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Subject:
From:
Susan Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 24 Jul 2001 07:09:30 -0700
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Give me a fanatic any day if by fanatic you mean
”passionate and committed to increased knowledge and
experience.”  If my car is not working, if my garden
is failing, if my house needs painting, my bathroom
remodeling, my child’s broken arm repairing – by all
means, recommend the most fanatic expert in the field!
 Since when did experience and passion become
synonymous with fanatic?  Since when did it become
inappropriate to get the best help with a problem?  To
borrow from Rachael’s post:

“It is also my theory and take this for what its
worth,
that any organization started by women, run by women,
and for women is going to be threatening to some
people, men and women alike.  The fanatic reputation
is applied to amny women's organizations, I think.”

Absolutely.  The undercurrent of many recent posts (to
my ear) is a reaction to the continuing undervaluation
of women’s need for medical help (i.e. breastfeeding),
women as care providers (note the slow acceptance of
straightforward breastfeeding roles for IBCLCs), and
culturally female ways of providing that help
(woman-to-woman, sensitive to time, relationships, and
intuition).  Use of the word fanatic to describe a
woman helping a woman perform a biologically female
function is misogyny.  Is it any more palatable when
that language comes from a woman?  Think again.

My own commitment to helping women and children nurse
does not arise simply from a passion for
breastfeeding.  Rather, it is the politics that
inspire me.  Because breastfeeding is intrinsically
female.  Because breastfeeding is a choice (albeit
cultural), a deliberate act on the part of the mother
(even in the best of circumstances) drawing that baby
to the breast again and again.  It is precisely
because breastfeeding is the one deliberate,
exclusively female act that I find it to be the
ultimate feminist issue.  Unlike conception,
pregnancy, and birth which women should “own” but
sometimes “deny” and “endure,” breastfeeding requires
deliberation.  No one has yet to call me, through LLL
or through my business name, to complain she is
“accidentally” breastfeeding and doesn’t know how it
happened…..

Are the best neurosurgeons, car mechanics, grade
school teachers, chefs, attorneys, house painters,
landscape architects, and plumbers called fanatics in
your area?  Bet not.  I’m guessing they’re simply
called “the best.”


Susan Johnson  MFA, IBCLC






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