This week, a virtual storm broke around the humiliating expulsion of a nursing mother from a trendy café in Soho, London, because it was ‘a place for eating’

It wouldn’t have happened in Scotland.

Leave it up to the owner of the restaurant. Their restaurant, their rules. I don’t insist that smart restaurants allow me to enter their premises dressed as they please. If I don’t like their rules I can go elsewhere. If nowhere else caters for me then there clearly isn’t enough demand and that’s my problem that I shouldn’t expect the government to solve by p***ing off the rest of society.

dressed as I please*

Richard, I’m not entirely sure what you’re saying. If restaurants don’t allow children, that’s their prerogative, but if they DO allow children and yet DON’T allow them to eat, perhaps they should put signs outside, so that customers can make their choices informedly?

Laurie, I don;t get why people think seeing someone breastfeed is worse than a screaming hungry baby. I breastfed my little one in public, and the number of people who congratulated me was huge.

In the long opening paragraphs you almost seem to be suggesting there is something arbitrary and learned about male desire for female breasts? Is this your view?

Obviously you’re right about breastfeeding but what does this mean?

“Anti-breastfeeding stigma is not for a minute about modesty. It is about restricting women’s choices…”

Do you believe that when someone decries breastfeeding in public they are actually, deliberately *lying* about being offended by the act, and are in fact conciously trying to restrict women’s choices? Are you saying there is some kind of huge patriarchal conspiracy to pretend to be disgusted by breastfeeding? That’s what you seem to be saying.

The female breasts is not primarily constructed to feed human young . This is obvious if you compare its shape with our near relatives who have the requisite glands but lack the variously sized fatty deposits . These rounded forms aka fun dumplings aka ham radio (“ This is broadsword calling sunny boy come in sunny boy …“twiddle twiddle ) are for sexual display .The large breasted dimorphism displayed by the human female , and equally the large penised male ( again oddly impractical; structure copmpared to the small bony penis of our relatives ) point clearly to a past where sexual competition overtook environmental fitness as the main evolutionary driver . These explosive effect is responsible for the peacocks tail and other display features found in nature and very possibly accounts form the over endowment with brain early humans mystifyingly acquired.

One compelling theory is that at a certain stage in the evolution of humans it became possible to have intercourse from two directions and whereas the female bottom was originally the main sexual attractant the breasts grew to mimic the effect .The mythic link between tits and ass and the love heart which clearly symbolises the cleavage of either has a scientific foundation.

With this background we can see that women displaying her breasts in an asexualised way is making an gesture against her status an object of sexual desire . For some reason these two roles are peculiarly separated in Anglo Saxon culture and the yummy mummy still feels slightly awkward the French are more comfortable with it

I am perfectly happy for women to breast feed in public Mrs. N has two on the go now and emergencies occur . On the the hand the effort of wimmin to assert the asexual role of breasts aggressively is apolitical act designed to pretend the purpose of breast is functional . It is not , they are their to attract men . There are naturally complex feelings about this fabulous things and would it really kill wimmin to take account of that ?

Newmania,

I find that hugely distasteful and frankly incredibly offensive. Fun dumplings? Ham Radio? When, precisely, did you leave school?

Evolutionary theory about the biological purposes of the human body is also a feminist issue. We can never be sure why certain features developed; some biologists (mostly male ones, funnily enough) work from the same first principles as you do, and it’s their work that has become largely accepted as gospel, but it represents only a small fraction of evolutionary theory. What people choose to believe about how evolution worked, about their own mythological history, says a lot more about contemporary society than it does about our ancestors. For an alternative reading of the theory, see the Aquatic Ape hypothesis (very flawed, but it demonstrates a female biologist working from a perspective of not automatically assuming that everything about women is designed to attract men) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_ape_hypothesis#Reception_by_Academia.

And secondly, are we not more than animals now? Our bodies have a huge number of functions: even if breasts did evolve to attract men, like every other part of a human body they are more than what evolution intended for them. They are parts of a person. Nobody should be able to dictate in what context they are and are not sexual.

Breasts are not solely there to attract men. Women’s bodies are not designed primarily to attract men. That’s one of the most vilely misogynistic things I’ve ever heard from you, and that’s really saying something.

Jennie: Laurie, I don;t get why people think seeing someone breastfeed is worse than a screaming hungry baby.

You’re assuming people are rational — the world makes much more sense when you drop this assumption.

Woobegone: Do you believe that when someone decries breastfeeding in public they are actually, deliberately *lying* about being offended by the act, and are in fact conciously trying to restrict women’s choices?

