What if she holds them UNTIL she is breastfeeding on the bus? What would be more offensive, boob or gas? Maybe her baby prefers the smell of the gas while eating?

I wonder if farts are officially medically classified as bodily gases or not? Not having any luck finding the answer from Google.

I appreciate what you are saying, and obviously I can't prove it, but i am quite sure that an alternate discussion of an otherwise inconsequential event would spawn a thread this long, even if OP was twice as confrontational. I mean there really is alot of nonsense here, even by twoplustwo standards (farting on the bus?).

I need to ejaculate on a regular basis for similar reasons, but the judge wouldn't buy it.

I agree. The issue, as far as I can see it, is that the antis are holding their subjective judgments to be superior or more compelling than the subjective judgments of other people. My position is that they are not more compelling, since a peaceful and free society is founded upon reasonable accommodation and reasonable freedoms. No one has the right to a perfectly agreeable field of vision, so to hold that someone doing something disagreeable within your field of vision is an infringement on this non-right that the "perpetrator" must correct by any means necessary (rather than simply adjust that field of vision to exclude that which you don't like) sounds pretty childish.

Who is "me" in this list?

The feeder:
- Some work to leave or cover. If cover is chosen, some further work to assess and deploy the different levels of covering, in keeping with the baby's cooperation with same. If departure, then some work not to get too deep into any place from which a quick escape is not possible.

- Hypothetically 15% of people "benefit" from this. But I can't say I'm enjoying any benefit from not having a breastfeeder in my office, and the presumed benefit from non-exposure is dubious. No harm, certainly, but not sure about presence of a benefit.

- Alternatives, again largely determined by the mother's values, practical abilities, and the baby's cooperation.

The observer:
- Look elsewhere. No work at all, regardless of how the observer feels. I can just as easily turn my head as can one of the bros in the thread; what's being asked of them isn't an undue hardship. In both cases looking away is more easily accomplished than the corresponding solution that the mother would have to deploy.

- Benefit goes directly to the person who feels they are suffering.

- Alternatives to looking away: Make things worse for oneself by staring.

It doesn't matter if it's everyone bothered by it, only that some people are. Surely not everyone cares about farts (are there any people who don't have the sense of smell)? Or some sickos who actually enjoy them?

The only thing to consider is that some people don't enjoy them. The fact that that some is "almost all" in this case is irrelevant. It might affect how much discretion might be needed or how much effort should be made.

I'm also curious of this question- are there any places or times where it is inappropriate to breastfeed? Suppose the baby is perfectly behaved otherwise and would otherwise be allowed (even if the real situation is the baby is not allowed, such as a very nice restaurant or the opera or something). Or should anywhere a mother is allowed to go be an acceptable place to breastfeed?

Me would generally refer to the person doing the action. Looking would not be considered an action since it is passive. I would consider inaction to be the norm and only situations that cause hardship to the original actor should force a neutral party into action. For example, if a woman has a screaming baby at a restaurant, I would consider it to be her duty to either try to shut the baby up, or to remove the baby from the restaurant. Not that I should move to another portion of the restaurant myself to avoid her. Or put on headphones and listen to music to avoid the screams.

The look elsewhere argument fails because the only way to know to look elsewhere is to already have seen it. There's a reason why offensive images are not permitted to be shown here. You could just "look away" but once you see it, it's too late. A reasonable precaution for a woman breastfeeding in close proximity might be to warn people she's going to do it. Obviously in a public place like the subway might be odd to do this, but if you are with some friends somewhere, warning them you are going to feed the baby would be a reasonable way to make the "look away" argument valid. Since no one would ever see anything without intentionally looking for it. If I am in public, I might see a woman doing something that might mean she is about to feed, but I might not see that part or I might not know.

I also wonder if pongo would use a cover if her baby tolerated it and fed well with one on. If this were the case, would she use one since using one would no longer inconvenience her?

I linked you to the wiki entry I quoted. If you think the NIH is making it up or wrong, you need to provide a competing survey that would support what led you to think so.

Could you specify what reasonable concessions you mean?

The 15/85 figure comes into to play because of your definition of "more people." I can't think of any circumstance under which the 15% could honestly be considered "more people": Definitely not overall-- they don't care-- and if it were a 15-percenter alone in an elevator with a mother/child pair he is still outnumbered. Any more passengers and the odds are with the 85ers.

That doesn't mean the 15s should be ignored. As much as it pleased me to learn that outside of OOT public breastfeeding is widely supported, it actually doesn't matter what the ratios are because the disagreement is over who is responsible for reasonable accommodation.

Right. So why is it more reasonable for the mother/child to leave or not feed when the equally viable option of turning your head is available to you? The latter seems SO easy and SO fast that I haven't seen a compelling reason why it shouldn't be the default.


