With thanks to @thecurvature, I bring you an extraordinary video by an organization called Marriage Equality, an Irish organization working to support civil marriage for gay and lesbian people.
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Top Hat over at Its All About the Hat suggested a Breastfeeding Blog Carnival called "This is What a Nursing Toddler Looks Like." [This is my first blog carnival so I will link to the other participants as soon as I figure out the rules of the game - UPDATE: I have added some links at the bottom to other Carnival participants.] Luckily for me, the Carnival theme left a good bit of room for interpretation since I don't currently have a nursing toddler. I have many fond memories of nursing my kids when they were toddlers and so do they. I and they remember how important it was that they could nurse when they were sick or hurt or needed comfort. We nursed when they needed some time with mom. We nursed when they were getting used to sharing mom with a new sibling. We nursed when they were hungry. We nursed to sleep. We nursed standing up and sitting down and in positions I used to call "Olympic Freestyle Nursing." A nursing toddler can also go hiking and he looks like this:
But with my kids getting older, I am seeing more of what a nursing toddler looks like when he is no longer nursing and is no longer a toddler. That can be someone who really understands how important it is that kids get to nurse and mothers get to nurse their kids. A former nursing toddler isn't fazed by seeing women breastfeed wherever they are. A few years ago my then 12 year old son saw me helping to organize a nurse-in. I explained that a woman had been quietly nursing her baby on a bench in a shopping mall when a security guard ordered her to stop and move. She refused, saying she needed to finish feeding her son. Soon she was surrounded by security guards who engaged her husband in a shouting match and left the woman terrified. When the mom shared her story and the shopping mall management refused to respond to her complaint about her treatment, a nurse-in was planned. My son was confused – why would anyone think there was something wrong with a mother feeding her baby? Then he was mad – this was wrong. He asked if he could come to the nurse-in. When he saw me making signs, he asked if he could create one for himself. I told him that we expected press coverage and there was a chance his friends would see a photo of him from the protest. He was adamant that he wanted to be seen. Back to the Carnival theme – This is What a Nursing Toddler Looks Like. He looks like a proud breastfeeding activist.
UPDATE: Other What Does a Nursing Toddler Looks Like Carnival participants. A Breastfeeding Toddler Photoshoot, Escaping to my Controversial Place The Joys, Humors, and Struggles of … , The Mother's Lamentation Nursing a (and Around a) Toddler Creates Cute Stories, Melissa's Place I Never Thought I'd Nurse a Toddler, The Prudent Woman The Pros and Cons of Breastfeeding a Toddler, Breastfeeding Moms Unite Nursing an Older Toddler, Musings of Mommy Bee My Nursing Toddler Story, babyREADY Beautiful at Any Age, A Piece of My Mind This is What A Nursing Toddler Looks Like, Three Girl Pile-Up This is What a Nursing Toddler Looks Like, Permission to Mother This is a Nursing Toddler, Gaze Into the Heavens This is What a Nursing Toddler Looks Like, My Seaside Retreat Nursing a Toddler in a Ring Sling, PhD in Parenting This is What a Nursing Toddler Looks Like … , Mama's Apple Cores When it does not create or protect the right of a woman to breastfeed. When is breastfeeding rights legislation a really really bad thing? When it makes it even more difficult for a woman to breastfeed than if there were no law at all. And this really really bad thing is what is happening in North Dakota. Witness the sad journey of North Dakota Senate Bill 2344. As originally introduced this past January, SB 2344 amended the North Dakota crimes code to exclude breastfeeding from all forms of indecent conduct, and created a new section of the state civil rights law making discrimination on the basis of breastfeeding prohibited both in public accommodations and in the workplace. North Dakota would go from being one of a handful of states with no law protecting breastfeeding to having one of the strongest laws. But then the bill made a trip into the North Dakota Senate Human Services Committee where on February 16th SB 2344 was completely gutted. The Committee removed the entire section of the bill which would have created a civil right – therefore removing the only mechanism for enforcing any protection the bill would have created. The Committee also removed the section creating a right to pump breast milk in the workplace. But the Committee did not just remove vital portions of SB 2344, it added a few words too: "discreetly" and "if the woman acts in a discreet and modest manner." So instead of a new section in the civil rights code, the bill adds this to the health code (therefore without any penalty for violation):
