Without getting “too deep” into the ridiculousness of being appalled by boobs, boob-feedings, or bringing your baby to your work when all else fails, here’s what I find grossly ironic:
- A professor of anthropology breastfed her baby in class. Yeah HI. Do you know what anthropology is? It’s the study of human cultures. You should be so grateful to have a live presentation of human culture you twits.
- A student quoted and interviewed in the media had a problem with this boob-show apparently in between facebook and twitter posts. Yeah… if you were really paying attention instead of dicking around on your WiFi or smart phone, maybe what you have to say would be more than a whiny ploy for attention and sympathy at her alleged “unprofessionalism”.
- would the reaction be the same if a professor who is a father brought his sick baby to school and fed the baby (obviously not from the breast) in front of class? What is the difference? Because she’s using her mammary glands correctly?
Anyway, love this article from Slate.com on the subject. Here are some gems from this clever and well written piece:
“[B]reasts actually have a secret super power. When whipped out under the right circumstances, the ordinary mammary gland has the ability to expose a tremendous amount of cultural hypocrisy around gender and parenting.”
It is intriguing how the various body parts you are endowed with from birth, as a woman or a man, are actually hugely political in the right situation. You would think as a relative naive member of the human race that a body is a body is a body. Clearly, this is a cultural-political battleground waiting to happen.
“…[the professor] decided to shut up her fussy baby in the culturally prescribed way, especially for the highly educated middle class set: giving the baby her boob. Had she done so safely ensconced in her home, perhaps beatifically meditating on how this means so much more than any career ever could, she would have been held up as a moral paragon for all women. But since she did so in the middle of doing her job, in this case lecturing a class full of students taking a feminist anthropology course, she’s instead become a national scandal…”
Since when does anthropology exclude breastfeeding? Since when does feminism exclude breastfeeding? This is ridiculous! If you are in a cultural anthropology class revolving around feminist concepts and ideology yet completely offended by tits and breastfeeding moms, then what the hell are you doing there? That makes no sense. Is it only acceptable to have a sanitized video of the matter, a Salon.com article or some such nonsense? This is the real deal. How is that offensive? In a feminist anthropology class no less!
It seems that if it hadn’t been for the breast-feeding, this entire situation would have gone unnoticed. But many students completely lost it when they saw an actual human breast. Such as Jake Carias, age 18 and interviewed by the Washington Post, who claims that he was fine with the presence of the baby, but not so much the boob…
Oh cry me a river of “crossing lines.” If you truly care about feminism you would shut your whiny male privileged mouth and be grateful for a live demonstration of what feminism and anthropology means. I really don’t get it. Additionally, his 10 minutes in the spotlight comes from not paying attention in class. We are supposed to sympathize with some privileged dipshit who doesn’t understand the meaning of the course he’s taking while paying for college either with tax-payer money or his parents’ cash flow because he was the only name Wa-Po could dig up due to his lack of proper class etiquette? Yeah, I’m not sold on this “poor guy’s” foray into seeing a boob that he has likely fantasized about. Why should seeing a breast that is actually being used for what it was ultimately designed for (sustaining human life) be offensive when this twerp has likely watched or even participated in more “offensive” breast actions himself? We should not. Just in case that wasn’t clear.
“So, [a student who later dropped the class] spends his class time on Twitter and Facebook, but a woman who can continue a lecture while breast-feeding is an intolerable distraction? … the whole thing has little to do with some sort of assault on their education and more to do with underlying anxieties about sex and gender.”
Exactly.
“[Pine] really shouldn’t have to offer an argument [for why she breastfeeds] at all.”
Exactly! Without going into the myriad benefits of breastfeeding, no mother should have to justify her decision to actually care for her child. Ridiculous.
“Plus, … for a woman of her class and age, choosing formula means having your peers act like you’re dishing rat poison into your daughter’s mouth. Funny how we live in a society that both expects women, especially highly educated and ambitious women, to breast feed, but forbids them to do so while pursuing their ambitions. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think pushing women out of positions of prestige and power and back into the home was a feature and not a bug of this system.”
Well said- couldn’t have said it better myself. 😉
So really, here we are in 2012 in an age of supposed liberation and freedoms with people in a feminist anthropology class gawking at a breastfeeding professor. If kids are making it all the way to higher education and they don’t understand the concept of anthropology or feminism and the compound feminist anthropology, then clearly feminism and educational systems are failing kids.
I understand the level of unprofessionalism that comes with bringing your child to work (been there, done that) yet I refuse to acknowledge that just bringing your baby to work is acceptable and even bottle feeding your kid is acceptable but nurturing your child with a breast is unacceptable and crossing a line. How far we have strayed from sanity.
Anyway, here’s some more links to this ridiculous assault on boob feeding culture:
- the Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/american-university-professor-breast-feeds-sick-baby-in-class-sparking-debate/2012/09/11/54a06856-fc12-11e1-8adc-499661afe377_story.html
- a Counter Punch article: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/05/exposeing-my-breasts-on-the-internet/
- random media coverage on the “incident”: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/lifestyle&id=8808958
Although, despite being an ardent supporter of her actions and deeming them even appropriate especially considering the course, I will say what do you expect from a university named after a country that can’t seem to understand women’s bodies should be regulated by women and not men, that birth is natural, that breast is natural, and that making a choice to continue or discontinue a pregnancy really only concerns 3 people: the pregnant mom-to-be, the foetus inside her, and the practitioner who may or may not abort the child. America is messed in the head and apparently American University follows in its namesake’s steps.
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