Mothers don't get to choose when their baby suddenly decides it's hungry. Happening to see a woman breastfeeding in public is always going to be better than the alternative of hearing a baby non-stop crying for food.
It’s a mother taking care of her child’s most basic need.
If a society’s most fundamental role is to protect its children, what does that say about a society that hides mothers nurturing their children?
One day in 9th grade health class we did an activity where we would say stereotypes about the opposite sex (to discuss and dispel them later.) I raised my hand and said "boys spend all their free time masturbating" and immediately one boy was abashed and went "NO!!!" and at the same time one boy chortled and said "yep."
Not very related just a story I laugh at sometimes
Why in history class?
Also teenage boys who would find that disgusting would definitely speak up lol
Besides the point, do people really find this disgusting?
We once spent an entire 75 minute English class discussing Marvel movies (not in relation to the topic literally just how we felt about them), and we also watched The Winter Soldier in religion instead of actually learning about religion (though the teacher did say that if anyone asked, it’s a Christ allegory)
My religion teacher would also do that, but he got approval from it from Education Department, he just said "Religion doesn't involve a grade anyway and the kids have earned it" and they approved (Religion indeed is not graded, at least it wasn't on my school, your class work was ranked as Very Good, Good, Sorta Good, Neutral, Sorta Bad, Bad and Very Bad instead of numbers, and it had 0% impact on the average grades lol)
He also used every opportunity to say Jesus was a trans man
Oh no ours was very much graded and he did not get permission from the higher ups to show us the movie but did it anyway
No one minded bc it got us out of doing work and I actually really love the mcu and Cap is my favorite character so watching him during class was great 😂
I think in my country the norm is for religion to be a not graded class since most schools have it as optional (you or your parents can sign for you to just ignore the class and read or do other classes' hw on that block), so only the really fanatically religuous schools grade it
He wrote a whole thesis on it when he was in Uni in the 90's, got expelled from the Holy Catholic University due to it, so since then he just teaches religion in Progressive Christian Schools
Can you give any examples on arguments he used?
or better yet: somewhere I can read the thesis
I just think it would be really funny if I could say this and back it up
Not the commenter, but a virgin birth would mean that Jesus would only have female Genetic material and well a clone of his mother, so him being a man would require him being trans
Good start, on the other hand: I've often heard that god was the one who impregnated Mary. Which means there wouldn't be any limit to the genetic material used.
So her being impregnated by an angel (specifically Michael iirc) doesn't invalidate the Virgin birth and doesn't support the clone theory. But let's go weirder.
Jesus was given a vagina with the spear in his side as to forgive and rebirth man without sin.
Boom. The transformation is a transformation. Dang I nailed it in one
My Religion Teacher explained it from several perspectives, including this, and he determined that God doesn't have a gender, he is above human concepts, and Jesus is God, so why did he choose a male name and body? He gave a shit ton of arguments, he unfortunately could never post his thesis though, he got it ultra rejected by the Holy Catholic University back then
Winter Soldier was more recent (and imo Cap’s movies are better anyway). This was in 2015 so WS had just come out (2014, the last Thor movie was 2013, and it was The Dark World) 😂
I vividly remember my teacher saying Bucky was the Christ figure because they had the same hair 😂
To be fair, at least in my home country the subject is called history & political education. So we‘d also talk about current events and the politics surrounding them, which sometimes led to random discussions
I can get behind that. I used to have classes called sociology, or even in religion class, biology maybe, but history just seems out of place ;D
Back in trade school we used to have a religion teacher that used to be a pastor. Was my favourite class, and one of my favourite teachers! We rarely talked about religion like itself, but often had discussions like in the post.
I once rememberd that he asked us if we would care if, when our parents die, they take their organs for donation.
After a few people gave their answers, he asked "what about their eyes? What if someone needed them, would you be okay with that?"
