AIBU to think that women should not have to be discreet when breastfeeding?

[lalaland3008]

I'm not saying that anyone should purposely flop both boobs out into someones dinner. But it makes me really mad that some people think women should have to be discreet when feeding their baby, sit in a corner or breastfeeding 'booth'.

I also think a breast is just not comparable to a penis to a vagina and if people are offended because they see breasts as purely sexual then that is their own problem.

Noone would object to me sitting in public drinking my coffee or feeding my baby a bottle of cows milk yet people find breastmilk offensive.

I'm not bitty mad I lasted 2 weeks breastfeeding but it still makes my blood boil that it is seen as controversial by many.

AIBU?

Eating is natural. Walking is natural. Breathing is natural. We all do those things in public.

Shitting, pissing and fucking are the only natural things we don't do in public - that is because they involve potentially disease-ridden fluids, I'd imagine.

I did say if it was sanitary..

YADNBU

We get so hung up on a baby feeding from a breast yet you would see more boobs on display on an average night out.

QED my arse. An ad hominem attack would be if someone said, "You can't trust Whatmeworry's argument because she didn't even pass her GCSEs/is a member of the BNP/worships Satan in her spare time." It's attacking the person, rather than the argument. But describing you as "patronising" is simply referring to your style of argument, rather than a feature of your personality.

If you attack an argument you say "your aguments is patronising". If you attack a person you say "you are patronising".

QED. Your argument is an arse :)

It's a bit different, isn't it? They have evolved to become private things, because of smell, sanitation and the fact that you do a funny face when you are pooping. There is shame attached to those things. Why do you want to attach shame to breastfeeding?

No-one needs to become more tolerant except the people who don't like it, because they can easily turn away.

Not only the people who don't like it. What about religion?

God, honestly, what ABOUT religion?

You might as well say "what about the people who believe that the no-titty fairy doesn't like to see breasts?"

Religion has fuck-all to do with it. We don't live in some sort of super religious state or even a vaguely religious state. So frankly if someone doesn't want to see a pair of boobies (or even one booby) maybe they should consider Saudi or Iran as a new home.

Wow yellowraincoat. Why don't you just send all them foreigner home!

Er, excuse me, pantylace? What the hell has "foreign" got to do with anything?

Don't try to warp my argument into some sort of BNP crap because that's not what I was even beginning to mean.

The teats are designed that way because they are attached to a bottle - a bottle which is a different shape, requires a different sucking/swallowing action to 'deliver' its contents, and which has no 'let down'.

Bottle teats were originally copied from other mammals, not the human. Why do you think that was - that those other mammals all secretly bottlefed their young?

But lets go back a step...why do you think the human breast is different to all other mammals, then? For better feeding of human babies?

Well you could have fool me!

Seriously I'm sorry you took it as me meaning that Muslims shouldn't be here. Not at all. But I can't really think of an extreme Christian state.

But I really do not want to live in a country where religion dictates what people can do.

And I'd like to live in a state where we consider each other too. I'm not religious but I understand other people are. And I respect that.

I don't know. I have no wish to see people defecate in public. I ahve no wish to see people have sex in public. I don't mind seeing people eat in public.

The mouth is not a sex organ. That is why eating is Ok in public.

Breasts are. That is why there is unease.

Whatmeworry, you can get into all this evolutionary psychology/biology stuff, but at the end of the day, it really doesn't have anything to do with morality. We aren't only ruled by our bodies, we have higher functions than other mammals that mean we can overrule our bodily functions.

Breasts aren't a sex organ.

pantylace, that's great. I respect people's right to be religious. I don't want them imposing their religious values on me though.

Whatmeworry, breasts might be used as a sex organ. But first and foremost they are for feeding.

They should be thought of as feeding organs long before they are thought of as sexual.

Whatmeworry all mammals' breasts are different from each other. It's pointless to compare relative nipple lengths because each species is different in many ways, as are the shapes of their offspring's mouths.

As others have said, the nipple fills the mouth when a child is latched properly, so the "flaccid" size has nothing to do with how effective it is or not.

You might want to argue that because our breasts have a higher proportion of fat in than some other mammals that is likely to mean that they are one of several secondary sexual characteristics. Fine. That doesn't mean that their primary function is not still feeding babies. Cos it is, whether or not you actually use them for their intended purpose.

Breasts are feeding organs first and foremost.

But how do you get the men to see them as only feeding organs and not as sex organs?

I would say get rid of page 3 but that won't ever happen.

"The mouth is not a sex organ. That is why eating is Ok in public.

Breasts are. That is why there is unease."

Some cultures don't engage in mouth kissing during sex and courtship.

Or consider the breasts to be primarily sexual. Which is why in some cultures women go topless in day to day life and nobody thinks it is an issue.

here

"But how do you get the men to see them as only feeding organs and not as sex organs?"

You encourage women to breastfeed openly and unselfconsciously in every situation where they might find themselves, and you lower the profile of bottlefeeding by removing ads/sponsorship/general promotion, in the media.

I actually think that the mouth could be viewed as a sex organ. Kissing and oral sex for example. But we also use it to talk, eat and breathe.

So why can't people get their heads around the fact that breasts also can be used for more than one thing?

We accept eating in public depending how it's done. We ask that people have manners when they eat.

We can eat in an overly sexy way, but we don't, in public, do we?

Same goes for breast feeding. Nothing wrong with feeding in public, but how you do it makes all the difference.