There are few sights in the entire world as beautiful, peaceful, and precious to me as the sight of a mother nursing her child. I guess that's because, wild-eyed, abortion-supporting, population-explosion-concerned radical that I am, I love babies. In fact, I support abortion and worry about population explosion precisely because I believe that all babies should be wanted, loved, cared-for, and welcomed into a safe, thriving planet.
I nursed Son when he was born and my wonderful D-i-L nurses Grandson. Some of the happiest memories of my life are of times spent holding infant Son and nursing him to sleep.
So it's beyond bizarre to me that the same people who claim to espouse "family values" -- which seems to mean that they hate sex but want women to stay pregnant and have as many babies as possible -- turn out to hate the idea of breast feeding. They hate it, apparently, because it involves, well, breasts. And in twenty-first-century America, breasts are apparently such a sexually-fetished part of every woman's anatomy that, in a culture that thinks that sex is "bad," it's now "offensive" for a woman to nurse her baby in public. Taken to its extreme (and you don't have to take this idea too far to get to its extreme because, believe me, it's already pretty far along on the extreme-o-meter) what this means is that mothers must stay home, stay covered up, be invisible.
Look, I don't care that Delta apologized. We live in a society where women nursing their children can get thrown off of airplanes. That's just sick.
And, what IS it about airplanes? Women nursing their children get thrown off of them. Moslems praying get thrown off of them. Gays resting their heads on each other's shoulders get harassed on them. Apparently, in America, if anyone, no matter how much of a crackpot, is "offended" by something that you do, no matter how objectively harmless and inoffensive, you can get thrown off an airplane. And this is no small inconvenience. We all know how many hours are involved in buying tickets, waiting in lines, making connections, etc., etc. We all know that getting thrown off a plane can mean missing your next connection, missing your meeting, missing your family get-together, costing hundreds of dollars, etc. Not to mention that it usually inconveniences all the other people on the flight, 99% of whom weren't even aware that somewhere else on the plane someone had dared (~clutches pearls!~) to nurse a baby or pray.
I'm willing to agree that, because airplanes present such an attractive target for terrorists, we all need to put up with some demonstrably-necessary (which eliminates a lot of what goes on, but that's another story) inconveniences: having our bags ex-rayed, going through a metal detector, having air marshals on flights. And I'll agree that airline stewards and stewardesses have a rough job and shouldn't have to put up with abusive drunks. But this nonsense of allowing every crackpot stewardess who finds it "offensive" to see a mother nurse her baby or to see gay men express affection throw people off a flight is just fucking ridiculous. It's fucking ridiculous and it needs to stop right now.
3 comments:
and if you or someone you know is uncontrollably sexually aroused by the sight of a woman breast-feeding, seek professional help.
right now.
people using blackberries on planes offend me, and might be emailing terrorists.
thrown them off.
oh, and anyone wearing fur. that's murder.
and republicans. they lost, they can take the train.
First let me say that I love dirk.
And then that I told this story over at Whiskey Fire/Ashes.
When my closest friend died at age 30 from brain cancer, my younger daughter was not quite two months old. I brought her with me to the funeral. I did not bring my two year old because it was possible she would have a tantrum at some point and disrupt the ceremony (which was offensively christian given that my friend was a non-believer, but I understand that the ceremonies are for the living). There I was, bawling my eyes out while my daughter silently breastfed.
In the Spring, when the date for the burial had been arranged, my friend's mother called me to let me know. Then she said that if I was planning on coming, I shouldn't breastfeed, unless I could hide somewhere, because I had offended some people at Sharon's funeral!!
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