Jennifer writes: >What occurs to me about the poster of the little girl nursing her doll >is that the same HCPs would not have complained that the child was not >wearing a top if she had been bottle-feeding her doll. > I do agree that most would not react badly to a poster of little girl bottle-feeding her doll. One obvious reason is that most people still think of bottle-feeding as normative. A less obvious reason, I think, is that little girls *can* bottle-feed; doing so does not require a post-pubescent body. On the other hand, actual breastfeeding requires sexual maturity. Many people are rightly wary of girls being "groomed" to do things more womanly than their years. All too often, this happens in an environment of coercion, exploitation and abuse. When little girls (and plenty of little boys, too) imitate breastfeeding, they almost always do so in the context of a loving, healthy family. Sadly, not everyone can see or appreciate this distinction. For many, especially those who have been abused as children, a picture of a topless child doing such a womanly thing sets off an internal alarm. I guess that I am just restating my observation from my previous post: objections to a poster such as this may be rooted in something a bit more complicated than the inappropriate sexualization of breastfeeding. And these objections may also be more personal than those of any person on the street to something that smacks of child porn. Most of us on LN live in societies in which child sexual abuse is heartbreakingly common. It might be that the high rate of this predatory behavior has rendered far too many people unable to delight in the beautiful image and message of this poster. If that is true, then perhaps our anger is misplaced when we target those who object to it and tear it down. Kerry Ose *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html