> The mindset that hospitals and new mothers "need" gifts from =
> manufacturers of artificial baby milks, bottles and teats is a =
> *fiction*. The best way to demonstrate that is it indeed a fiction, is =
> to provide a viable alternative.
>
Putting on my English major hat here:
Fiction and myth are both terms that are rich, meaningful, and, for me,
at least, life-giving; the word you are looking for and trying not to
use is "lie." I know it is hard for some of us to make strong judgment
statements, and it is dangerous and degrading to do so with the mothers
we are helping. However, among us, let's admit that there is no other
term for the idea that mothers need artificial milk and equipment and
that these are gifts. Other possibilities, such as inaccurate, false
impression, misleading, and so on are probably too weak to be used in
this context. I will let the anthropologists among us discuss the full
range and connotation of myth; certainly when I wrote about the "Myth of
the Mother" I didn't mean lie!
On the other hand, the mindset itself is not a lie. It does not even
grow out of a belief in this set of lies, but rather from a full
awareness of the truth and a determination to ignore it. There have been
cases in which disseminators of hate literature have said, off the
record (or possibly even on, I don't know, but if I have heard it, it is
possible) saying that they knew they were spreading lies. To me,
spreading the message that substitutes are as good as human milk when
you know they are not is *far* worse than actually believing it (as some
mothers do).
Jo-Anne, far too uppity after talking to a wonderful group of legal
translators and terminologists.
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