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

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