> Subject: How is sexual defined?
>
> Lesley writes:
> >At the risk of being pounced upon and shouted at I would like to add to the
> >recent discussion that I believe that breastfeeding IS sexual and that
> >there is absolutely nothing wrong with that...{snip}
>
> I'm not pouncing, and I promise not to shout with caps.  I continue to
> maintain that mammary glands have nothing to do with sex, except where we
> *culturally* define them as having something to do with sex...{snip}

I think the breasts are not so much to do with sex as with *sexuality* which
is about far more than just the act of sexual intercourse - it's to do with
gender and our emotional life, how we feel about ourselves as women etc. I
remember going on a course about "Body Image and Sexuality" (about mastectomy
patients etc) and the lecturer started off by saying that if we had come to hear
about how mastectomy patients had sex, we were at the wrong lecture! He then
went on to talk about how patients are affected emotionally by disfigurement
etc and how people report feeling "less than a complete woman" or "not a real
man" after surgery has left them disfigured.

Sexual intercourse, pregnancy, giving birth, breastfeeding: they are all part
of sexuality, not sex. Just my opinion... :-)
--
Anna (mummy to Emma, born 17th Jan 1995 and Alice, born 11th Sept 1996)
Web Page: http://www.ratbag.demon.co.uk/anna