It sounds flippant but it comes down to having to give right of way to one of two competing agendas. I think I should/I think you shouldn't when no real harm is being done to either party is a stalemate and you still have a hungry baby on your hands. So, you go one level up and see who has legal support when trying to resolve a dispute.

On that point, my concession: I don't like these feed-ins that spring up from time to time. Given the sentiment in this thread that being seen feeding is an aggressive, imposing act, it seems like it's going to eventually backfire politically if these mobs continually conduct an actual aggressive, imposing protest asserting their right to do so. I'm a big believer is distinguishing rights from license and they cross that line to their own detriment.

jacknicholson.gif

After you've seen it, what happens?

This seems largely premised on the expectation-- dashed-- that this won't happen. Is the expectation not to see it a reasonable one? I would argue mostly not, especially in family-friendly or family-tolerant venues where you know going in there's going to be a certain population of infants, and that a certain number within that group will be breastfeeding. That's not to imply, well too bad, but to say that it's a surprise in most cases is kind of a stretch.

Men's night at the golf club would be a circumstance in which I would hope for more deference from the moms than usual. The club's objection would get destroyed in court and they're cruisin' for a feed-in but there are places where more consideration is due from one party than another just based on common sense.

With strangers a warning would run counter the discretion aspect. Agree with the oddness of such a warning regardless, and wonder if issuing such a warning would mean crossing over into militantism. With friends/family I've had all kinds -- I'd say 75% are already holding their baby and just do it totally unbeknownst to me, 10% duck out, and 15% ask if anyone minds.

Thank god my wife doesn't read this forum.

A lot of people in this thread greatly underestimate how frequently babies eat (minimum of every two hours when they are little), and how pissed off they get when they are hungry (uncontrollable wailing is the norm). If you are on a plane next to a woman and her baby, you want her to breastfeed that kid as much as possible because it is waaaaaaaaaaay better than the alternative for you.

Also, if a breastfeeding woman looks like she is at Mardi Gras, then she is doing it wrong, but that doesn't happen very often. You are a huge nit if you can't handle the minimal amount of nudity you typically encounter when a woman breastfeeds in public. Blanket is worth a try, but sometimes the kid habitually bats it away, you forget, etc.

I can't unsee it. This is the same reason why people object to people pleasuring themselves in public, even though you can look away.

This of course depends on social norms and situations. I'm not terribly surprised if I see it, but if one gets offended or grossed out in such a situation, expecting it doesn't really help if you accidentally see it, but then look away.

Probably a reasonable assumption. If you go to a mommy and me yoga class, it would be much less reasonable to object to seeing even blatant breastfeeding than somewhere like a golf club. Time and place for everything, and it would be perfectly reasonable for the level of discretion to change based on certain circumstances.

I think a lot of this depends on the situation. My wife is not going to breastfeed in front of friends without kids. She definitely will not feed in front of male family members like her brothers or step-dad without a cover. In front of my sister or mother or her own mother, she'll just whip-em out and start going and not think twice. I think she warned my sister she was about to do it since she is somewhat of a prude.

I agree that a warning wouldn't make sense in a public situation with strangers. But it would also invalidate the "don't look" argument, since the only way to know to look away is to see it. It's the same argument to use against showing nasty wounds in this forum without a spoil tag and warning. You can't really argue "don't look" on inline images, since you wouldn't know til it's too late. But you can put things in spoil tags that might bother some people, but there are no rules against it, so that it requires them to take action to be exposed to it.

The more I think of it, the spoil tag analogy is reasonable. There is a policy on spoilers in the TV forum that is quite similar. A spoiler would be considered a problem for some percentage of the people, but some other people might even enjoy them or be neutral to them. You can't unsee a spoiler, so if you are offended by spoilers, you either don't read the thread, or you require those posting spoilers to use the spoil tag and provide fair warning for them.

pongo seems to be taking the position that no one should ever be offended by reading a spoiler, and if you don't want to see a spoiler, either stay out of the thread or look away if you happen to come across one. The effort to type the extra spoil tag is too much for her when posting, so too bad for anyone who doesn't want to see it.

See every h17 thread dog.

Years of therapy imo.

Bad example. From what I've seen, h17 threads don't go on forever because he has an "overly confrontational acerbic tone" (usually he is pretty articulate and straightforward), but because his opinions are bizarro, and at odds with 99% of the people here, and he never gives up. Saying that women can breastfeed in public at their own discretion is not equivalent to saying that it is inappropriate to have guests stay at your place; the former was settled universally about a million years ago and the latter is just abnormal.

So? Then what happens? What harm do you suffer for being unable to unsee something?

Is this breastfeeding-specific or could we also count people who wear colostomy bags or have Cerebral palsy? Plenty of unsettling things to see out in the world and it's weird how this thread has zeroed in on breastfeeding like it's uniquely disquieting to witness and therefore uniquely exempt from general rules of reasonable response.