So who decides what is a discreet and modest manner? You? Me? The owner of the public accommodation? The police? The mother? The bill does not say. So who will it be? Whoever doesn't want a woman to breastfeed in public. After all, if a woman is breastfeeding in a restaurant and the owner orders her to stop or leave, the final arbiter of whether the mother is arrested for trespass is the police. Will the police officer watch the woman breastfeed to determine whether she is breastfeeding in a discreet and modest manner? Will he rely on the owner for that determination? Will witnesses be interviewed? And what does "discreet and modest manner" mean? Visible skin? Visible areola a/k/a the Facebook test? A flash of nipple (I think I'll call this the "Janet Jackson test")? Anyone who has breastfed a child knows that a woman's control over these factors in any given nursing session with any particular child is pretty limited. Any person with breasts can probably understand that a large (pun intended) determining factor in one's ability to control the occasional flash is breast size. The amended SB 2344 isn't just vague, ambiguous, and totally lacking in protections. Unlike any breastfeeding law to date, North Dakota's SB 2344 arguably makes some public breastfeeding a crime. How? With that tricky word "discreetly." Rather than excluding breastfeeding from the crime of "indecent exposure" as so many other states do, SB 2344 amends the criminal law as follows:
So does that mean that a woman breastfeeding "indiscreetly" is in violation of the indecent exposure statute? To my knowledge, no woman in North Dakota (or anywhere else – and I have been following this for years) has ever been charged with indecent exposure for breastfeeding. Under North Dakota's existing indecent exposure law, the prohibited conduct is:
Not conduct easily confused with breastfeeding. So excluding "discreetly" breastfeeding must mean that indiscreetly breastfeeding, whatever that might mean, is indecent exposure, right? I have heard the argument that something is better than nothing. Hey, North Dakota has no law concerning breastfeeding so this is better than nothing, right? Wrong. This law offers breastfeeding women nothing – no protection against harassment and discrimination when in public, no rights or protections in the workplace – and it explicitly limits the way in which breastfeeding in public is to be done, possibly even to the point of creating a crime. This particular "something" is most definitely worse than nothing. Tomorrow I will watch the U.S. presidential inauguration with my children and I will weep. I will tell them that we are watching history, glorious history, something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. I, like many people my age in the U.S., never thought I would live to see an African-American president. I grew up in a country in which only rich white men could be president. I grew up certain I could never be the leader of my country. People who grew up in poverty, like me, could not be president. People who were female, like me, could not be president. People who were Jewish, like me, could not be president. When I was born, the country had its first Catholic president. Well, despite all the hope the election of Barack Obama brings to me and to my children, someone like me could not be elected president in the U.S. today. I feel sure I will live to see a woman elected president. I think there is a decent chance I will live to see a Jew elected president. But I am also an atheist and that fact alone would likely prevent my election. In a February 2007 Gallup Poll Americans were asked:
In my view, all of these characteristics are irrelevant to qualification to hold office. Happily, only 5% responded they would not vote for someone who was black. Good news and the subsequent election proved the respondents were largely truthful. Seven percent would not vote for a Jew and only 11% answered they would not vote for a woman. I was sad, but not surprised, that 43% would not vote for someone if he or she was gay. However, the only single characteristic that would prevent more than half of the respondents from voting for a candidate was atheism. Because I do not believe in a god, 53% of the respondents would not vote for me. I thought about this poll quite a bit yesterday while I was watching the We Are One performance at the Lincoln Memorial. Virtually every song had a mention of god or prayer. Virtually every performer mentioned god or said "God Bless You" to the crowd. Tomorrow, the U.S. Constitution requires that Barack Obama say:
Nothing else. He chooses to use the bible (not all presidents have). He chooses to add "so help me God" (not all presidents have). And the ceremony will include not one but two prayers (prayer was not part of U.S. presidential inauguration until 1937) – one prayer delivered by a man with a history of anti-gay positions. I will weep tomorrow, as I did on election night watching the tears of civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson and the crowds of people who, like me, never thought they would see this happen. I will tell my children again about what I think the election of a black president means in this country for people who are different and historically disenfranchised. But as an atheist, much of the day will be a slap in the face. On a day all about a new era of inclusion, I will still be on the outside looking in. And I can't tell my kids that even they can be president some day because if they grow up to be atheists like their parents, probably they can't. After years of lobbying and failed legislative bills, Massachusetts breastfeeding advocates have at long last succeeded in getting a law passed to protect breastfeeding in public. Yay and congratulations to all the people who have worked so hard and for so long! I am particularly pleased to see that that the new law, which goes into effect in April of 2009, has an enforcement provision. As I wrote about at some length in the July/August Mothering, women in states with public breastfeeding laws lacking enforcement provisions have found themselves with no way to effectively use these laws. Many woman find themselves shouting "but I have a right!" waiving the law, while the store owner says "so what?" "An Act to Promote Breastfeeding" states:
