For those of you unfamiliar with the research data on this issue, I
recommend reading my chapter "Beauty and the Breast" from the book I
co-edited, Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives.  It doesn't matter that
oxytocin is released when the baby nurses and during orgasms.  That has
nothing to do with anything.  Both cause contractions that are necessary for
human survival (admitting sperm to the uterus, expelling the baby, feeding
the baby).

In most cultures of the world, throughout history, breasts have been ONLY
for feeding babies.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Suggesting that we not struggle against viewing the breast as a sex object
because both men and women get pleasure out of it (and because it is a
losing battle) is like saying that people shouldn't have struggled against
Chinese foot-binding adn the viewing of the bound foot as a sex object
because men got such great out of it and because it would be a losing
battle.  Well, that battle was won, and Chinese women no longer have their
feet tortured and mutilated and render inoperable because they are bound,
and Chinese men learned to get their sexual jollies elsewhere.  And the same
could happen for breasts in the west, if we but agreed that breastfeeding
was too important to sacrifice on the altar of men's (and women's)
culturally-learned sexual pleasure.

Kathy Dettwyler

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