Sharon Terry writes:
>
>Do you mean that we as individuals have each learned to be turned on by
>breast stimulation?  Or do you mean as a society we have learned that?  How
>did we learn it?  How did those individuals who never had a positive role
>model for sexual behavior, or were reared in rigid body-loathing traditions,
>learn it?  I am confused as to how one learns something that is so physical -
>how one can learn to have a stroke on the nipple be a pleasurable zap in the
>brain...  It isn't that I don't believe you, it is only that I don't
>understand...

Sharon, you're certainly entitled not to believe me, in any case!  But I
would say that we are bombarded with images from our earliest days that
breasts are sex objects and are *naturally* part of sexual activity, just
like we learn that kissing is pleasurable even if our parents never kissed
us on the mouths (and kids in Mali never see anyone kissing on the mouth,
and in fact are taught that mouths are pretty dirty things -- which is true
-- and that kissing is a gross, disgusting thing only crazy white folks do,
like paying money for a dog -- another thing only crazy white folks do).  We
learn about breasts as sex ojbects on TV, in movies, in print (magazines,
even the supposedly non-pornographic ones like Teen, Seventeen, Cosmo, etc.
will have articles about how to make your breasts attractive, how to keep
them perky, how to get sexual pleasure from them).  Newspaper stories about
women with breast implants claiming that they suffered nerve damage from
their implants and can no longer experience pleasure during sex -- this
would be a recent example, not relevant to me or you personally since we
grew up before the discussion of the hazards of breast implants, but one
that my 14 year old daughter read about in the local newspaper last year.
We hear stories from friends (along with the old standards of "you can't get
pregnant the first time" and "you can't get pregnant if you have sex
standing up").  There are many many ways in which this image of the breasts
as part of sexual activity, and kissing and stroking of the breasts as part
of pleasurable sexual behavior, are taught to children at a very young age.
Even my son's peers at preschool (4 years old) *know* that breasts are for
sex.  My son, on the other hand, saw a picture on the cover a novel I was
reading (cover image much steamier than the novel inside) of a man kissing a
woman's breasts/cleavage (she had on a dress) and was intensely curious
about why an adult man would be "cuddling" a woman's breasts.  He at least
knows that breasts are for children and for nursing, but even in our
household he can't be shielded completely from this attitude.  I don't think
it is something that each individual learns from personal experience with
someone stroking their breast.  I think it is something our culture teaches
us, in myriad ways, is normal and expected, so that people who don't
experience pleasure from breast touching think they are weird and may find
themselves faking it.  I also remember girls from high school who complained
that they didn't like their boyfriends pawing their breasts at all, didn't
understand what the great pleasure was supposed to be, wondered if their
boyfriends were inept or if there was something wrong with their breasts --
but we all agreed that if you wanted to keep their hands *above* your waist,
one way to do so was to give them free access to your breasts.  And some
girls learned to enjoy it, and some enjoyed it from the start, and some
always hated it......


Joy Anderson writes:

>With regard to sex and breasts - there is a physiological link, as oxytocin
>is both the hormone which causes milk let-down and causes orgasm. It is
>quite physiological to experience sexual feelings when breastfeeding due to
>this hormone's effect. As I am sure you know, oxytocin also causes labour.
>This hormone's effect is sometimes the basis of objections to breastfeeding
>or sexual intercourse through pregnancy - the oxytocin *theoretically*
>causing premature labour. I have heard oxytocin called "the hormone of
>love".

Oxytocin is the hormone responsible for causing milk let-down and uterine
contractions during labor, and is *released* with orgasm (though not
specifically *causing* it, I don't think; it is released at the moment of
orgasm, and causes the uterus to contract, but isn't responsible for the
pleasurable feelings *of* orgasm).  It is also released when one eats food,
but most people don't therefore claim that eating is part of sex.  There is
no research that I am aware of showing that the release of oxytocin itself
is *pleasurable* or even recognizable by the person; certainly the
contractions of the uterus following childbirth due to oxytocin from the
baby at the breast are not *pleasurable*.  It would be interesting to do a
study where one gives one group of non-pregnant, non-lactating people an
injection of oxytocin and the other group an injection of saline solution.
I'll bet you would find no identifiable response in either group.


 There is also no reason (IMHO) to define all physically pleasurable
feelings as *sexual*.  In "Beauty and the Breast" I liken the physically
pleasurable feelings of breastfeeding to those one gets from a hug from
one's mom, or a good friend, or a backrub from a masseuse, or even taking
off your tight shoes and pantyhose at the end of the day.  All physically
pleasurable sensations do not have to be sexual.  Most of us can separate
the physically pleasurable sensations of a backrub at the gym (AS IF I ever
get one of those!) from the sexually-charged sensations of a backrub from
one's spouse as a prelude to sex.  And most of us find the physically
pleasurable sensations of a nice long kiss from our spouse completely
different from the exact same physical, but not pleasurable, sensations of a
nice long kiss from someone we can't stand/don't know.  Sex is 99% in the
brain -- the physical feelings are interpreted differently depending on
who/where/when of the context.  That is why a statement that a woman being
raped should "Lay back and enjoy it" is so ludicrous.

I stand by my contention that it is harmful to women and children to define
the physically pleasurable sensations of breastfeeding as *sexual* because
of all the other cultural context surrounding sex in the U.S.  As long as
breasts are considered primarily sex objects, and breastfeeding is viewed as
sexual, it will never be accepted for women to nurse children beyond the age
of two years (or six weeks, in some communities), and it will never be
accepted for women to nurse children in public.

Off soapbox again.

Kathy D., shivering here in Texas, where the windchill is minus 2, and we
don't even get snow to show for it.