And it evolved into a really interesting discussion about ethics why we care more about the eyes f.e than the liver or something
We dont have religious studies in NZ (to my knowledge), but my calculus teacher used to teach both in the UK, so every now and again he would get bored of teaching maths I guess and do religion just for fun.
We had civics and economics at my high school, which was social studies, which all the history classes also fell under.
In civics we had “debates” about popular social topics of the time. All the queer kids in my class had to defend gay marriage, we talked about abortion, etc.
We had current events talks in my history class and breastfeeding in public has been a hot topic for a while. And yes some people find it disgusting just like some view acknowledging periods as disgusting.
My entry level world civilization class in college was one of the most fun classes I’d ever taken. My professor fit the stereotype of wise but definitely misfiring on a couple cylinders.
I was a history major, and on the Raid Area 51 Day, I got my professor to spend the entire class talking about how he was stationed at Area 51 when he was in the army in the 80s. Then we talked about aliens and conspiracy theories until class was over and he gave up trying to get me back on track.
I mean, I have argued for hours with adult men who told me that feeding my baby publicly was the equivalent of them taking out their penis and pissing on a table. So yes, there are weirdos who think like this.
I do. But that is independent of whether there is a baby attached to it. Having opposite opinions on those two situations is just one of the many paradoxes of allosexual people that I do not understand.
Why were you fired though? Niki and her stance on breastfeeding played a very important role in the civil rights movement. I think we should dox your boss.
I suspect it's also that it's one of the only interesting things to happen to OP in particular. Most people have unusual high points and low points in their life, and this happens to be OP's W.
I find it very believable that veterans of Tumblr discourse would have talking points prepped and ready to go on many more issues than the average person would have ready
If It did happen IRL the boys wouldn't have silently at there with their mouths agape. Instead they would've called her bitch, said she was being misandrist, blamed feminism for the decline of women, claimed she was being dramatic or making things up, etc etc.
For fuck's sake, it's a tit. Everyone has them. You wouldn't wanna play with mine, and I can't feed a kid with them.
Okay so technically that can happen, but I'd rather it didn't.
Women do not exist for your sake, or your pleasure. Leave em alone and let them do what they want.
Idk if it's just me but I rarely see men take issue with breastfeeding mothers. In my own anecdotal experience, it's usually women that have a problem with it. Can't imagine seeing it as "gross" though, that's just weird
Idk about gross but people do seem to think of it as shameful in some way because most people seem surprised that I'm willing to publicly breastfeed. (Picture a woman shopping at the mall and her baby gets fussy so she whips out her boob and puts the baby in her arm and continues shopping). The way I see it, it's not indecent because this is the natural purpose for which boobs exist. Thankfully I live in a pro-family state (TN) that ensures no woman can be asked to leave any space, public or private, on account of breastfeeding.
Obviously, it’s anecdotal because it’s my experience, but it has only ever been women I’m with that comment on it, I think even if men don’t like it, they’re usually too uncomfortable to say anything
You can say this with full confidence knowing that no one wants to go back several months into a reddit user's comment history. I just choose to believe you
No idea about the validity of THIS story but it reminded me of my college ethics class, I think we were talking about cultural relativism and this white boy in front of me puts his hand up so fast and starts advocating for slavery, basically like, you can’t criticize slave owners because in their “culture” they weren’t doing anything wrong.
I hate talking in lectures but I couldn’t sit there any longer and listen to it, so I raised my hand and said something along the lines of, “I don’t believe there’s no such thing as cultural relativity, but I do believe that there are some things that are wrong no matter who does it, especially when it comes to the abuse or harm of other people.” I don’t remember what happened after that, the discussion probably just moved on. And I know there’s a decent possibility this kid was just trying to ‘play devils advocate’ but he was making it sound like slavery was actually pretty cool. And this school was in upstate New York, where a lot of the students were from other cities in the state, making the demographic pretty mixed between a lot of different races and cultures, so it’s not like every class was just a white kid echo chamber. It just made me feel gross.