Again, what's to be helped, exactly? Does this observer have a more legitimate claim to "help" than the mother/child's claim to feed? I have argued that if you walk around family-tolerant establishments expecting not to see it then do, you've really created your own false reliance and it's not the responsibility of outsiders to accommodate that through their own conduct.

Certainly they can assume this responsibility willingly and go sit in the car, but it has still gone unexplained why this voluntary assumption should instead be a mandatory one for the comfort of a group which
- is the clear and distant minority
- has other, more readily deployed options at its disposal
- makes no allowance for reasonable discretion if it doesn't meet their personal definition of discretion
- exaggerates the sight of breastfeeding and harm done to bystanders.


If the disturbing pic is just dropped into a thread, then a spoiler tag makes sense. What you are asking for is a spoiler tag on every picture in "Pics that say 1000 words, some pretty disturbing" because common courtesy dictates that all disturbing pics be spoilered.

The way you've focused on "don't look" as objectionable, you would think that anything important followed as a result of looking. As an end in itself, it's far too weak to hold up the request that the mom/child do all the heavy lifting.

Christ on a hot tin roof. I'm not arguing from this analogy anymore. <spoil></spoil> is not the same as trekking through an arena, not even close, and while the principle of looking out for other people's ocular wellbeing is an admirable one, it's answered by the discretion we've been discussing.



Pongo used a spoiler!

You said if OP were male and the topic difffered it would go unnoticed and certainly wouldn't reach 800 posts.....and you're wrong. Plenty of people agree with h17 in his threads to further refute your point.

As I have said at least three times ITT, I like to be able to see my baby when he is eating. But really, it doesn't matter why a breastfeeding mother doesn't want to use a cover. If she is more comfortable without one, for whatever reason, why should she value you comfort over her own, and possibly also her child's? Will you please answer that question, plainly, without any idiotic farting analogies?

im grunching, but just wanted to thank you wackjobs for finally putting this in its own thread and not making me read through 850 (!?!?!?!) posts in the facebook thread. i cant even imagine what you guys have said for 9 pages and im so happy ill never know.

Because we live in a society where you should be taking other people's feelings into account. I like to decrease any uncomfort that others feel around me because I would like to think that others will do the same. Treat others the way I would like to be treated. I don't like to be uncomfortable so I don't want to make others uncomfortable either. Pretty simple.

In this case, the argument is simply what effort or concessions is each person willing to make to reduce the uncomfort in others. You are clearly in the camp that you will make no effort or concessions. I'm in the camp that I would make some effort and concessions. Knowing, as I do, that the concessions in this case are very minimal, I'm quite sure you're wrong, and kinda being a d-bag about the whole thing.

heh, nice

is it that hard for you to use a less injurious term than "d-bag," like "inconsiderate" or "rude," you sanctimonious "oooh look at me I'm so into reducing discomfort in others except when I'm casually referring to them as d-bags over an etiquette disagreement" sack of smarm? what's that? you chose to say d-bag because you felt like it? oh my god, let's launch an 800-post thread about it hyper-analyzing your perceived attitude when you made that post! or we can shrug it off because we're sane adults who don't need everyone around us, nursing mothers included, to be walking on eggshells.

pongo wants to see her baby nursing for bonding reasons + the kid might be fussy / distracted with blankets (I don't know or care) + she thinks the norms of the 15% who are icked-out by public breastfeeding are blinkered = she is not a monster of arrogance for weighing those things above flawless consideration for others that none of the raving critics in this thread have come close to displaying, except for like Melkerson

plus you tards are so quick to generalize her take on breastfeeding into this universal attitude of "eff what anyone thinks, I'll do whatever I want" she supposedly has about everything she does in public

and if you think my post has too many needless epithets, it's because I'm dismayed this walking nightmare of a thread has me in its grip again

am I even awake right now?

I'm pretty sure that the concession for the other party to simply look away is far easier than for me to use a cover, which frankly I do find to be a big deal. I DO make an effort to be discrete by making sure the baby's head is blocking pretty much everything from view for the great majority of the time, even though it might be far easier not to. And that is already more effort than it takes to just look in another direction. But for some reason that's not enough for you?

P.S. Thank you lagdonk for being reasonable.

I admit that it is hard for me to not get emotional about this argument, since breastfeeding in public is something I do almost every single day, and if I wasn't able to I would essentially be shut in my house for months.

Actually, your first paragraph and last paragraph are very much related. Pongo ABSOLUTELY comes off as someone that thinks "eff what anyone thinks, I'll do whatever I want", hence the d-bag usage. Yes, I could have used something less harsh and likely should have but I absolutely HATE the attitude that she puts forth. If she even showed any consideration for those around her, even if she held onto her opinion in this case, I likely wouldn't have even participated in this thread.

it's funny how a few people still think we care that you breastfeed in public. we absolutely don't. i think your attitude is obnoxious.