[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.