Bear in mind that most thought is subconscious and people are quite capable of having real motives that they aren’t consciously aware of. Humans are all hypocrites; you might want to read up on evolutionary psychology to see why this is so.

Cabalamat, I know, but that’s depressing.

Newmania: someone has not only had sex with you but married you, with your attitudes? Jesus wept.

Firstly, can we steer clear of evolutionary psychology, please, it’s mostly drivel, and at best is entirely debatable since it’s all about just making up what the evolutionary reasons for things were as fits our purpose.

Secondly, Woobegone:

Do you believe that when someone decries breastfeeding in public they are actually, deliberately *lying* about being offended by the act, and are in fact conciously trying to restrict women’s choices? Are you saying there is some kind of huge patriarchal conspiracy to pretend to be disgusted by breastfeeding? That’s what you seem to be saying.

It’s not what I took it to be saying at all. What I took Laurie to be saying was that the offense and disgust that some men seem to feel when confronted by breastfeeding in public is motivated by a set of assumptions in their head (probably subconscious, most of what goes on in our heads is) that breasts are there to be sexualised. To see a breast in such a functional and un-glamorous context is therefore surprising and confusing to them. Seems reasonable to me.

ps. Can I just say that I am a man, and I have no objection to people breastfeeding in public.

Oh, and I would just like to offer a more innocent explanation of why breastfeeding in public might make people feel not disgusted, but just a bit awkward: Because men are trying *not* to constantly sexualise women, they feel like they shouldn’t be able to see breasts, because if the woman sees them “looking”, they might feel they are being looked at in a sexualised way, even if they are breastfeeding at the time (by which I mean, if men are looking at your breasts because you’re wearing a low cut top and push up bra, then that’s partly your fault, but if you’re breastfeeding, you have a legitimate alternative motivation). Hence the “not knowing where to look” syndrome; you become hyper-conscious of what the correct way to behave is.

“It’s not what I took it to be saying at all. What I took Laurie to be saying was that the offense and disgust that some men seem to feel when confronted by breastfeeding in public is motivated by a set of assumptions in their head (probably subconscious, most of what goes on in our heads is) that breasts are there to be sexualised. To see a breast in such a functional and un-glamorous context is therefore surprising and confusing to them. Seems reasonable to me.”

Well it seems reasonable, but isn’t that just the kind of explanation-inventing that you don’t like about evolutionary psychology? Have you read any, by the way, or is your low opinion of it just a second hand opinion? (I’m genuinely curious)

I don’t think we ought to speculate about why people feel disgusted by things. In fact I’m fairly sure there *is* no “why”, because emotions are not rational. The fact is that breastfeeding in public is distasteful to many people.

Now whether we ought to pander to the whims of these people is another matter. personally I think they should just shut up and learn to live it – but I have nothing against them for feeling as they do and I don’t think it’s useful to see their feelings as evidence of some kind of subconious anti-feminism. That’s giving them too much credit.

I can’t say I’ve read a lot of evolutionary psychology, but I read enough to form the view of it that I expressed above (as part of my psychology degree). The problem from a scientific standpoint is that testing the hypotheses that evolutionary psychology comes up with would require a time machine, and therefore until we have one, its predictions, as interesting as they may be, can’t really be thought of as science, because they aren’t especially testable.

The difference with what I said is that my explanation revolves around a set of attitudes that exist in these people’s heads *right now*, and therefore if we could think of a prediction that that explanation makes we could test it by constructing some sort of experiment and getting a group of people who are disgusted by breast-feeding and a group who aren’t to participate.

However, I admit that I have no good evidence to back up what I said at present. But then, that’s one of the uses of strains of thought like feminism, Marxism, liberalism, rationalism, (psychological) nativism, etc., is that they make certain assertions about the way the world / people’s minds are, and much of that can be investigated.

It’s certainly not true to say that the subconscious cannot be investigated.

Like Andy, I’m a bit wary of evolutionary psychology, mainly because I only ever seem to encounter it when it’s being deployed as ‘evidence’ by ‘men’s rights’ activists on the way to explaining how prostitution is the exploitation of men by the evil womenfolk. Perhaps I should just do more reading into it, but I generally find anthropological approaches to this kind of thing to be much more convincing.

Oh, and ‘fun dumplings’??? Are you secretly a headline writer for Zoo, Newmania? If not, I feel you might be betraying your true calling…

>> Male commentators have compared breastfeeding in public to shooting up drugs in public, claimed that the practice spreads aids, and squealed that it makes them want to throw up.