But that’s also classes like ethics for you I guess.
People who think breastfeeding in public should not be a thing, should be booted off this world. We already have enough dumb people. There is no need for more.
Problem is I'm pretty sure everyone can be classified as a dumb person. Everyone is stupid in one shape or form and yet we can be incredibly smart also. Idk I just felt like putting in my two cents
some of us are actively working on becoming iteratively less stupid over time
whereas others sincerely believe that their ignorance is as valid as other people's knowledge and experience
I have yet to see it happen.
People who know they don't know something can improve.
People who learned something incorrectly can improve.
People who sincerely believe that something they just made up is as valid as educated knowledge cannot improve because they don't understand the difference between factual information and opinions. They can't even grasp that they need to improve.
I get where you're coming from but I just can't help but disagree. A lot can happen in a human lifetime that can change people and although some people don't change all that much, i feel like there are too many variables that can change someone down the line to really rule out that someone can change.
The only thing that makes this story unbelievable is that idea that not having a good response is enough to stop a teenage boy from saying something stupid
So like. I kinda agree, and obviously breastfeeding in public is just whatever, feed your baby when they need fed. But I've only ever seen guys have the opinion of "women should only breastfeed in private" that also have the opinion of "if she's not my wife/girlfriend showing her body for my pleasure, she's a filthy whore." Yes, including the ones they seek out in porn.
Trust me, OOP means all men. I used to be pretty misandrist, and this is exactly the type of language I’d use to be misandrist while still having plausible deniability. Hell, I got banned from r/curatedtumblr for using this type of language.
Plus OOP literally says “all the boys” lol.
Not that it matters at the end of the day, but I'm 90% sure OOP is making up or at least highly exaggerating events (unless it's a class of like 6 people, which happens) so it feels a little telling that one would specify "all the boys" in a made up situation like this
My feelings on this are the same as my feelings on free the nipple stuff.
How you present yourself to society at large is inherently performative. It's even there in the word; "presentation" a show.
Like with any show or any art in general, it's interpretation depends on the viewer. The author is dead, intentions don't matter, and you are viewed through the lens and biases each individual person brings.
It is likely, in our current society with our current societal norms, someone will view any display of boobs as inherently sexual. If that makes you uncomfortable then don't display, because you can't change what other people think individually. You may be able to influence biases and cultural norms over time, but you will be fighting current society the entire way.
TLDR: Thinking to yourself "I'm breast feeding, this can only be viewed in a non-sexual way" is all well and good, but your intentions have literally no influence on how others see you.
Someone who views a mother feeding a baby’ as sexual is sick and shouldn’t really be part of society. Luckily, those people are just a small minority. Loud and stupid. But just a minority.
Also someone feeding their child doesn’t present themselves in any way. It’s not an art installation, it’s a child getting fed. People have to learn to mind their own business, not the other way around.
Literally fed my baby in the middle of a crowded mall yesterday. He needs to eat. You see plenty of breasts in life. I know I’m postpartum fat and not a super sexy woman, but The Public can handle seeing half my breast and some of my belly while the boy eats.
They could not be creepy about it. They can see things however they want, its how they're treated in public that matters.
But also you absolutely can. What do you think activism is??!?
Being completely fair, we've reached a point where anything even peripheral to sexuality is considered taboo (and often conflated with the sexual anyway). Horny teenage boys might be all for titillation, but I feel pretty confident in saying that's because raging hormones and the societal pressures against acting upon or, critically, talking about sex--as a human experience, I mean, and not a clinical or academic hypothetical.
What I mean to say is, most well-balanced people aren't explicitly for or against the display of women's bodies in comparable ways, but only the immature and/or frustrated make a big deal of out of either way. Among that segment that takes leering pleasure in it, such a display in periphery to function gives it obvious purpose, an explanation, a reason other than aesthetic. It's confirmed *not* sexual or titillating, replacing the layer of arousal with a social one that suggests it is a private moment one should not intrude upon, which makes it jarring to be done in public.
