Breastfeeding: The Argument Against Perv Blaming and Breastfeeding

We see the images of Miley Cyrus, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna and other stars making the rounds on social media. Usually there's a lot of comments about how slutty they dress and how distasteful and disgusting they are for showing so much of their bodies in suggestive fashion to their audience. Invariably there will be the contingency of people who say that females should not be slut shamed because of how they choose to dress especially if they are of the age where they can make those decisions for themselves. I personally wouldn't want my daughters or females in my family to dress that way, but just because some women choose to dress a certain way does not automatically make them sluts nor does it make all females sluts by association. So there is a great deal of validity to the argument against the slut shaming of females.

There's another shaming or rather blaming going on with regards to breastfeeding. It seems like anytime the subject of breastfeeding comes up especially in the presence of others there's always a contingency of people who try to shame mothers into hiding using what I am going to call the perv blaming of males. We always hear about how mothers should cover up or nurse their babies elsewhere because pervs will get off on it or some perv might follow a mother home and sexually assault her or men will leave their wives or significant others for the mothers they see nursing their babies simply because they caught a glimpse of a woman's breast. People seem to have this idea that males will turn into uncontrollable horny beasts whenever they see a breast. When all else fails it's time to blame the shaming of mothers on every make being a pervert. Just like slut shaming is offensive to females, perv blaming when it comes to breastfeeding is offensive to men.

There are 3 reasons why as a male I personally find perv blaming extremely offensive.

The first reason why perv blaming is offensive is that males see women in provocative or revealing outfits on a regular basis and we manage to control ourselves. We can go to the mall, or park, or anywhere women are likely to be and there is likely to be at least one female with a low cut top or outfit that shows off a significant portion of her body. Somehow we manage to keep our libidos in check. We can go to the beach during the summer and see more breasts than we could possibly see from average breastfeeding mother. Guys manage to control themselves there as well. It is also interesting to note that nobody including those who use perv blaming to shame breastfeeding mothers seem to be too worried about playing the perv blaming card when it comes to the skimpy beachwear of the females who frequent the beach. Why not the same concern? Why label all men perverts only when it comes to trying to stipulate how a mother should feed her baby? There are no logical answers to those questions which means that people are only picking and choosing when to perv blame to suit their purposes which is to shame mothers into hiding when they go to feed their babies.

The second reason that perv blaming is offensive is because it is unfair to the many males who are respectful. How many times have we heard stories from mothers who say they have received more support and encouragement from men than they have from their fellow women? Very seldom do you hear stories where guys have exhibited creepy behavior or treated a breastfeeding mother horribly. Most decent guys will condemn that type of behavior. Most guys grew up with mothers like mine who did take the time to teach them a healthy respect for women. It isn't fair to respectful guys to take the few exceptions to the rule of respect and decency and hold them up as reasons why mothers should hide when feeding their babies. Using the guys who do exhibit less than stellar behavior towards breastfeeding mothers paints a negative picture of all males in the minds of new mothers who are breastfeeding and mothers to be who are planning to breastfeed. It can discourage them from feeding their babies around males and make their breastfeeding journeys more difficult because they have been led to believe that all makes are dirty minded perverts whose sole missions in life are to cop looks at the breasts of unsuspecting mothers. Why not take the majority of guys who do show respect and decency and use them as a examples to encourage mothers to nurse their babies wherever they are with comfort and ease? After all there are more of those guys out there than the guys people consider perverts.

The third and final reason why the perv blaming of males when it comes to breastfeeding is offensive is because not all males are pervs, and perverse and creepy behavior is not limited to breasts. While it is true that some men can be perverts and many men are attractive to the female body which includes breasts not all men take their attraction too far to where it becomes a problem sexually or a problem for women in general. It is also true that some men have breasts fetishes. But it is also true that some men have fetishes that involve just about every other part of the female anatomy. Some men have foot fetishes, some have hair fetishes, or hand fetishes etc..., but we don't tell women to cover up those areas of their bodies to prevent men with fetishes from fetishizing them. What's the difference? We've over sexualized breasts for one, but if a guy really has a sexual fetish involving other parts of the female body then wouldn't the exposure of those parts place women in just as much danger as people think they are when they breastfeed their babies? In most cases women will say if a guy has a fetish with another visible part of their bodies that's his problem and it won't stop them from wearing what they want and going where they please. So the argument that limits male perv shaming to breastfeeding is inconsistent, hypocritical, and illogical.

Guys are people too and sometimes it seems that people forget that we can be decent upstanding human beings too. It is not fair to shame the majority of breastfeeding mothers by blaming or accusing all males of being perverts when in fact perverts are the exceptions rather than the rule among males. If mothers choose to cover or breastfeed out of the presence of males because it makes them uncomfortable that's perfectly fine. What isn't fine is to expect all mothers to do so because people think they know how all men think and their perception of how we think is always negative. Most of us are decent when given the chance to be. Just like it would be unfair to label all females sluts and whores just because a few females may choose to dress or act in a highly provocative way, it isn't fair to take the less than ideal behavior of some males and use their behavior to define all males. Let the slut shaming and the perv blaming cease!

