I have just been reading a "have your say" piece on the BBC news website about 
proposed legislation to protect the rights UK women to breastfeed in public (According to 
several posters, Scotland actually already has a law that protects public breastfeeding).  
Here is the link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/default.stm

Here is my question:  Whenever this topic comes up in the media, we invariably hear 
from people for whom being in the presence of breastfeeding dyads is deeply discomfiting 
-- one of the posters in the above discussion disclosed that she is a midwife, but happens 
to find breastfeeding "repulsive."  sigh.  

Anyway, I know we very recently had a heated discussion on Lactnet regarding the whole 
Ronald MacDonald House debacle in Houston, and there was something about that debate 
that did not sit well with me at the time.  Joanne Elder and others ventured quite 
eloquently, I thought, into an exploration of what sort of empathy should/could be felt for 
those who find proximity to the act of breastfeeding upsetting. 

Morgan Gallagher and others raised equally eloquent objections to these arguments for 
some sort of compromise, and all of Morgan's points were well taken, but I couldn't help 
wondering if the debate needed yet more reframing.

Here is my question:  Could we not label the discomfort, anxiety, upset, etc.  that people 
feel around breastfeeding dyads a phobia?  As I was reading the BBC news discussion, in 
which some posters describe themselves as almost debilitated by nearness to 
breastfeeding dyads, it all of a sudden struck me that these people suffer from a phobia.  

I like the idea of calling it a phobia for a couple of reasons.  Primarily, it makes it the 
phobic's problem, not the breastfeeding dyad's.  People with claustrophobia, for example, 
don't go around insisting that society restructure itself so that they never have to be in 
confined spaces.  People who don't like to be around breastfeeding, however, still think 
it's okay to say that breastfeeding dyads should go into the bathroom, or use a bottle, or 
in some other way hide/subvert the biological norm to appease their unease.

The second reason I like this is that it could potentially take an unhelpful element of 
moralism out of this debate.  Phobias are not immoral; they are irrational.  And the main 
response a phobia garners is sympathy, not scorn.  

As such, the empathy some on this list have argued we should extend to those who don't 
like to see or be around breastfeeding might be something we can offer without any sort 
of compromise.  It seems possible to acknowledge that due to the near disappearance 
biologically normative infant feeding in a number of societies in the 20th century, 
combined with the hyper-sexualization of breasts in those societies, a certain percentage 
of the population will be breastfeeding phobic.  This phobia can be, but isn't always, 
heightened by difficult personal experiences such as abuse.  This phobia can manifest 
itself in new mothers who find themselves overwhelmed or repelled by breastfeeding or it 
can manifest itself in anyone who finds it extremely anxiety-producing to be around 
breastfeeding.  

Help and compassion would be available, but, in the end, if a person suffering from this 
phobia could not, say, bear to be in the same restaurant with a breastfeeding dyad, it 
would clearly be the phobic, not the dyad, who would need to go somewhere else.

Thoughts?

Kerry Ose  

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