They have nothing to say because it's confusing. Because "men think the display of a woman's body is good until it's no longer for their pleasure" is by no means wrong but also not even close to a full accounting of the issue, and even if they can *sense* that, they don't have a handle on it. The best they could do might be "that's not fair," which isn't particularly persuasive.
*Hi ♪~ I'm skidding in here after the fact just to clarify: I went through teenage boy^(\*) puberty and seem to have digested the experience differently (can't imagine why \s). My purpose here is to add some information that may help describe how this idea might come about culturally and thus provide a more nuanced understanding as--ever the optimist--I think that's a step on the road to making shit better. Maybe I'm just hoping my perspective offers uncommon insights, so all that time spent bewildered and confused might be worth... somethin'.*
*All that to say, it can be two things, and the feeling that something which exposes a body part generally considered private "should" be done in a private space such as a restroom has a specific origin that is not necessarily sexist. The result is that public breastfeeding becomes this clash of several different cultural ideas and men are arguably less able to sort through that in a sensible way. This should not be taken as excusing or denying the sexism present in the issue, nor as a valid argument against public breastfeeding. Even trying to puzzle through it at the time, I firmly believed if it is acceptable to feed your baby in an area, it shouldn't become not okay simply because you're breastfeeding. Makes no gott damn sense. If I had an issue with it, it was on me to puzzle through why, and if I was going to assert that it was inappropriate and insist someone should not be allowed to do so, that would have been on me to argue. Frankly, people gotta get over it instead of making their weird issues everyone else's problem.*
I dunno how we get from here to a better place. We have layers of self-reinforcing dysfunction and we're currently taking several steps backward with scapegoating porn because people made dysfunctional by puritanical pressures discover the lowest rung of erotic media available and binge on it like they're eating Maccas 4 meals a day because it's all they've ever seen and they had to overcome a lot of pressure to get *there*. They aren't going to peruse at their leisure and find the sex positive stuff if, when caught, they know their community won't see a difference and will only interpret further attention or care given to it as a further indictment against their character.
It'd probably help if we stopped pretending people who base their entire lives around do-it-or-else advice books from millennia ago aren't, at a baseline, maybe just a little prone to misinterpret the applicability of society's equivalent to YA fiction to everyday life. That got away from me. Please pretend I phrased that like a civilized conversation between two disagreeing friends over a cup of tea and not like a chronically bewildered internet denizen punching words into an edit box without the benefit of all those subtle, non-verbal cues and contexts to play off of.
----
Also, I call bullshit. Not that it couldn't happen, but there'd be an obvious need for relevant context to address the obvious questions raised by the impression that a debate on the acceptability of public breastfeeding broke out in response to the normal curriculum of that "history class".
In HS English class we had a debate about marijuana and whether or not it should be legalized. Fuck if I know what the point of the class was. I sat on the anti side. The debate began to get heated and the girl across from me hit me with "if we illegalize it people are just going to do it anyways." then she sat back and fixed me with this smug look like she had constructed the perfect argument. With confusion on my face I replied "we should legalize murder. People are just doing it anyways."
She sat silently for three seconds then engaged the dude next to me.
In case you really wanted arguments in front of you: whether murder is legal or not, it will be used the same way and have the same consequences around it: lives will be taken for no fair reason (the law's definition of self-defense is a good reason). But in case of drugs, illegal drugs are sold by gangs and people who endanger poor people to make the drugs travel. It's more likely to murder a dealer if the drug is already illegal than if it's not (are tobacconists being killed for asking more money than the guy has ? I don't think so). People who don't know how to take drugs get overdose, and when they have bad symptoms they are afraid to ask for help if it's illegal. Anyone can pretend to sell drugs and it can be actual poison, how would someone find it was you ? Now when drugs are legal, the product is controlled, the retailers are controlled, there's tax on the product that goes to the State, since people don't hide there are more traces of everything and since it's not already illegal, it drives people to avoid doing something illegal, in countries where it's legalized there are centers where you get clean materials and get advice to avoid health problems...