Breastfeeding: The Modesty Dilemma

   When I hear people say that they are all for breastfeeding but there's nothing wrong with a little modesty I'm reminded of the times I would visit the aquatic center pools at the physical education building in college. They were open to the families of students, faculty, and staff on the weekends. Being that it was in a university setting you would get an eclectic group of people out there. I remember there were several Muslim families that would visit quite regularly and the women would get into the pool wearing swimming attire that covered everything except their faces, hands, and feet. That was their definition and exhibition of modesty. There was a rule that no thong bikinis were allowed, but the spectrum of swimming attire out there included everything from what the Muslim ladies were wearing to the bikinis that other ladies were wearing that got about as close to being thongs as they could get without actually being thongs. Just about every style of swimwear between those extremes was represented. That's typically what you see when it comes to breastfeeding. You have mothers who feed their babies covered up and out of the way and you have those who just pull out a breast wherever they are and take care of business. You have mothers whose nursing styles fall somewhere between those two extremes. I don't mean extremes in a bad way I only use that word to show how opposite those styles are from each other.

   If you were to make the same statement about modesty with regards to swimwear as you would about breastfeeding my question would be the same for both, whose standard of modesty are we abiding by? Everyone at the pool was wearing what in their minds was modest for them and what they felt comfortable wearing just like every breastfeeding mother feeds her baby according to her standard of modesty and what's comfortable for her. That's why it's confusing when people make such a statement. Modesty is such a subjective term as we've heard hundreds of times before. If you gathered a hundred people together from all backgrounds and all walks of life and asked them what modesty looks like to them with regards to breastfeeding you could potential get a hundred different variations of modesty. How do you pick one that everyone can agree on or that will actually work for everyone? Which version is the right version? It is virtually impossible. The only workable solution is to allow people the freedom to choose what version works for them.

   Modesty is tricky when it comes to breastfeeding because even if a mother wanted to cover or be discreet about what she was doing her baby might not allow it. For people that have been exposed to breastfeeding all their lives like myself it can be as disturbing and uncomfortable to see a baby struggling and fighting under a cover as people claim it is for them if they should happen to see a nipple during a nursing session. When we demand a certain standard of modesty for every mother we can make feeding their babies exponentially more difficult then it has to be. I witnessed a mother trying to walk and nurse her baby and keep him covered while her husband looked at tools in the home improvement department in the store where I work. After struggling and becoming noticeably frustrated as she tried to keep her baby covered she threw in the towel and ended the nursing session altogether. She wasn't happy and judging by her baby's cries of discomfort he wasn't very happy either.

   So when people say they are all for breastfeeding but there's nothing wrong with a little modesty, they may actually be correct provided they could actually come up with one single standard of modesty that works for everyone. Since it is virtually impossible to find a version or standard that works for everyone then perhaps there is something wrong with saying there's nothing wrong with a little modesty: it's potentially different for everyone.

~Tom Miller

Children and Breastfeeding: 4 Common Myths For Why Children Shouldn't be Exposed to Breastfeeding

One of the most popular arguments against NIP is that children should not have to witness the act of breastfeeding. If you have followed any breastfeeding related page you will see the same arguments repeated over and over again. You will usually statements that sound like this "children will be traumatized by breastfeeding" or "I don't want to have to explain to my child what that woman is doing" or "I don't want my child to see some strange woman's breast while she is feeding her baby" or one of my favorites "maybe some parents want to wait to teach their children are older to teach them about sex". While these arguments may sound valid on the surface they are actually factually illogical. Having grown up one of the older kids in a large family where my mother breastfed all of us I can say for certain that all of these arguments for why children shouldn't be exposed to breastfeeding are illogical, invalid, and actually better arguments for why children need to be exposed to breastfeeding and the earlier the better.

Using my experience as the child of a mother who breastfed I will attempt to dispel what I have chosen as the four most common myths or arguments as to why children should not be exposed to breastfeeding.

Myth #1
Children will be traumatized by seeing a mother breastfeeding her baby.
This is one of the most popular arguments people use to discourage mothers from breastfeeding in the presence of children. It is also one of the most illogical arguments people can use to discourage mothers from breastfeeding in the presence of children. In order for a child to be traumatized by something they would have to have been taught that something about it was terribly wrong. Since children are still learning about the world and are still relatively innocent about most things it is highly doubtful that something as harmless as breastfeeding would traumatize them. I was in the room the night one of my siblings was born at home and because I didn't know very much about birth at that stage I had no reason to see it as anything other than a natural part of life. Had I been taught that it was supposed to be traumatic I may have had a different reaction. Since I hadn't been taught anything negative or scary about it it didn't faze me. Breastfeeding is no different. If it is introduced to a child as a normal part of life at a young age that's how they will view it and anytime they see it it will be as innocent to them as observing a puppy or a kitten drinking milk from their mothers. By contrast, if they are taught that it is dirty or wrong by the influential adult figures in their lives then they might be bothered by it, but it won't be the breastfeeding itself that is causing them to be traumatized, it will be how they are taught to view it.

