You.are.funny. But he does make one important point - the obvious race/class issue of public breastfeeding. I posted a comment there. Check it out.

BTW - Your last paragraph is dead on.

Yes, Nykol...that was one of the things I agreed with about the post. The medical industry is rife with racism and sexism. I'm sure I have posted about it before with regard to birthing options, breastfeeding, target marketing, etc. (because that's what I normally talk about on this blog. As much as I know AIDS is an important topic, I also know I can't cover everything...so I stick primarily with what I know...which, YES, is a form of racism. The fact that I'm not immediately confronted with those issues is due to racism...my ability to ignore them can be credited to my privilege. There are some things I have to acknowledge and move through.)

Anyway, so yeah. But my thoughts on that are that the racism and classism that interferes with the breastfeeding relationship (which is actually a very important relationship when you consider the studies that link breastfeeding with higher intelligence, better attachment, etc. which we can argue about later (it's such a fucking complex and landmine-ridden topic!) but which at least indicate that there are more barriers to bonding, say, if you use Artificial Baby Milk than if you breastfeed.) is COMPOUNDED by the sexism of people who want to make a huge deal out of it.

How's that for a run-on sentence. I have to get some coffee. Thanks for the comment...I'll go look over there now; although I'm scared. Hahaha. Imagine that, mean old bitter bitch "Darth Drucilla" is scared.

By the way, I was pleased that if someone felt like his only alternative was to call me names, at least he chose some really fucking interesting ones. It made me laugh.

& you know...I appreciate the work that this blogger is doing, but I can't even read his page because in my eyes it's ridden with sexism. Sorry, dude & yes, I can appreciate you & still not have a conversation with you because of those barriers.

Which actually leads me to another bone that I need to pick before it breaks my skin. When I told Tekanji that she had a lot of work to do in the childfree community, I did not mean that she was wasn't feminist ENOUGH. I meant that I find her to be fiercely feminist...and I have found a lot of people who exist within the childfree community are the most UNfeminist people I have ever met. Not because childbirth is an inherently feminist act, but discounting and invalidating the work that comes with childrearing is A CORNERSTONE of sexism.

Why am I suddenly able to make these points?

In college (15 years ago) I did a "concentration" (kind like a minor, but my school had to be different) in Women's Studies. The capstone course was a seminar called "Mothering." I tell you, all of us little 20-year old feminists were really annoyed at that. We whined and complained to each other that a women's studies class was going to focus on mothering, of all things. Hell, mothering was the opposite of feminism!

By the second week of class, though, it was starting to become clear what idiots we'd been. Mothering and childbearing and caregiving are at the heart of it all.

Sadly, it's been too long since I really considered this topic with any seriousness, so I'll just throw it out here for now, and (scary!) think about writing something longer on it for myself later.

One more and then I'll stop spamming you.
It took a while to find the post you're referring to (I'm slow). Anyway, does he really say that non-white women don't breastfeed in public because they're afraid of backlash, so therefore white women shouldn't breastfeed in public either?

As I've told you before, I don't have the spirit/energy, whatever you want to call it to enter into the fray the way you have and do around this and other related issues. Hats off to you.

But I've been so appalled at some of the people who argue with you about this that I will say that there are white middle class women who, while well-intentioned, are unaware of classist and racist thinking when it comes to breastfeeding, cloth diaperin, homebirth, infant massage, etc.

But, that means they need to become more aware of their privelege, not stop breastfeeding in public.

And I am beyond appalled that some @%^@%#^@% you were brilliantly arguing with a few posts before, used the example of a woman of color beating her child into silence in a mall as an example of someone who is "at least trying" to make her kid behave. The convoluted racism of his remark almost makes me dizzy.

Non-white mothers have told me that, sadly, they feel they need to be harsher with their kids because their kids will be targeted and misunderstood for even the slightest social transgression by virtue of being non-white. They have said to me, "better me beating them than the police" It's a heartbreaking argument and one I understand, but don't support their use of violence as a way to protect their kids. We as a society are failing to protect those kids from institutional racist violence. And for this dude to be praising this or pointing to it as something virutuous is so incredibly void of any understanding of his own privelege that it makes me nauseated.

Yeah, dude (donb't remember his name, sorry) Violence is effective. It can silence kids and even women. No argument there. For me, the argument is about human rights.