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Subject:
From:
katie allison granju <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 19 Aug 1997 15:48:51 -0400
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Here is today's Camille Paglia column from the online magazine, Salon.

***********************************************************************

Breastfeeding is becoming a bogey of the '90s.
 Here in Australia we have mother A suing
 mother B for breastfeeding mother A's children
 and governments legislating to prevent women
 selling their breast milk (while allowing the sale
of blood and sperm). On the other hand, there
 are women using public (and aggressive)
 displays of breastfeeding as some form of
 political statement. How can such a natural and
 essentially mammalian activity become a
 political football?

Signed:                          Chthonic Youth

                          Dear Youth:

                          I'm sure Salon readers will be as
fascinated                           as I
                          am by your bulletin from Australia.
                          Breastfeeding has gotten some attention in the
                          United States through a few controversies over
                          whether public nursing violates
local                           ordinances
                          forbidding indecent exposure.

                          However, the selling of breast milk has never
                          been an issue here at all. Is this a
new                           wrinkle
                          in Australian entrepreneurship? Will mother's
                          milk be your next export? We're very happy
                          with Nicole Kidman and Foster's beer. Please
                          show us more!

                          Possibly there is some currently untestable
                          health hazard in unpasteurized breast milk.
                          Otherwise, I fail to see how government has
                          the right to ban its sale. By my
libertarian                           code,
                          each person has the right to dispose of his or
                          her body as he or she wishes --
including                           selling
                          organs, fluids or hair. (Until the
invention                           of
                          dynel, impoverished Italian women's shorn
                          locks made the wigs of the world. Three
                          millennia of olive oil gave us an edge.)

                          The politicizing of public breastfeeding
began                           in
                          the 1960s, when hippie women went braless
                          and shoeless at love-ins and rock
festivals                           and
                          began to push the envelope governing public
                          displays of affection. It's a debatable
point:                           To
                          what extent in modern Western culture is
                          exposure of the breast, a secondary sex organ,
                          inherently erotic? (There was a recent flap in
                          Toronto over women winning the male right to
                          go bare-chested.) And to what extent does
                          breastfeeding, a utilitarian
function,                           resemble
                          other "natural" activities? -- some of
which                           are
                          publicly permitted (eating and drinking) and
                          some not (urination, defecation, sexual
                          intercourse).

                          As with most sexual conventions, the laws will
                          change if enough people defy them. But the
                          majority of women at this time don't appear to
                          be particularly eager to make
militant                           spectacles
                          of themselves and their infants.

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