This story has me really peeved. Bear with me: this is a bit of a rant, so go ahead and skip it if you're not in the mood to read Cara's rantings about nursing in public . . . :)
So, anyway, this Mom in Tennessee is nursing her infant in the hallway in a courthouse, and apparently someone else in the building has a problem with it. Security is informed, and they ask the mother to nurse somewhere else (apparently offering her the janitor's closet--gross). It's perfectly legal in Tennessee for a woman to nurse an infant under 12 months of age (ahem--more on that later) in public, but, apparently, because someone complained, the courthouse security thought they'd ask Mom to move anyway.
So let me get this straight: she's behaving fully within her legal rights, and still the people who work at a LEGAL SYSTEM building, for goodness sakes, asked her to move? Seriously?? If someone complained that an African-American woman was sitting nearby on a bench in the hallway of that same courthouse, would they ask her to move, too?
(The likely complaint with my comparison would be that one--nursing a baby--is a choice, while the other--one's ethnicity--is not. Substitute any behavior, then, that someone might object to: talking on a cell phone, reading a "controversial" book, speaking a language other than English, wearing religiously-dictated articles of clothing . . .)
Now, thank goodness Tennessee has a law in place explicitly giving her that right (Michigan does not), but what's with the 12-month thing? 12 months is the minimum that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends for the breastfeeding life of a baby. If I were to nurse Maia in public in Tennessee these days, I would be outside of legal protection.
Sigh.
Okay, I got that out of my system for now. :)
2 comments:
The issue, I think, has to do with the general over-sexualization of women's bodies. Thanks in part to the Victorians, and in part to the Puritans, and in part to who-knows-who-else, we've undergone this great cultural process of forgetting that the bodies of women have SO MANY OTHER purposes, beyond providing various kinds of pleasure for men.
One such purpose: the bodies of women are built to carry around women's brains, in which there exist opinions and personalities and the capacity to make all manner of intelligent decisions FOR OURSELVES about propriety and morality and so forth. The bodies of women therefore need not wait around to be told, by men, what constitutes acceptable behavior and what does not.
Another: the bodies of women are built to carry, and bring forth, and provide nutrition for children.
But unfortunately, for our society, [breast]=[sex]=[shameful]. How pathetically, tragically narrow. How sad for us all.
Amen, sister.
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