ferrousland.com - news archives
Monday, May 07, 2007 - (see all news for this day)
a follow-up article & my reply - 12:00 PM
(filed under 'general')
i copied & pasted an article about breastfeedingin public into my blog here written by charles winokoor & then my response to him via email.
i received a reply from him with a copy of his follow-up article. it's below the 'read more' link. pleased do read it & my subsequent reply.
please note that the odd characters were present in his original email to me. i guess some characters didn't translate from whatever application he was originally using. i've tried to tidy up the line breaks to make it more easily readable.
his email & follow-up article:
I know my column "Making Milk Public Controversy" caused something of a minor furor. For some reason my follow-up this week didn't get posted on-line. Since so many people have mentioned your site in their e-mails to me I thought I should forward it.
"My very own motherıs milk controversy"
You would have thought I had picked a fight with the Hellıs Angels. Or ail responses as I did to my column last week.
That was the one in which I took an admittedly sardonic look at the case of the Brockton mother who caused a bit of a media stir, resulting from her breastfeeding her 2-month-old in a Bay State store. More precisely, she drew the attention of an iParty manager, not just because she was breastfeeding, but because she did it while sitting on the floor inside the store.
I chided her, not only for having put the store manager in a tough spot, but for complaining to his corporate bosses, who responded with a by now familiar, politically-correct statement of remorse. I saw it as a textbook example of an adult acting out like a child.
Making matters worse, in terms of stirring the pot, was my use of an introductory nightmare, in which I had a vision of the breakdown of societal behavior not just human, but feline and canine as well inside a supermarket. I thought I was just having a bit of fun, borrowing a little imagery from Hieronymus Boschıs famous oil painting, ³The Garden of Earthly Delights.²
Out the dozens of e-mails Iıve received (and continue to get) from all across the country, less than half a dozen have been favorable to my point of view.
A lot of them hit the same points, included among them that because Iım a man Iım incapable of understanding the sanctity of a woman using her breast for nourishment, as opposed to an object of sexual attraction.
Many urge that my bosses force me to eat my lunch in the bathroom, the analogy being that a mother who chooses to breast feed her baby in a ladiesı room is forced to endure unsanitary and unsavory conditions. Some of them threatened to unleash a sort of lactose fatwa on my head, by urging as many cyber-moms as they could to boycott the paper and complain to advertisers.
So much for freedom of expression and those two PC maxims weıve all come to know so well: tolerance and diversity.
Some of the opposing-view messages were thoughtful and informative, pointing out in great detail the health benefits of breast feeding. To those women, especially, I made sure to send a note of appreciation.
But, in all honesty, itıs the really vicious ones that have provided the most entertainment bang for the buck. Iıll quote a bit of one with the subject heading ³ignorant!!²
³I imagine you have never breast fed yourself? or had the responsibility of trying to give a TWO MONTH OLD CHILD a bottle if you exclusively breast feed? Ya, I didnıt think so.² Hereıs the payoff. ³I imagine your (sic) not married either, or else your wife would surely have beaten some sense into you before you spewed off your venom. Surely, you donıt have children. God help them if you do.²
Actually, madame, youıre correct: Iıve never married and donıt have children. So, in lieu of a wife to straighten me out, I sought the opinion of the next best thing in terms of an authority figure, my sister. A working mother who is raising a boy edging toward his teenage years, she is, despite the sibling connection, hardly my No. 1 fan when it comes to my opinion columns.
She told me a couple things which I had never considered. Did I know, for example, there are women who are unable to conceive who resent other women who flaunt their capacity to breast feed? Cancer survivors too whose disease has compromised or negated their ability to breast feed are sensitive when it comes to watching women openly breast feed, she told me.
She also recounted an incident when, as a new mother, she asked a woman in a store where they kept the bottle nipples, and was rebuked with a condescending scolding on the evils of not exclusively feeding with oneıs own breast.
And, she said, with all the male perverts and sexual offenders out there in American society today, might it not be wise for a woman to be discreet and cautious, before she casually exposes certain parts of her body?
Apparently my sisterıs not alone. Hereıs an excerpt from another e-mail:
³As a new mother who formula feeds I am tired of these lactivists trying to make me feel bad for feeding my baby (what they consider) rat poison.ı ³My hairdresser actually had to have security escort her and her baby out of (a mall) last year, because two women from La Leche League were harassing her for formula feeding her baby. ³I donıt understand why these women canıt just feed their child in whichever way works for their family and leave everyone else alone.²
What nearly every angry e-mailer failed to discern was that I never said I was against breastfeeding in public. Iıve been overseas, seen it up close and found it to be the most human of acts. But sitting in the middle of a retail floor? Forget about it. After all, how clean is that?
