Just bought the June issue of the UK edition of Marie Claire magazine because of article mentioned on the cover "Women who breastfeed animals". The article "Mothers who raise animals as their own children" is about women of the Bishnoi tribe in Rajasthan in India -- in the desert near where the recent nuclear tests were conducted -- who have a long tradition of protecting their environment including rearing orphan black buck antelope with their own milk. The article talks about how these people avoid outsiders, are strict vegetarians (not defined what that means) and how the women do most of the work -- including heavy work -- , marry young and have certain sexual freedoms (they can sleep with men they fancy and their husband accepts this) BUT -- completely unremarked by the author of the article the tradition of feeding the deer: "In remote areas of the desert,,,,Bishnoi women still feed orphaned bucks at the breast. 'I have seen it myself in villages....But the women are shy and never do it in front of an outsider'." " 'Bishnoi women used to breastfeed the young buck. But today we use bottles of milk for our animals and for our children too.' " The woman speaking "takes a baby's bottle filled with buffalo milk from under her tight-fitting embroidered choli, or blouse. Shuti has been warming the milk between her breasts." There is a photo of the deer with the baby bottle. I do not know what to think of this article. How tragic that a people so remote from many influences of modern life and whose values include nurturing the environment have turned to bottle feeding. How irritating that the journalist has seen fit to use the breastfeeding angle to sell the magazine. ('Breastfeeds animals' is pretty emotive stuff.) How utterly bizarre to warm the animal milk between the human breasts. How interesting that the journalist seems totally unaware of this irony....... Magda Sachs UK *********************************************** The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html