This whole nurse-in situation, complete with media circus, to me begs begs begs the question: "Who are you doing this for? The baby? Or for the media attention, for yourself?" It doesn't seem to me that anyone who went out of their way to go there and nurse their babies was doing it for the baby, but for the media attention. These people could have just as easily gone somewhere, anywhere, in central Florida that did NOT have news cameras all over the place and nursed their babies there. But no, they CHOSE to go there and nurse publically, as if to throw this up in people's faces. Which to me makes it all the MORE rude. Flaunting it is very low class and poor taste to me. VERY low class. NO dignity at all. Indeed, making the choice to be there specifically BECAUSE news cameras would be there is just....ugh. Bad, bad taste. Cheesy. Way over the top.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that most people will see all this verbiage on this blog and ignore it. People are now getting into "sound-byte" mentality and they do NOT want to think very deeply about ANYTHING at all. I ran into this on YouTube; I offered a long historical explanation for something, and the other person said, "All you did was babble."
:bangs head on desk:
And this is what we're coming to - people who are becoming ridiculously short-sighted with the attention span and depth of thought of a gnat. Hell, the gnat does better than most humans, most of the time.
It does make me wonder why I bother going to all this effort. I think that a lot of people have NOT thought this through very well, and they're going to ignore me and not give ANY serious thought to any of this and possibly change their minds. No, I'm the one who is expected to change MY mind.
And I am not the only one who really resents this legal bullying that the mommy brigade engages in. Many people do, but many people don't want to rock the boat and speak up about it. Hey - We Have Rights Too! Just as their right to throw a punch ends where my nose begins, so too do I say that my rights do not END when someone has a child.
Pah.
There's more, but it will have to wait for later.
Let the record show that I do not favor women breastfeeding their babies in public.
I am one of a few people who finds it just plain rude. Joe is another one. We have another friend who also finds it rather rude.
There are some objections that many people might make to my position, such as:
Objection 1: "You're just a prude!"
Maybe I am. Guess what, people - prudes have rights too, even if YOU don't think they do and even if YOU are in total disagreement with them.
Let's look at this word "prude" shall we? Be afraid, be very afraid - because every time I have looked into where these words come from and noticed how we use them today, I find that such words apply to these breastfeeding women as much as they think it applies to me.
Now then:
The word "prude" has been defined as "a person excessively concerned about propriety and decorum." OK, I think most people can agree with that definition.
But please note that this definition doesn't mention sexuality or body parts. Just propriety and decorum.
Now, let me give you a scenario here, using some fictional people in a fictional setting:
Scene: a group picnic in a public park
Characters: Frank, Kelly
Frank has no kids
Kelly has two children - one 6, one 3 months; both are present at this public event
Frank, responding to something another person said: "Fuck that, man, if that had been me, I would have...."
Kelly, who is sitting and publically nursing her 3 month old and who has told everyone around her to "just deal with it" interrupts and says this: "Hey! Frank! Language! Watch your language around my kids!"
Kelly is, by definition, a PRUDE. If she does not like the way Frank speaks in public, let her either just "deal with it" as she just told everyone else to do at the picnic where she's breastfeeding her baby, or she can go elsewhere.
If swearing in public is bad taste, then so is public breastfeeding. Fair is fair. People who object to both of these ARE prudes, by definition. Sometimes I think that most people use the word "prude" to mean "anyone who is squeamish about things I am not squeamish about." And that is just downright inaccurate. That simple.
Before anyone asks, yes, I have seen this very scenario take place in real life. I have seen a woman breastfeed in public, which a couple of people at the event do not like, and then I saw her censor the speech of another childfree person in that same public location, at the exact same event. And I thought censorship was un-American.
Why should the childfree person mind about their conduct in public if the breastfeeding mother is not going to do so? This is PUBLIC, remember. Her kids are going to have to get used to the fact that some people use salty language in public. Just Deal With It.
Just for the record, here's the etymology for the word "prude" - originally a positive term in French, meaning "wise woman", short for prude femme (modeled after preudomme, which employed homme= man ). But the French word shifted in mean to refer to "a woman too wise, too observant of decorum and propriety", and it then came into English with that shifted, negative meaning.
WISE WOMAN. HELLO!
And let me ask this, semi-rhetorically - shall we dispense with ALL propriety and decorum, just to prove that we are not slaves to prudishness? No? Then who gets to decide what is or is not proper public behavior? And this decision will be based on what credentials? Is the "mommy brigade" going to rule our public lives now, and those of us who have no kids just have to "deal with it" as if we have no right? FUCK THAT.
I know this - if I had a baby (not likely, since I don't really like kids), I would never breastfeed my child in public. I could never expose my breast in public that way, even if it was in a nonsexual way. It is just not done. I think that by NOT exposing the breast in public, that actually DOES maintain a certain amount of mystery and enticement for those moments that ARE sexual.
Objection 2: "Your viewpoint oversexualises women's breasts!"
I do not believe that the breast is a completely nonsexual organ on a woman's body. Some would try to convince me of that, but let me put it in another possible scenario that employs this kind of "the breast is not a sexual organ" thinking:
Kelly, who is married to a man named Glenn: "No one should have a problem with me nursing my baby in public! The breast is not a sexual organ anyway! It exists only to feed babies!"
Frank: "Really? Then you or Glenn won't mind if I do this (goes up to Kelly and gropes her breasts, prompting an indignant squeal from Kelly), right?"
Kelly: "You masher! You beast! Why did you do that? Keep your hands off of me!"
Frank: "You just said the breast is a nonsexual organ. That puts it in a category similar to your arm or your hand, and you don't mind if I touch your arm or shake your hand, because they're 'nonsexual' body parts, right?"
Kelly, "That's not the same thing at all!"
