>>In no other species of mammal do the mammary glands play any role in
>>sexual activity.
So what? Even if true this proves little. And Prof. Roger Short has some
amazing stories of three generations of male billygoats who lactated and
obviously enjoyed suckling themselves. A variant of normal, the far end of
the spectrum, or pathological? depends on how you define what occurred
naturally in a family of goats with particular genetic potential. Being
goats, no one worried about their morals...
>>If sex was unpleasant, as it IS for most of the women in the world most
>>of the time<<
Do I detect a western bias here, Kathy? "sex" equals heterosexual
intercourse seems implied, for starters. I agree that male-female
intercourse/sex can hardly be pleasant for the circumcised woman; that
male-female intercourse/sex in many cultures is nasty brutish and short.
But not all. Some cultures have far more highly refined erotic traditions
than ours, and in some an unsatisfied woman is a reproach to a man's
masculinity. (We see echos of that in western culture, where women so often
solve the problem by lying.) But the variety of human sexual activity
astonishes me. Women from cultures other than my own have suggested that
western ideas of sex are deeply impoverished and deeply patriarchal. Where
we each draw lines is culturally defined. We would probably find it strange
to see women engaged in milk wars, running around madly squirting milk at
one another and laughing hysterically: it happens in some New Guinea tribe
or other. Just imagine how perverted that might seem to some American
social worker!
There is no mention to date of female-female sex, to some Netters no doubt
abhorrent and to others a valid form of sexual experience.I wouldn't expect
any lesbians to be brave/foolish enough to come out on Lactnet, given
prevailing attitudes, but I have to say that being incorrigibly curious, I
have wondered how that orientation might have shaped their experience of
the breasts and breastfeeding. (In Australia and the UK I know many lesbian
women, some of whom have been wonderful mothers and breastfed.) Nor have we
mentioned in this thread to date of the breast and sex that some men LOVE
lactating breasts, and some women love them suckling: Dr. Marsden Wagner of
WHO Copenhagen got me to write down as a quote for my next book, that it
adds another dimension of sexual pleasure to make love to a lactating
woman. Kinky or natural depends on where you sit. Other men find it messy,
some silly sods find it repugnant. In that sense I agree with Kathy that
context determines what is sexual and what is sensual and what is
disgusting. For that very reason I would not want LactNet to become a part
of the powerful western/American context that says that if breasts sex and
babies ever naturally coincide, it is pathological, possibly criminal. We
should not join the oppressors.
<< If you define breastfeeding as sexual, then numerous women
will have their motivations questioned and their children taken away from
them for sexual abuse for breastfeeding them.
America is the only country I know of where such a thing is possible, and
it is Americans who are busy denying the breast-sex link as hard as they
can here on Lactnet. When they are honest enough to say what they feel and
ask for information/help, mothers are more likely to have their babies
taken away if LCs make it more likely that they will be defined as abusers
by saying that no, we never felt any tingle in the groin, engorgement in
the lower abdomen, only warm fuzzy feelings...Look guys, some of us have
nipples that respond differently. Or maybe babies which suck differently:
it happened with one baby and not another in my case. No big deal here.
Should I be arguing that those who never experience this are defective,
you'd rightly see me as intolerant. Well, give the rest of us a break.
Abuse is about using people, not loving them. What our bodies physically
feel is largely irrelevant. Or else every man/woman who gets aroused by a
person not his/her legal partner is a rapist or a pervert or ... It is
actions that matter, not feelings over which we may not have full conscious
control.
>>any warm fuzzy feelings I get while BF are just that. Those "Normal"
>>feelings of motherly love. (Now there are times while BF, that I really
>>wish my hubby was home, for "playtime", but that is related to wanting
>>HIM, not the baby!)
Jay, for me warm fuzzy feelings were the dominant feelings most of the
time. But sometimes breastfeding made me want my husband home, just as for
you. Those times were times when breastfeeding was arousing as well as warm
fuzzy. Can you honestly say that you never felt aroused, that foreplay with
him wasn't really needed- or not as much- before you leapt upon your guy
for "playtime"? If so, you're with me: someone who sometimes experienced
breastfeding as sexual and not just sensual. Let's be honest about this!
Some abused women have found that experiencing a different kind of pleasure
when breastfeeding was cleansing, allowed them to reclaim their bodies for
themselves. We have to allow for a variety of feelings, not be so adamant
that only motherly, sensual feelings ever occur or SHOULD ever occur while
breastfeeding. Angry hostile feelings can occur, sexy feelings can: the
baby is not affected by either unless a woman's conscious volitional acts
go on from feeling to acting in ways detrimental to her child. Babies are
not mind-readers. I feel people are saying breastfeeding = sensual= good,
=sexual= bad. That's a cultural judgment. Some if it is also definitional
problems. I'd like some responses from Scandinavia where breastfeeding is
almost universal and so there is a wider range of experience, and sex seems
less of a public hangup than it does in America.
Please let's allow for difference here as on other things, and not be rigid
in our judgments. This of all topics is not one where we should generalise
from our own experience and set rules for normality that can be used to
harm the breastfeeding infant and mother.
I have made a resolution to write no more on this (unless seriously provoked!)
Maureen
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