Dear all:

Thank you Winnie.  I did not feel attacked.  I felt I needed to explain and need to explain further.  

The thought process wasn't "I want to defend sexting, and breastfeeding is just the same".  It was "here is someone who clearly put some effort into defending sexting and the analogy actually works better for breastfeeding than sexting -- and yet people often think of breastfeeding in public as worse than sexting."

And as for flashing, at least according to the research I listened too,  there is a whole group of married and committed couples apparently who sext each other PRIVATELY even though no one really should expect privacy over any form of telecommunication.  These couples seem to do so because they travel too much and don't really spend as much time as they would like together in the same spot.  As I understand it is more like the old fashioned writing of letters (which by the way could also go awry and be read by the wrong person) or like the more intermediate use of voice over a landline phone (which also can go awry as when certain royals had their phones tapped -- to use my son's expression I found some of this TMI that I didn't need to know about).  So, I think some people use sexting like flashing and others don't.  I think there are still people who forget, like I do when I am on my cell phone, that someone could be listening in or reading the texts and your words could be blasted all over the planet.  I guess when I am talking on the phone I naively assume that my conversations usually would be too boring and I am too unimportant for someone to really think that would be worth their while to record me long enough to hear something juicy.  

I think in the case of politicians and celebrities, texting is more like leaving your window shades open when you KNOW your neighbor is a peeping Tom and has a telescope set up in the window directly opposite your own.  Not quite the same thing as running out in the street, but almost.  Or perhaps going to a nude beach and then being surprised that the paparazzi found you and you are splashed all over some fan magazine. 

As for breastfeeding, one of my trainees read something somewhere from some dad that I thought made marvelous sense.  It went something like "When I am intimate with my wife, I consider her mouth to be part of the experience and very sexual.  Nevertheless, I don't feel that she should cover up her mouth when she uses it for another purpose which is eating". I think it is another version on Kathleen Dettwyler's comments on how the foot was eroticized in China to the point that it was wrapped and deformed into more pleasing shapes according to the fashions of those times.  I can think of many body parts (e.g. hair, ankles, legs, etc) that are not inherently sexual that are hidden in various different cultures because they have become eroticized.  

Sincerely,

Susan E Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

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