Iıll close out this chapter of my life with a few final excerpts, sent from one Katherine. She writes:
³I know youıre getting flamed worse than a sausage on a grill right now for your article. I breast fed my daughter for the first month of her life, [but] I would never breast feed in public.
³Youıll find this sense of entitlement among the highly educated and the crunchy granolaı Vermont types.²
She closes: ³Maybe America is more uptight about things than Europe. Then,
go to Europe and stay. ³Good luck. Youıre going to have a lot of very angry mommy e-mail. And theyıre a nasty bunch when provoked.²
cwinokoor@tauntongazette.com
my reply to him:
Thank you for taking the time to email me a copy of your follow-up article. I simply can't imagine why they didn't put it online!
While I feel sad that some mothers miss out on the extra-special bond that comes with breastfeeding a child, I certainly don't agree with people who might try to make those mums who are bottle-feeding their children through their own decision or through no fault of their own, feel guilty or harrassed. That's not on. They should be supported no matter what and given more support from birth to try to achieve successful breastfeeding.
Your sister's viewpoint about some people feeling bad because they can't breastfeed or can't have children is all well and good, but does that mean we should also not walk around on our two legs in public because we might make those who have lost the use of their legs feel bad? Should those with luxuriously long and shiny hair keep it covered up it in public because those going through chemotherapy have lost their hair? Balding men might be offended, too! Perhaps we should closet our children up in our homes and never let them out in public so as not to offend those who are unable to have children of their own? I think that effortlessly skinny people should also stay indoors so that those who can't seem to lose the weight they try so desperately to lose don't feel bad.
Perhaps if breastfeeding was seen out in public more, it would eventually swing the tide back in our strange western society so that when those male perverts and sexual offenders all died of old age, there would only be men left who undererstand the true purpose for breasts.
I'm so thankful that I live in Australia instead of the at times seemingly backward and puritanical USA where mothers who are breastfeedind their children are asked to leave restaurants and aeroplanes and are not supported in their quest to "just feed their child in whichever way works for their family and leave everyone else alone."
How dare that woman try to defend her right to feed her child wherever she sees fit!? How rude to want other mothers feel the freedom to do the same by bringing up the matter with the corporate bosses of the store so that it wouldn't happen again! Perhaps she should have asked for a chair to sit someplace else in the store, but perhaps she'd already looked around and seen no chair available, so took the next best course of action and sat on the floor. As for the floor being dirty, I imagine it was, but I'll bet it didn't also reek of unrine, faeces, toxic disinfectant and inneffective deoderisers.
You say you're not against breastfeeding, yet you compare it to pi55ing and shi++ing [original, proper spellings used in my email to him]? Hardly a complimentary comparison, I'm sure you'd agree. You also said, "So much for freedom of expression and those two PC maxims we've all come to know so well: tolerance and diversity." If you want to spread tolerance and diversity, sir, perhaps you should do so in your column by supporting women who are doing their best to bring up their children to become happy, independant and healthy-minded adults rather than one that prefers to spread the idea that using breasts as they're intended is comparable to the voiding of bodily wastes.
i think that maybe he didn't express it in the right way initially - surely he has to have known the kind of backlash he'd get, but i still don't think he's wrong, really.
as he wrote in his response, he didn't say she shouldn't b/f. and he didn't even say that she shouldn't b/f in public. he said that she shouldn't sit down in the supermarket to do it. and that is true of anyone. if you sat down in the supermarket to have your sandwich and apple and packet of chips for your lunch, they'd very likely ask you to move too.
breastfeeding is natural, yes, but that doesn't mean that it should be exempt from all societal norms: the supermarket is for buying, not for eating. most shopping centres have designated food courts or even benches every little bit. healthy babies, no matter how young they are, CAN wait a few minutes for you to finish the shopping. it's not going to kill them and it's not going to hurt them. it may, however, teach them that the world doesn't revolve around them and their every need and want.
some text ads:
Loans - Car Insurance - Flights - Phoenix Pools
ferrous
gmail
com
i guess this guy picked the wrong subject for his column. i imagine he wishes he had picked another subject. lol