I’m finding it increasingly difficult to read, and respond to, the posts 
which suggest it was Jessica and Tobin’s responsibility in RHM to prepare 
the way for her nursing.  That is not unreasonable for Jessica to be asked 
to ‘announce’ her intention to nurse – for, after all, we all need to find a 
way to rub along together.

I’m finding it hard to read these posts, as they seem to be suggesting that 
all parties involved have equal rights in the matter.   Tobin’s need to be 
nurtured is of equal status as the rights of the ‘offended’ party in having 
to watch such an uncomfortable act.

This is complete nonsense.  There is only one right here: Tobin’s right to 
nurse.  That’s why there is a law stating so, no matter how ineffective it 
turns out to be.

Tobin has an inalienable human right here that is being denied.  The right 
of a human child to human milk, to nurture and nourish when its 
psychobiology requires it.

The offended onlooker does not have any rights to be protected.  The 
offended onlooker has a personal issue, a feeling of discomfort and unease, 
that requires handling.  A cultural dissonance, that needs acknowledged, 
responded to, engaged with and hopefully smoothed away.  The nursing dyad 
has no such personal issue in this paradigm.  The nursing dyad is not 
operating out of a cultural context.  The nursing dyad has supreme 
importance and protection in this scenario.

There is a simple truth here, that is so awesome and complete in its 
simplicity, that it’s in danger of being overlooked: breastfeeding an infant 
is not a lifestyle choice.  It is not a cultural convention.  It is not a 
personal statement.  It is a biological imperative.  It is our essential 
nature.  It is an essential element of our species, and the continuation of 
it.  It is a biological norm.

We do not choose to breastfeed.  We can choose not to.  Likewise, we do not 
choose to breastfeed in public.  We can choose not to.  Breastfeeding is not 
a cultural construct.  Not breastfeeding, is.  Nursing an infant when the 
infant needs it, is a biological norm.  Deciding that this needs to be done 
in a certain place, at a certain time, or in a certain way, is a cultural 
value.

The problem with many of the comments in here over the past couple of days, 
comments about tolerance, offence, understanding that other parents are 
going to be askance at nursing twins… is that these arguments place nursing 
within a cultural paradigm.  It positions the debate in one of opinion, 
feelings and cultural mores.  In doing this, it assigns equal right to all 
participants, not to have their feelings etc ‘offended’ and that they all 
have equal standing in the debate: no one position is more valued or 
‘protected’ than the other.  Different cultures often do things so 
differently from each other, that problems and tensions arise when people of 
the differing cultures meet are best met with discussion, sharing views etc. 
  All laudable comments on such problems as they arrive in a multi-cultural 
society.

However, breastfeeding is not a cultural activity.  Therefore it does not 
belong in the cultural difference paradigm.  As a biological normative 
behaviour, it exists in a complete different paradigm: that of human rights.

Quite often, when this sort of thing is discussed, someone will say “Would 
you ask a black person to go eat in their room if someone else was 
offended?” and a huge debate will fall open about whether or not that was an 
appropriate thing to say.  One side will scream its not appropriate to 
reference colour, the other will say “Why not?” and off the merry go round 
will go.

Well, I’m going to raise it here – as an example of what I mean by the basic 
difference between arguing about a cultural convention and a biological 
norm.

Being black is a biological norm.  In fact, it’s the biological norm.  Being 
white is actually the absence of being black.   To discriminate against 
someone on the basis of colour, is to discriminate on their essential 
biology.  It is to discriminate against their right to exist: it impinges on 
their human rights.  There is no logic, rhyme or reason to such 
discrimination.  It is a cultural construct imposing lunacy on the essential 
nature of humans.  No one decides to be black.  It is not a cultural 
concept.  It is not a lifestyle choice.  It is an essential artefact of 
human biology.  It is.

As is breastfeeding.

Remembering that we do not choose to breastfeed… we can only choose not to.  
All babies are born to breastfeed.  It is not a cultural concept.  It is not 
a cultural artefact.  They are not making a lifestyle choice.  They are 
following their biological, and psychobiological, imperatives.  They are 
doing what humans do – they are suckling for nurture, for nourishment and 
for survival.  It is.

That is why they need the protection of the human rights paradigm, not the 
cultural one.

When laws are passed to protect the nursing dyad, these laws are not about 
protecting cultural difference.  It is not about soothing cultural 
dissonance.  It is not about protecting feelings, emotions or opinion.  It 
is about protecting the essential normative biology of a nursing dyad.  It 
is to prevent cultural suppression of an innate human characteristic.  Just 
as being black, is an innate human characteristic.

I reiterate:  breastfeeding is not a lifestyle choice.  It is not something 
you choose to do.  It is something you can only choose not to do.  If you 
accept that an infant has an inalienable human right to human milk, and to 
comfort and soothe on the mother’s breast, you must also hold up its right 
to do so when it needs to – regardless of how offended the ‘onlooker’ in.  
By all means soothe the onlooker – but don’t make it the responsibility of 
the mother to do the soothing.

Keeping nursing in public debates with the cultural paradigm is completely 
and utterly redundant in our current society.  It was once the only place 
the debate could take place, and we must thank, and support, the previous 
generations in their struggle in that paradigm.  Many nursing mothers here 
and now, are only here because of the work of previous generations, who in 
the Great Drought sought to change personal opinion when they could.  
Slowly, gently, and in a ‘let’s all get along nicely’ way.  Wonderful women 
fighting a small, slow battle, inch by inch.  Thank you.

