Letters to the Editor
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It's just a tit.
Are we a country that is run by adults or by horny and bashful teenage boys? It's just a tit, and by a certain age, most of us have seen them in all their glory and all their mediocrity.
Doesn't it depend on what's happening with the tit? If a baby is sucking on it, it's boring. If a grown man is sucking on it, that's different. Are we so immature as to be unable to diffentiate between the two?
Bowing to reality, since tits are still tits, a woman who needs to breastfeed in public should do so discretely. The little boys who pass by may snigger, and Republicans may utter quick prayers to ward off Satan, but most of us will just pass on by. Anyone who lingers to stare should be barked at.
Turn on the TV and you see breasts galore; no nipples, but given the mammoth size of today's breasts, that barely makes a difference (or shouldn't, anyway). Since we seem to have all come to grips with images of cleavage everywhere we look, it seems to me that we should just shrug off breastfeeding in public. We have more important things to worry about. Then again, we just love to talk about them titties. Oh well.
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Ohhh Yesss
The bare boobs are coming.
Thanks Bill,
U da Man!
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Gosh Mike
That woman and her husband sound like arseholes (excuse the Aussie spelling). Fancy plonking yourself down in the middle of a public arena then demanding privacy. Sheesh.
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Discretion!
Even if a breastfeeding mother isn't being particularly all that discrete, that still doesn't give anyone the right to harass them. Those of us who have kids, or know mothers, know that being a mother is a demanding full time job that requires a lot of juggling; career, family, friends, sexual demands of a husband, and etc. Sometimes mothers forget the blanket.
In that case what are they suppose do? Milk is dripping down their shirt, the baby is hungry and screaming, people are already looking, is she really suppose to care what you think?
Harassing a breastfeeding woman only compounds her stress, and it is one of the most insensitive things anyone can do.
America easily treats its mothers (probably) worse than any other country in the world, and the fact that we don't have Universal Health Care doesn't help matters much, so the next time you see a woman with a baby or small child, give her a break.
And if you harass a breastfeeding mother, under any circumstances, you are an insensitive pig.
I am never, ever, eating at Applebee's. Not that I ever ate at Applebee's before, because their food sucks (no pun intended).
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Citation please...
America easily treats its mothers (probably) worse than any other country in the world,
What a load of shit. Amazing that you have any credibility whatsoever at this forum.
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@fetboy (for the last time on this thread I hope!)
Quickly, because it's WAY past my bedtime...
Do you realize that you have put almost all of your focus and energy into ridiculing and criticizing me?
It was tit-for-tat (pardon the bad pun). I started off by making one little criticism of something you'd posted earlier in the thread, then you jumped on me for a couple of things I'd posted, and then...we were off to the races. We locked horns and had legitimate disagreements. I agreed with much of what other posters were saying, and those with whom I disagreed were already being taken to task by other posters, so I had little to add to those spats. However, no one else seemed to be calling you on your crap, so I felt it was my duty. Don't take it personally, although I admit a couple of my comments could be construed as personal attacks, they weren't really meant to be. As I said, I'm sure you're a nice guy and mean well, but I think your "theory" is off-base and I didn't care for the way you argued your points. It was...messy.
I at least have offered a theory. You haven't offered one yet.
I didn't realize that I was under any obligation to offer a "theory" in this discussion. I'm not a sociologist. You, however, threw out a half-baked "theory" that was poorly reasoned, unsupported by facts and evidence, and internally inconsistent, and that deliberately overlooked a sizable portion of the pertinent "sample", and I felt compelled to state as much.
The list of American peculiarities I gave gives evidence that America is the most conservative democracy on the planet (or at least one of the most conservative democracies).
Don't overstate your case. America is indeed conservative in many ways, but it's also been radical in many ways historically, and has been the engine fueling social progress and change in many ways. To cite merely two contemporary examples, the modern feminist movement and the modern gay rights movement were both born and nurtured in the United States, before spreading to cause enormous change in many other countries. Regardless, even if America is arguably the most socially conservative of the advanced Western industrial democracies, so what? Your argument was not limited to that small group of countries, it spanned the globe. And on a global basis, America is FAR from a conservative country. You keep undermining premises of your own argument--yet further evidence that you haven't really thought it through, but rather have just been tossing any seemingly pertinent idea that crossed your mind onto this thread. Not a good way to argue a point convincingly.
Why is America so conservative?
Actually Americans are not all that conservative when you talk to individual Americans. So in truth we are only conservative because our nation is run by conservative politicians.
This is a gross oversimplification of a complex issue and question. The following digression about the American political and electoral system is almost entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand--public breastfeeding. Going off on tangents that are not truly germane to the core issue is also not a good way to argue convincingly for your "theory". Thus, I'm going to ignore that whole section of your post. Sorry.
Finally, you circled back to the original issue after that long, impertinent digression, only to cap your "argument" with one of the most colossal non sequitirs I've ever encountered:
Thus, harassing a breastfeeding woman, which everywhere else in the world would be considered rude and insensitive, is consider appropriate in America, because harassing breastfeeding women, is the puritanical/conservative thing to do.
You must be kidding, right? You can't expect me to take that seriously. It goes without saying that you came nowhere near demonstrating or proving that point, and didn't provide a shred of compelling evidence to support that conclusion. On top of that, your reasoning is circular: "Why does America harass breastfeeding women? Because America is ultra-conservative. How does America demonstrate its ultra-conservative values? By harassing breastfeeding women."
So far, your grade in debate class is a D or D-. You might want to try extra hard on the extra credit question on the final exam.
What do you think of that theory?
As should be clear by now, I think it's a rank pile of garbage sitting on the curb, waiting for someone to come by and haul it away. Sorry to be blunt, but there it is.
You have potential, fetboy. Your heart's in the right place, but your head is awfully muddled, to put it mildly. I encourage you to think through these issues and arguments in greater depth. Good night.