So the new Massachusetts law creates a private right of action – the ability to file a civil lawsuit – for a mother against anyone who "restrict[s], harass[es] or penalize[s] a mother who is breastfeeding her child." In my usual role as "she who finds the problems," I have some concern with how the enforcement provision will work. Needless to say, there may be some disputes about what conduct on the part of, say, a store owner will be considered restricting, harassing, or penalizing, Asking a nursing woman to leave a store or refusing to serve a nursing woman seems obviously to meet the test. I wonder whether asking a mother to move or cover will be considered harassing if nothing is done when the mothers says no. I certainly think asking is harassing but I suspect this will remain a question until a court decides. But I don't think this wording is a problem with the law – often the more specific one gets in drafting a statute the more you end up accidentally excluding things you want to prohibit. Laws get too long and unwieldy. In noting the room for interpretation in this new law, I am just giving women a bit of a heads-up that passing a civil rights law is never the end of the journey. I also have a concern with the language requiring that recovery under the private right of action requires that the wrongdoer act with the "intent to violate a woman's right." Intent is essentially what is going on in someone's head when he or she acts and it can be difficult to prove. I second Angela White's concerns over at Breastfeeding 1-2-3 that the intent requirement might be used to protect wrongdoers ignorant of the law but agree that that argument is generally unsuccessful. I am just baffled as to why the intent requirement is there at all. Seems like an unnecessary hoop to jump for someone bringing a lawsuit. Angela suggests that a nursing woman might be asked to move for some other legitimate reason and I too hope that is why the provision is there. There are two more problems I see with the enforcement provision that might prevent women from making full use of it. First, few people have the skill to file a lawsuit without hiring a lawyer and lawyers cost money. I prefer an enforcement provision under which a mother can file a complaint herself with a government agency and can go forward without expenses that might exceed anything she might recover. The new Massachusetts law does allow the court to award attorneys fees (which it should) but lawyers usually need to be paid upfront and one risks that the attorney fee award won't be as much as what the fees actually are. Believe me. Been there. Which leads me to my other question about the recovery element of the new law. In a successful lawsuit under this law, a court may award "actual damages in an amount not to exceed $500." This is where I need a Massachusetts lawyer (I am going to try and find one and check back with you but feel free to speak up about this). I am concerned that this provision puts another burden on the woman to prove that she has been injured in a measurable way – "actual damages" also known at Common Law as "compensatory damages" means different things in different states. It may mean a measurable monetary loss. Hmm. Any woman who has been harassed for breastfeeding in public can tell you about her embarrassment, her humiliation, sometimes her fear that she would be arrested or touched physically by the menacing stranger who was harassing her. In what way will a woman have to prove that this resulted in loss that should be compensated with money? I need a Massachusetts lawyer to tell me if my concerns about this are valid. Finally, I'll note that the new Massachusetts law does not apply to religious schools and houses of worship. While I believe currently only Illinois specifically limits the application of its public breastfeeding law in houses of worship, it has been pointed out to me that houses of worship are excluded from the definition of "public accommodation" in other states and therefore civil rights laws often apply differently in religious buildings. I don't agree with it. I can't see the justification. But there it is. After all that peeing on the parade, let me say again that it is a great thing that Massachusetts finally has a public breastfeeding law and that it is one with an enforcement provision. Massachusetts has gone from one of only five states with no law protecting breastfeeding in public (the final four are West Virginia, Idaho, North Dakota, and Nebraska) to being one of only nine states with a penalty for violating the right to breastfeed in public (check here for the other eight). And that is something to celebrate. At this point I didn't have more to say about Facebook removing breastfeeding photos but I was struck by the latest final word from Facebook: For real? Visible areola? I will admit I am no expert on porn but I have never seen Big Areola magazine sitting next to Hustler or flipped passed Areolas Gone Wild in the adult pay