However, we are not there anymore.  Keeping the debate in the cultural 
paradigm is not only no longer useful – it is detrimental to progress.  Keep 
it in the cultural battlefield and you do several things, all of them 
invidious:

For starters, you place all the pressure on the individual mother, and her 
infant.  Jessica Swimely has carried that entire pressure of this battle on 
her head over the past few days – as the law that is there to prevent her 
from having to do so, has failed her.   By keeping the cultural paradigm in 
mind, you make it about the mother making the inroads into culture.  You 
makes statements as a society that breastfeeding is to be protected … but 
you leave the individual mother to take the flack.  She must make the 
choices daily, on where and when her child’s psychobiological needs are 
suppressed by the hegemony.  She carries the burden.

As does the infant.

In addition, you get all the cultural ‘debates’ that take up the time and 
energy and prevent progress.  The female human breast is ‘sexual’ and it’s 
understandable that others will be offended.  Ehm no.  The female human 
breast is not sexual.  It does not carry a biologically determined normative 
function of ‘sexual attraction’. (Enlarged breasts actually mimic the true 
sexual attraction – the human bottom.  Large breasts are not biologically 
standard.)   Culture dictates whether or not it is a sexualised organ.  Keep 
the debate in cultural mores – keep having endless arguments about seeing 
sexual body parts.  Some USA State laws have even identified this as part of 
the protective law and stated legally that a nursing breast is not a sexual 
object.  When you accept, and promote, the concept that nursing in public is 
a cultural debate, you actually end up undermining what you’re trying to 
protect – by constantly allowing the ever rolling debate on such trivial 
points as to how much of a breast can be seen before offence is caused.  
Unless it’s a non-nursing breast, in which case you’re allowed rather a lot 
of it on billboards.

You also create space for the debate to include when and why weaning should 
occur and further undermine normal nursing practices from establishing.  
Lest we forget, this is about nursing toddlers.  Every single time one of 
the posters in here has made a comment about how it is understandable that 
people have reacted badly to nursing twin toddlers, a dagger has been struck 
in the heart of many of us.  Two extremely pernicious concepts have bobbed 
to the surface here – one is the ‘indiscrete’ women, making it harder for 
laws to be passed, as she ‘whips it out’ and alienates people.  Concurrent 
with this is the notion that those of us nursing toddlers in public are 
making it harder for acceptance, as we are acting so far out of the cultural 
norm.  Shame!  Shame on you!   How can you possibly justify discussing a 
woman’s body, and her biological imperative to nurture her infant in such 
negative and unjust terms?  How can you stand up and say you support 
breastfeeding, but you can see that those nursing toddlers are better 
advised to hide more than the others?  How can you undermine the very women 
fighting longest and hardest to establish normative nursing patterns.  How 
can you justify suggesting that women nursing in public hinders 
breastfeeding awareness?

Yet you do all of these things, when you argue about breastfeeding as a 
cultural issue.  Because the very nature of cultural debate is to state that 
all sides have some points to make, and must be accommodated.

Breastfeeding is not a cultural artefact.  Breastfeeding is a biological 
norm.  The ability of the infant to access their mother’s milk when and 
where it chooses, is a human rights issue.  The right of the human infant to 
nourish and comfort itself at the mother’s breast when it requires to, is an 
inalienable human right.  A woman having control of her own body, in order 
to nourish her infant regardless of cultural suppression, is her inalienable 
human right.

These are human rights, not cultural debates.  We can act in order to get 
along nicely where possible, but the right of the human child to 
breastfeeding is paramount.

And lest we forget…. the cost of the lack of nursing, is death for many 
human babies.  In the USA, 2 babies per thousand die for being on formula.  
Many many more get ill.  In the wider world, 3500 babies a day die for lack 
of breastfeeding.  In the time it’s taken me to write this – over 7000 
babies have died.  And in the global village we live in, the lack of nursing 
in the West, feeds into that statistic.  Women in the West feeding their 
infants in closed rooms, are not seen by their own communities, by the 
expectant mothers around them… but they are also not seen by the mothers of 
the Third World, desperate to give their babies ‘the best’.  These women 
only see white, affluent and incredibly healthy babies and mothers… on the 
sides of cans of expensive formula.  By keeping our nursing mothers bundled 
in the corner, or locked in bedrooms with their toddlers, or asking the 
common room to clear before feeding them… we contribute to the problem.  But 
that’s okay, because the father over there, feeding his sick baby formula, 
is appeased.

Women chose not to nurse because they live in a culture that disapproves of 
it.  We cannot change this, by working within the culture to ‘smooth it all 
out’.  We cannot dump the responsibility on the individual nursing mother to 
prevent offence.  We must act to protect her rights to nurse, and her 
child’s right to nurse.  Their human rights.  Full stop.  Period.  End of.

Working in terms of the sensibilites of the onlooker to nursing, was once 
useful.  Yesterday.  Or even the day before yesterday.  We can acknowledge 
how useful it was, and how much was acheived, as we move on to tomorrow.

Morgan Gallagher
Online Lactaneer
Nursing and nurturing the psychobiological needs of her 26 month infant, 
despite hegemonic pressure

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