[kipsfi]

I guess this may seem insensitive, and I admit, I will never understand, as I'm a young, single, childless male.

Why do you need to post these pictures? It's not that I find these pictures offensive, but the odd time I see somebody breastfeeding in public, I do catch myself being slightly thrown off. It seems like a very private thing. Why do you WANT to post these pictures online?

[Goronmon]

Why do you WANT to post these pictures online?

Probably for the same reasons someone would want to post any picture online.

[gte910h]

Do you find eating a private thing? These women don't either. Breastfeeding is a baby eating. Something they have to do a LOT of times a day.

Would you like to eat in bathrooms? In tiny little closets? Under a blanket in the dark? These are all places baby feeding alarmests try to make babies eat.

How would you feel if any picture that had a bit of a plate in it was censored off facebook because a group of mostly childless and old men found it offensive?

Think about changing your atitude. Just because you're not used to seeing something doesn't mean the issue is with where it's happening, perhaps you're just not used to it.

[gallamine]

I think part of the point they're protesting is the notion that breastfeeding should be a private, personal thing. These women believe it's normal, natural and there's no reason it shouldn't be public - like if you were to kiss or hug your child in public.

I'm torn on the subject. There's plenty of normal, natural things that still should be private, but is nurturing our children one of them?

[mverwijs]

> These women believe it's normal, natural ...

That's because it is natural.

[kipsfi]

I guess that's part of my problem with it. The care of a child is just as natural as the conception of a child.

Where do we draw the line? Am I aloud to post pictures of myself urinating? Because that's natural too.

Natural != appropriate to show the public.

[rsanders]

Even a single, childless male can think through the differences between conceiving a child and supplying that child's frequent, urgent nutritive needs. If you miss a meal, you may feel a little hungry or tired or cranky. As best I can represent it, a baby not being fed on his schedule is much like an adult not being supplied with oxygen. It's far worse than feeling a hunger pang. And women are equipped with a constantly available, sustainable, low cost, environmentally friendly, and energy efficient answer to this problem. So wtf is the problem?

There is a public interest at work here. Breastfed babies are said to have fewer short and long term medical issues. Breastfeeding might be as important to our health (and crippling healthcare costs) as a people as bike paths, sidewalks, healthy foods, preventative medical visits, and any of the other many small lifestyle improvements which we are willing to spend many millions of dollars creating and promoting. And it costs us...a worldview adjusted ever-so-slightly back to what has been for most of our species' history perfect normalcy.

This is an important issue. Encouraging breastfeeding, which does appear to be the superior form of infant nutrition, requires that we normalize it. If we're all too delicate to see tiny thumbnails of women breastfeeding floating by in our newsfeeds, how will anybody ever survive the rather more "graphic" occurrence of it happening next to them on the bus?

I'm willing to accept bikers in far-too-revealing spandex. I have similarly learned to accept women breastfeeding. it's really not so bad once you actually encounter it...which is not something you'll ever know if you're being shielded from it by "decency" filters like Facebook's, or hearing the implied judgment that it's indecent.

[dfxm12]

"Natural and potentially life saving" is not the same as "natural". OP is either being obtuse or trolling you.

[rsanders]

I prefer to interpret the opposing party in such discussions as serving a vital function in a Socratic dialogue. Whether or not IHBT, it's useful to argue the issue with an opposing viewpoint.

[pbhjpbhj]

It's the - feeding a baby in public - part that is naturally part of normal civilised society. Urinating in private is similarly a part of normal civilised society.

It's confounded by the multiple definitions of natural: here it just means commonplace and ordinary.

[ugh]

But you have to explain why it’s not appropriate. You have to give reasons, you know.

[Tichy]

Perhaps if you would see it on Facebook all the time, it wouldn't throw you off if you encountered it in real life.

[pron]

I think they call it "bonding with mother nature" or something, and nothing is really worth doing nowadays unless you can post it to Facebook for the whole world to see.

[Avshalom]

Actually I think they call it "feeding their children."

[pron]

They're not "feeding their children", they're making some sort of statement, which is entirely within their rights, but it has nothing to do with survival. When I eat I don't post action photos online.

[rsanders]

You don't; millions of Facebook users exercise the right to do so without having their photos removed. Look at the photos you do post of you doing whatever activity you consider central to your life and how your friends and family perceive you. Now imagine that Facebook prevented such photos. Wouldn't you find it annoying enough to raise a public outcry?

Now imagine that what Facebook has decided to censor is not just some hobby of interest mainly to you, but a cause about which you care passionately and which profoundly affects every single member of every generation. It's a legitimate "think of the children!" situation.

I don't mind Bill Gates working to eradicate malaria, just don't let him post pictures of filthy people in attire Westerners would consider improper. Ewww.

Breastfeeding is coming back, and children are reaping the health benefits, precisely because concerned women have been dragging our culture back from its neurotic denial of it for over half a century now. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Leche_League.

[pron]

Fine! Breast milk for everyone! I'm in favor. Like I said in my original comment, I think both sides are idiotic. Facebook is idiotic for censoring annoying but harmless propaganda (you said it) photos of women feeding their children in the semi-nude, and the women are idiotic for caring what 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg thinks of their beautiful exposed breasts.

Yeah, I may find it annoying if Facebook disapproves of any activity I'd like to publicize to the world, but thankfully, we've got tumblr and other sites where we can post photos of us doing (almost) whatever the hell we want. I'd just go to tumblr (Note: I am in no way affiliated with tumblr, nor do I have a tumblr blog, or a Facebook account for that matter).

I take absolutely no part in the argument, and all I'm saying (for the last time) is: the way this protest is expressed, its origin and its target are interesting.

[rsanders]

You can post whatever you like on your own blog, but I think what these women want is the ability to have their posts seen by their friends and family. For a huge majority of the people I know, Facebook is the only way to do that.

I don't think either side is idiotic. I believe Facebook has a real need to improve its system so that it doesn't have to hold the entire world to a single parochial standard of propriety. And these women are encouraging it to do so. The only measure of their approach that matters to them is whether it is effective. Time will tell.

What would be interesting to me is your proposal for a better way to achieve their goals, and why you believe it would be more effective.