What? I mean… what?

I must be very odd. Whenever I hear quotes about men reacting like this on issues involving women, I can’t even imagine it coming from me or any of my male friends. The only crossover would be with a group labelled “assholes”.

I don’t mind seeing breastfeeding in public at all, I don’t mind kids seeing it, I just don’t understand the problem. It’s one sex on the planet doing the most normal thing to keep babies of both sexes fed. It’s not just mundane, it’s essential. Are we really still this backward on anatomy and life? Where did the terror and guilt about having a body come from? (Must not give the answer I want to there, I’ve been opinionated enough about religion on here already).

Time was that “putting milk into babies” was considered patriotic…

Nu Mania appears to be doing an Alan Partridge impersonation…

I’d be interested to know whether the bastard from Soho was genuinely disgusted or expected others to be disgusted. The latter, I think, would be a more conscious rationalisation, and more indicative of apparent societal attitudes.

Incidentally, this Johann Hari column might be of interest…

“But the biggest reason most women give for reluctantly pushing their baby on to the bottle is their need to return to work. How do we change that? For clues, look at the country where breastfeeding rates are still 90 per cent at six months: Norway. They give mothers a year off with 80 per cent pay, and give state employees breastfeeding breaks when they do come back. Yes, this costs businesses some money up front – but it saves a fortune further down the line, because you have a cleverer workforce that pays more tax and puts less pressure on the health service.”

Good post, Jennie. I agree completely with the point you’re making and most of what you say is spot on. The pedant in me feels the need to draw attention to the very first line though. There is a sound argument to be made that “Breasts are the most fetishised part of the human body, bar none”. But there’s also a sound argument that the penis wins the prize for “most fetishised”. Of course, it’s not quite so blatant (tabloids don’t yet provide us with a Page Three Cock) but phallic symbolism — fetishisation par excellence — is so ubiquitous now that one hardly even notices it.

The classic example that so few people seem to recognise is the humble necktie (or the ‘business phallus’ as I like to refer to it as). With the disappearance of the cod-piece, men shifted to wearing a cloth arrow pointing at their penis instead.

As I say, I’m certainly not disagreeing with your point, but I know feminist academics who honestly consider the word “phallocentric” to be the male counterpart of the word “feminist”… literally reducing maleness to ‘having a penis’. Yet they’ll decry Freud for theories of female development that place primacy on not having one. Anyways, that’s something of a tangent, but given my field, it’s one I couldn’t resist mentioning.

Aside from that, thanks for a good article.

One last thing, I think it’s worth echoing other commenters on the “anti-breast-feeding stigma being about restricting women’s choices” point. It undoubtedly is, but it’s also undoubtedly largely unconscious and a result of social conditioning. This doesn’t mean “it’s OK”, or that it doesn’t need to change. Merely that it won’t be easily changed.

“It’s not what I took it to be saying at all. What I took Laurie to be saying was that the offense and disgust that some men seem to feel when confronted by breastfeeding in public is motivated by a set of assumptions in their head (probably subconscious, most of what goes on in our heads is) that breasts are there to be sexualised.”

Couldn’t we say the same thing about bums? Not really sure I’d like them publicly displayed fulfilling all of their associated biological functions.

The process of milking in general is gross, even when we’re talking about farm animals. So it’s kind of worse to see a human doing it, and even worse than that when you’re, uh, sipping a nice creamy latte.

I think restricting the right to breastfeed is absolutely crazy. But I think a lot of things are crazy which I still think are perfectly legitimately things to do to yourself or on private property. So restaurants can make whatever rules they like, although perhaps they should be more explicit about their rules as it hardly seems intuitive that they would restrict that right (it is not as if patrons are forced to look) – and restaurant owners should be rightly held in disdain for having such rules, hell a boycott of their business would be a legitimate action. In any publically owned space, I would support the right to breastfeed.

Hey, good post, Laurie!

Er… I should have opened my comment with “Good post, Laurie” and not “Good post, Jennie”.

“Couldn’t we say the same thing about bums? Not really sure I’d like them publicly displayed fulfilling all of their associated biological functions.”

Oh come on, do try harder. No, I wouldn’t like to see a bum performing its natural function whilst eating, for the simple reason that poo is not a very hygienic thing to be around whilst you’re eating, and for that reason it’s not especially appetising stuff. There is a very good reason to find poo aversive whilst you’re eating.

Milk is not the same thing at all. If I really have to explain any further, I am wasting my time.