Myth #2
Children don't need to see some woman's breast while she is nursing her baby.
Children are actually the perfect people to see a woman's breast while she is nursing her baby. Since children haven't been indoctrinated into society's sexual view of breasts, being exposed to them performing their primary function will allow them to see breasts for what they were designed to do before they learn anything else about them. Growing up with a breastfeeding mother meant that my siblings and myself were often in the presence of other breastfeeding mothers. My mother never demanded or insisted that those mothers hide what they were doing from us just as she didn't hide her breastfeeding from us when she did it. As a result it wasn't uncomfortable being in the presence of mothers breastfeeding even when they didn't do it discreetly throughout our childhood and even into adolescence.
Adults can be stuck in their ways about the way they view things and it's hard to change their opinions. Children on the other hand have the opportunity to start fresh and get it right so they need to be exposed to breastfeeding as often as possible. Maybe the over sexualized view of breasts can go away for future generations and it won't be so hard for mothers in the future to nurse their babies in public.

Myth #3
Breastfeeding is nudity and children shouldn't be exposed to nudity.
Because of the over sexualization of breasts in our society we typically think of them being exposed for any reason at all as inappropriate nudity. There are two things to consider when it comes to breastfeeding and nudity. First, non sexual nudity, which includes the act of exposing a breast to feed a baby, is not always inappropriate nudity. Nudity in and of itself is not always a bad thing. In the right context and situation it may actually be both healthy and necessary. Breasts were meant to feed babies so it would follow that it should be okay to expose a breast for that purpose. As mentioned above, we saw my mother and her friends nurse babies openly and at no time did we see it as inappropriate. Since we were permitted to see breasts while mothers were nursing their babies I never looked at breasts in the traditional way people view nudity. I never questioned whether it was wrong or not to see what we saw because it was a normal part of our everyday life. Had my mother and the other breastfeeding mothers I knew growing up hid what they were doing I would probably have the same mindset about breastfeeding that many in society do today.

Secondly, children don't view nudity the same way that we as adults do. If children are raised in homes where nudity is normal that's how they will view it until someone tells them something different. There are cultures where nudity is the norm and nobody ever thinks to see it as inappropriate because because that's what they do from the time they are born. It's as normal to them as wearing clothes is to us. Shame is a concept that is learned and taught by adults who typically link all nudity to sex. Since most children have very little sexual knowledge they don't see the body as sexual. Even primary sex organs at a young age don't mean the same thing to children as they do to adults. Unless someone teaches children that breasts are sexual and should be covered at all times they won't grow up viewing them that way.

Myth #4
Teaching children about breastfeeding means having to have the big talk with them about the birds and the bees.
I was about 9 years old when my parents called us into the dining room on a cold dreary day where we were stuck inside the house. They sat us down at the dining room table and began to nervously tell us the basics about the birds and the bees. They discussed the functions of the penis and the vagina in the process of reproduction. At no point during the discussion did I hear any reference made to breasts in relation to sex. I didn't learn that breasts could be sexual until I started going through puberty. It seems that many people think teaching a child about breastfeeding requires teaching them about sex. If you have to teach a child about sex to teach them about the primary function of breasts then you are pointing them in the wrong direction that most of society is currently traveling with the over sexualization of breasts. Teaching a child about breastfeeding requires the simplest of explanations. If you tell them a baby is eating the same as you would explaining a kitten or a puppy nursing that explanation will usually suffice. They may be curious about the actual process of how the baby is getting the milk, but even that doesn't require a complicated explanation. Teaching a child about breastfeeding can be as easy as we want it to be. If you are complicating it you are probably introducing too much unnecessary information that will only confuse them and begin the process of perpetuating the sexual stigma of breasts.
Children of all people need to be exposed to breastfeeding. Girls who see breastfeeding as they are growing up will become mothers who choose to breastfeed. Boys who see breastfeeding growing up will become supportive husbands and fathers to the breastfeeding women in their lives. Most importantly children will grow up understanding that breasts have a primary function that has nothing to do with sex. They will understand that breasts were designed primarily to feed babies and it won't be weird for future generations to see them performing that function at home or in public. It may be too late to change the minds of some adults and get them to accept and support breastfeeding and NIP, but if we can expose children to it as early and as often as possible we may be able to make things a little easier for breastfeeding mothers in the future.

~Tom Miller