by Ruth Moss
I’ve written before and at length about facebook’s policy on breastfeeding photos, and why this is a feminist issue. Just letting anyone reading know that there is another protest planned on 21st February.
You don’t have to be a nursing mother to join in and show your support. You don’t have to be a mother. You don’t have to be a woman.
All you need is a photo of a mother nursing her young – human, or mammal – and use it as your profile pic for one day whilst changing your status to “Hey! Facebook! Breastfeeding is NOT obscene!”
Feel free to use one of my pictures if you can’t find any of your own.
I really do think this issue is wider than just breastfeeding (although that in itself is an important issue). It’s about disgust at women’s icky bodies and controlling them because of that disgust.
February 1, 2009 at 6:48 am
Count me in. It’s so stupid, and yet so unsurprising. All that masculine anxiety about sexual mothers.
Indeed, the double standard where women’s breasts are sexualised and even obscene and men’s are not is so taken for granted we don’t even notice it.
(Brief aside, did you know trans women can breastfeed? I so am if me n my girlfriend have a child)
February 1, 2009 at 7:22 am
“Brief aside, did you know trans women can breastfeed?”
Oh yep. I’m afraid I can bore for Britain on the subject of lactation. I try not to, but sometimes… can’t help it! If I had the time and the money I would *so* re-train as a midwife specialising in breastfeeding… but have neither so will make do with standing on a soap box!
February 1, 2009 at 9:21 am
Wow, I didn’t know there was an international boring competition lactation division! I have only come across football and cars divisions thus far.
February 1, 2009 at 9:32 am
http://is.gd/hYJu
There are quite a few of us.
Bad at a party. But good if you need breastfeeding help.
February 2, 2009 at 2:02 am
I guess I don’t see what all the fuss is about. I nursed my son and thought it was a great way for us to bond. Not to mention all of the studies out there showing the great physical benefits to the child. Nursing is how many infants eat, so why is it so taboo?
February 4, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Count me in! I induced lactation to breast feed a child placed with us for adoption! It was the ONLY thing I felt my child and I missed out on by adopting as opposed to giving birth.
February 6, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I’m in!! I adopted my second child and felt that breastfeeding was the ONLY thing her and I missed out on by not being her “biological” mother. Breastfeeding ROCKS!!!!
February 7, 2009 at 5:48 am
And then there are those of us who are boycotting Facebook altogether until they get their act together on this topic.
(OK, and because we just don’t need YET ANOTHER internet obsession
)