cable. I am sure there are people driven mad with desire at the sight of that red circle around a woman's nipple – for every body part there is a fetishist. But a "common standard" for deciding whether an image is obscene? I don't think so. This week the press and the mothering blogosphere have been filled with talk of Facebook. If you need to catch up, see this blog entry at PhDinParenting. If you want to hear some good old fashioned outrage, check out this podcast of Fox Across America which aired on 12/26 and includes an interview with me about 25 minutes in. The short version is that Facebook has been sanctioning subscribers for posting breastfeeding photos. A protest event took place on December 27th during which an estimated 11,000 Facebook subscribers changed their profile images to breastfeeding photos and changed statuses to "Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding is Not Obscene." I have not had a Facebook page for very long so I watched the event with some interest. I changed my profile photo to one lots of people have seen – my youngest son's tiny head nursing at my huge breast. It is a beautiful photograph which I love because of my son's sweet comfort and the fact that my hair covers my face. By baby number three I was not at all self-conscious about people seeing my breasts but still don't like photographs of my face. Of my seventy-five or so Facebook "friends," nearly half of them changed their profile images to breastfeeding photos on the 27th. Three of them had those breastfeeding photos removed by Facebook within forty-eight hours. As far as I know, no one has discovered how many breastfeeding photos were removed on the 27th or have been removed in total (though there is a site with a collection of some of the removed photos). While my inbox has been flooded with news stories about the Facebook breastfeeding photo virtual protest, it appears that Facebook is holding its ground. Other than a statement issued prior to the protest, Facebook has been quietly going about its usual business. It appears that images are reported to Facebook by Facebook users as violative of the anti-nudity provision of the user agreement and some not particularly strenuous evaluation process occurs at corporate. If Facebook officials in positions of authority are giving the breastfeeding question much thought, there is no indication of it in either their actions or their public statement. Are these images really bothering anyone? Some of the public commentary on the Facebook event has been the same dichotomy I have seen for years in the public breastfeeding legislation debate. The “anti-“ camp statements are something like: "I don't want to have to see that." "Women aren't discreet enough when they do that." or, my personal favorite, "I don't want my child to see that." And the “pro-“ camp maintains: “Breastfeeding is natural and healthy and normal.” “If you don’t want to see it, look away.” and, sometimes even when it isn't strictly true, “I have a legal right.” While I have been forced to engage in these debates, the voice in my head is always shouting, "Too damn bad you don’t like seeing breastfeeding. Grow up or go home." It isn’t nice but the voice in my head rarely is. But there are two truths at work here: people are uncomfortable with the unfamiliar and some people want to control what other people are allowed to do. As long as breastfeeding remains unfamiliar, it will make some people uncomfortable. The solution seems clear to me – familiarize people with breastfeeding and they will be more comfortable with it. I have written at length elsewhere about dealing with these two questions (and will certainly write lots about it here) but right now the owners of Facebook must decide whether they will be the arbiters of this debate or leave it to the rabble. Will Facebook say, "These are photographs of people engaged in conduct that would be legal if done in public and therefore the photos will stay" or will Facebook continue to follow some other motivation. Facebook may be running the numbers and deciding that not enough people will boycott Facebook over the removal of breastfeeding photos to make this worth corporate attention. Maybe some Facebook vice president truly is offended by nursing children. Or maybe no one at Facebook cares less. I do wonder why Facebook is not jumping at the chance to get some positive publicity by responding to subscriber hue and cry – while 11,000 is a relatively small fraction of the total number of Facebook subscribers, it is still a lot of people. Whoever is complaining about the presence of the photographs is not doing so in the press or on blogs or in any way that stands to hurt Facebook. So why not side with the breastfeeding supporters? What about breastfeeding activists? For mothering to be sustainable, mothers must be free to perform the acts of mothering everywhere life requires they go. While Facebook membership is by no means a necessity, as activists we need to boycott places where mothering is not welcome. Breastfeeding is one of many acts of mothering (and by this I do not exclude or criticize mothers who do not breastfeed). Does that mean that the next step for mothering activists on Facebook is to leave? I don't know. But it is something we need to be talking about. If Facebook continues to remove breastfeeding images, what is the next step for supporters of mothering? |
 
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