Frank: "Well, then just admit that yes, your breasts ARE sexual every bit as much as any other body part you have is."
See, the only body part that I regard as being COMPLETELY SEXUAL and with NO other use whatsoever, is the clitoris on women and nipples on men. Men's nipples provide no milk or nourishment for a baby, and a woman's clitoris is not like the penis through which urine passes. These are the body parts that exist PURELY for sexual pleasure.
Objection 3: "It is natural, and when a breast is feeding a baby, it is a working breast and not a sexual one!"
Urination is natural too, and if Joe were to need to urinate and he pulled out his penis from his pants and wet down a bush outside the very same Chick-Fil-A where these women were nursing, do you think they'd excuse it? No. Do you think they'd say, "It's ok, it's a nonsexual working penis, so this should not be considered indecent exposure." Definitely not. Why? This is where the inherent SEXISM AGAINST MEN comes in. It's ok for a woman's body part to be considered "nonsexual" but it's NOT ok for a man's body part to be considered "nonsexual."
Joe was arrested once, many years back, because he was refused use of a restroom in a restaurant in Tampa. He had gone inside and asked to use the men's room, but the hostess told him that their restrooms were for paying customers only. So, since he really had to go, he walked around to the rear of the restaurant and urinated behind the dumpster in the back of the restaurant. And got busted.
This is tremendously unfair to men. I think a lot of mothers do not realize that these social body issues unfairly penalize men. Does anyone even THINK about these things? Does this not occur to ANYONE, EVER?
I think this business of "make exceptions for me, but not for those ICKY MEN and their ICKY PENISES and ICKY NEEDS" is a load of utter tosh and quite selfish. Oh no, this breastfeeding issue and matters of exposing of various body parts in public does NOT exist in a vaccum. But so many women, as soon as they have a baby, act like all of a sudden life and the laws and whatnot should revolve around THEM and their babies.
Um, hello, I didn't have children. I don't want to have your decision to get pregnant and the resultant activities (such as breastfeeding and changing diapers, etc) forced upon me when I am out in the public sphere.
I chose to be child-FREE. So has Joe. And we have rights too. We have the right to not see that when we are out in public.
Objection 4: "The baby needs to eat! You can't penalize the baby by not allowing his/her mother to feed him/her whenever he/she needs to eat!"
Yes, the baby needs to eat. BUT:
1: You should have thought of this situation before getting pregnant. No one forced you to have a baby.
2: In many places, women's restrooms have a little alcove with couches and armchairs where one can go and nurse in private. Why not use that private time to bond with baby?
3: By NOT having laws that protect public breastfeeding, it might actually force businesses that do not currently have nursing areas in the women's rooms to put them in there. Even those restrooms that have only 1 toilet (as opposed to 2 or 3 stalls), there is enough space to include a separate chair to sit in to nurse the child.
4: It seems to me that by having an event like the nurse-in a Chick-Fil-A, and by scurrying down there as fast as one can just to deliberately nurse one's kid in public, is politicizing the baby and baby does NOT need to be turned into a political issue when he or she is just days/weeks/months old!
If you ask me, this is where Matthew 6:1-4 comes in:
Giving to the Needy
1 "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.
3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,
4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Seeing as how I'm a Unitarian Universalist, and UUs take inspiration from ALL religious traditions INCLUDING Christianity, I say yes - Scripture applies here.
Objection 5: "You wouldn't eat your dinner in the bathroom or with a towel on your head, would you? Then don't make the baby do it!"
No, I wouldn't go in the bathroom to eat or put a towel over my head to eat.
But on the other hand, I will be 40 years old come November. I don't suck at a woman's breast when I eat. There's a word for what I and other adults are: WEANED.
Therefore WE don't need to exercise discretion when we eat.
Now, I wasn't breastfed at all by my mother; when she discovered she was pregnant, at that time she'd been smoking. She did quit as soon as the doctor told her she was pregnant, and did not smoke again until after my birth, and the doctor told her she'd be ok to breastfeed me, but she believed that there might be traces of nicotene in her milk and she didn't want to take the SLIGHTEST risk of passing it on to me.
This whole nurse-in situation, complete with media circus, to me begs begs begs the question: "Who are you doing this for? The baby? Or for the media attention, for yourself?" It doesn't seem to me that anyone who went out of their way to go there and nurse their babies was doing it for the baby, but for the media attention. These people could have just as easily gone somewhere, anywhere, in central Florida that did NOT have news cameras all over the place and nursed their babies there. But no, they CHOSE to go there and nurse publically, as if to throw this up in people's faces. Which to me makes it all the MORE rude. Flaunting it is very low class and poor taste to me. VERY low class. NO dignity at all. Indeed, making the choice to be there specifically BECAUSE news cameras would be there is just....ugh. Bad, bad taste. Cheesy. Way over the top.
Unfortunately, I have a feeling that most people will see all this verbiage on this blog and ignore it. People are now getting into "sound-byte" mentality and they do NOT want to think very deeply about ANYTHING at all. I ran into this on YouTube; I offered a long historical explanation for something, and the other person said, "All you did was babble."
:bangs head on desk:
And this is what we're coming to - people who are becoming ridiculously short-sighted with the attention span and depth of thought of a gnat. Hell, the gnat does better than most humans, most of the time.
It does make me wonder why I bother going to all this effort. I think that a lot of people have NOT thought this through very well, and they're going to ignore me and not give ANY serious thought to any of this and possibly change their minds. No, I'm the one who is expected to change MY mind.
And I am not the only one who really resents this legal bullying that the mommy brigade engages in. Many people do, but many people don't want to rock the boat and speak up about it. Hey - We Have Rights Too! Just as their right to throw a punch ends where my nose begins, so too do I say that my rights do not END when someone has a child.
Pah.
There's more, but it will have to wait for later.