Corolinth wrote:
There's concern that some sick weirdo would find the picture and jerk to it. Why do we have that concern? What does it say about us that our first thought is child porn, rather than a five year-old pretending to be a mommy? How sick and twisted are we as a society that we have sexualized that image, without even seeing it? How does a normal person look at a picture of a five year-old playing mommy, and think it's child pornography? I'm reminded of how Sharia Law came about in Islam. It wasn't to control women. Rather, men were such dogs that they would rape a woman unless she was covered. Considering that, I'm not entirely comfortable with the obsession my fellow countrymen have with child porn and pedophilia.
What it says about us is that we're concerned with people not sexually exploiting children. You may be familiar with a certain recent incident at Penn State. Sexual exploitation of children is a real issue, and while we may have some hangups regarding breastfeeding, that does not somehow put us in the same category as people covering women in burkhas. This is what we call false dilemma thinking, and it's not a matter of us "becoming sick" as a society; it's that while our society has a hangup about boobies,
you (and quite a few other people as well) have a hangup with society having standards of decency you don't personally approve of.
This isn't a matter of legality or illegality either; it's a matter of a private organization conforming to our social mores. Furthermore, while our social mores regarding breastfeeding are rather silly, the other side of the coin is rather silly as well. Breastfeeding is a bodily function and while it does not present the health risks of many other bodily functions, it's still personal business just like taking a crap is personal business. Should it be legal? Probably, even though taking a crap in public shouldn't for the simple reason that we should not have poop all over the place. However, the fact that it should be legal to breastfeed in public does not somehow imply that everyone else should necessarily express personal approval of, or even disinterest in, what you are doing. If you want to breastfeed in public you are choosing to make your personal business everyone else's business as well, just as if you discuss your personal finances out where everyone else can hear you, and if other people want to express disapproval that does not automatically make them sick or depraved or even uptight and backwards.
This is especially true in view of the big deal that breast feeding advocates make out of breastfeeding in public. If you're going to do it, just do it. You don't need to be screeching about how natural and normal it is; those of us that think it is natural and normal do not need you to remind us how cool it is that you can whip out your tit in public, and those that do not think so are not going to have their minds changed by childish "nyah nyah nyah here's my boobies and you can't do anything about it" attention-getting behavior.
It's even more interesting that the same people who are all about breastfeeding publicly and think everyone else should approve of what they are doing are in a large part the same crowd that think it's their personal duty to tell moms who are bottle feeding that they're somehow doing something wrong. If you want people to leave you alone to breastfeed your kid in public, then just shut the **** up and take care of business.