If you have a job, your desire to take care of your household responsibilities on the clock does not outweigh my right to expect that you will not be wasting MY time and MY money as a business owner on activities that don't relate to the position for which you were hired.

Gad, you're an ass. I'm guessing your mom didn't breast feed you.

I'd explain exactly how wrong you are, and how short-sighted your business model is, but I've said it all before (just check the Broadsheet archives), and I'm too damned tired to deal with morons tonight.

and you delete my comment?

Let's not pretend there are going to be many, if any, intelligent comments on this topic. Like all BS threads here comes more idiotic gender war nonsense from particularly deranged men and women with oodles of mental and sexual problems.

There will be a lot of Jerry Springer quality snark from a team of dedicated Dworkin kooks of emotionally damaged paranoids tending towards sexual neurosis and gender issues (Juliebird, Allie, Smith, etc) arguing with a bunch of dedicated assholes, emotionally damaged guys tending towards paranoia and fear of women (Brightstar, anonymous, etc) all so Salon can generate more clicks to get ad revenue so they can post more of this garbage onto the web.

Morons, take your positions....

First Broadsheet scorns people who are uncomfortable with public breastfeeding, then it lauds efforts to create a private place to nurse in the workplace.

If nursing in public is social good, why should employers provide a private place to nurse or pump? If pumping is a private function, why do it in public?

Breastfeeding in public can be a very discreet affair. Mom and baby snuggling together does not raise an eyebrow. If mom is at all skilled at bfing, she can latch baby on in a nonosecond with no one the wiser.

Expressing milk from a breast into a bottle is a whole 'nother issue. Things take time to set up and break down, the pump makes noise, the horns placed on the breasts are .... conspicuous, and the nipple and breast tissue gets contorted while it does its job. (Thank goodness for double-electric pumps, but they are less effecient than hungry babies). There is a Whisperwear pump, designed to be worn and used under clothing, but most moms use a much less invisible machine.

While I have pumped in my car, I am sure that setting up the pump at my desk, or in a classroom, would prove 1000 times more distracting to coworkers. And people would get to know a whole lot more of me than they would if I were nursing a baby on a park bench.

Duh.

Duh. -- Juliebird

Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Nobody could have figured that out otherwise!

You can always be counted on to render unintelligent, but snarky, comments expressing tour supposed empowerment on whatever inane issue Salon throws your way. Because nothing says empowerment like being an avid fan of Salon's version of the Jerry Springer show.

But don't worry, there will be more bile from Salon's tabloid teat soon enough for you to suckle. Salon will never ween you, for the clicks and ad revenue you generate for this slop.

Congratulations on doing your part to debase feminism and our culture generally to this level of tabloid garbage and utter mindless, knee-jerk, gender politcs.

Oh I missed you too!

Big kisses, you loveable mook!

Now go tell someone else how smart you think you are.

Being above average intelligence here isn't that difficult. BS is like the Jerry Springer Show of blogs after all.

Thanks, healthyskeptic, I needed a laugh tonight.

Snarkiness...check.

Comparing Juliebird and Allie to Dworkin..

Only Dworkin is Dworkin. But they have tenancies leaning that way.

Allie occasionally makes reasonable arguments, but can't help but fall back on Dworkinesq angst and whining sometimes which is straight out of victim mindest, blaming, militant feminism. For example, I think Allie is a professional, probably doing ok. But it seems when things don't go her way in life, or whenever there is a tough political issue requiring an objective view, she just can;t muster it easily and tends to fall back on the easier claim of misogyny.

Juliebird is pretty consistently Dworkin lite. She leaves out some of the more egregiously insane man-hating stuff, but you can tell she's absorbed a lot of dogmatic militant feminism and takes it for granted whenever convenient. It's her ideological crutch and bludgeon of choice. Probably a lot of her self identity is wrapped up in being her Dworkin-lite definition of "empowered" which is mostly just being shallow.

Almost nobody is truly as deranged as Dworkin. Just as almost nobody is truly as Machiavellian as Karl Rove. But the ideology they promote is designed to be accepted popularly, slightly watered down, and function as an ideological crutch for such people. Just as few people are fully bigots, many people will occasionally deride "the blacks" or "the jews" or "the atheists" or "the socialists" or "the gays" whatever boogyman appeals to their simplsistic ideology.

That's all 3rd wave feminism has become. A boogyman and crutch for the dregs of feminism's former accomplishments.

I certainly wouldn't expect my employer to grant me any special privileges to have cosmetic surgery, so why should my employer grant mothers special rights regarding breastfeeding? Having children is OPTIONAL. To be done on one's own time. Not to interfere with your employer's goal of making MONEY! There are plenty of people who OPT to not have children that would be happy to do a "working" mother's job.

Sheesh - I hesitate to dip my toe in this bitter, and somewhat off-topic conversation, but alas, I must.

Allow me to make a the following six assertions:

1. Procreation is fundamental to our humanity and our civilization (let's set over-population issues aside just for now). This is to say, people have babies.

2. It is NOT only the mother's job to parent the baby/child. I am not arguing for gender sameness (please), but stating that women AND men need flexibility and support to tend to family needs WHILE CONTRIBUTING VALUE to their employers and the economy in general. (These are not mutually exclusive.)

3. Employers who are savvy want more than their fair share of the best talent. More women than men attend university, and get MBAs and law degrees from many of the finest schools in our country. Lots of these women go on to become mothers. It would be stupid for employers to exclude these mothers from their talent base.

4. Done right, family-friendly programs, including lactation programs, deliver excellent ROI for employers.

5. Human milk is the appropriate food for human babies. It is universally agreed that human milk is superior to formula for the health and wellbeing of babies and mothers. Said differently, formula actually poses a RISK to babies (think diabetes, leukemia, obesity, asthma, SIDs in addition to ear and gastrointestinal infections) and mothers (think breast cancer and osteoporosis). When will we see through the formula industry's song and dance and confront this public health issue? When will we overcome our ill-founded concerns about the "privilege" of pumping human milk in the workplace, about the "indecency" of providing our babies with human milk in a public setting, about the perceived "inconvenience" of breastfeeding, and confront this public health issue? For more, check out today's Washington Post article "HHS Toned Down Breast-Feeding Ads".

6. To succeed, we need to approach the lactation issue (supporting breastfeeding mothers and boosting national breastfeeding rates and durations) on (at least) three fronts: legislation, employer education and action (independent of or in parallel with legislation), and employee (i.e. working mother) demand. A big part of the problem is that moms are not asking for the breastfeeding accommodation and support they need and deserve.

So there,

Cate Colburn-Smith, Boulder, Colorado

Co-Author of The Milk Memos: How Real Moms Learned to Mix Business with Babies - and How You Can, Too (Tarcher/Penguin 2007) by Cate Colburn-Smith and Andrea Serrette