I believe the scenario and even think she has a good point. I do not believe a bunch of teenagers would just shut up in the face of being wrong, and so I don’t think she said anything.
I fully support public breastfeeding, but the it’s natural argument is stupid. Shitting is also natural. Death is natural. I don’t want people shitting and being dead in a place I can see it.
Mothers don't get to choose when their baby suddenly decides it's hungry. Happening to see a woman breastfeeding in public is always going to be better than the alternative of hearing a baby non-stop crying for food.
But but. I wanna shame the woman for being a woman!
And I do want to shame the mom for not being able to 'control' her baby (/s)!
And I want to shame you because shaming people who shame mothers is my kink. /s
It’s a mother taking care of her child’s most basic need. If a society’s most fundamental role is to protect its children, what does that say about a society that hides mothers nurturing their children?
One day in 9th grade health class we did an activity where we would say stereotypes about the opposite sex (to discuss and dispel them later.) I raised my hand and said "boys spend all their free time masturbating" and immediately one boy was abashed and went "NO!!!" and at the same time one boy chortled and said "yep." Not very related just a story I laugh at sometimes
The duality of (teenaged) man.
And the 3rd turning beet red in the corner
The bottom
It could be you. It could be me!
*shotgun blast* what? It was obvious! He’s the bottom.
Demographic market research
The one who said no was upset that he couldn't cause he had a job probably /s
Why in history class? Also teenage boys who would find that disgusting would definitely speak up lol Besides the point, do people really find this disgusting?
We once spent an entire 75 minute English class discussing Marvel movies (not in relation to the topic literally just how we felt about them), and we also watched The Winter Soldier in religion instead of actually learning about religion (though the teacher did say that if anyone asked, it’s a Christ allegory)
My religion teacher would also do that, but he got approval from it from Education Department, he just said "Religion doesn't involve a grade anyway and the kids have earned it" and they approved (Religion indeed is not graded, at least it wasn't on my school, your class work was ranked as Very Good, Good, Sorta Good, Neutral, Sorta Bad, Bad and Very Bad instead of numbers, and it had 0% impact on the average grades lol) He also used every opportunity to say Jesus was a trans man
Oh no ours was very much graded and he did not get permission from the higher ups to show us the movie but did it anyway No one minded bc it got us out of doing work and I actually really love the mcu and Cap is my favorite character so watching him during class was great 😂
I think in my country the norm is for religion to be a not graded class since most schools have it as optional (you or your parents can sign for you to just ignore the class and read or do other classes' hw on that block), so only the really fanatically religuous schools grade it
Yeah I went to a Catholic school so it was a pretty big part of the curriculum 😂
Now i’m very curious to how he justified Jezus being trans.
He wrote a whole thesis on it when he was in Uni in the 90's, got expelled from the Holy Catholic University due to it, so since then he just teaches religion in Progressive Christian Schools
Can you give any examples on arguments he used? or better yet: somewhere I can read the thesis I just think it would be really funny if I could say this and back it up
Not the commenter, but a virgin birth would mean that Jesus would only have female Genetic material and well a clone of his mother, so him being a man would require him being trans
This is sound logic. I accept this as canon
Good start, on the other hand: I've often heard that god was the one who impregnated Mary. Which means there wouldn't be any limit to the genetic material used.
So her being impregnated by an angel (specifically Michael iirc) doesn't invalidate the Virgin birth and doesn't support the clone theory. But let's go weirder. Jesus was given a vagina with the spear in his side as to forgive and rebirth man without sin. Boom. The transformation is a transformation. Dang I nailed it in one
Sooooo much yoni spear wound art in the Catholic faith. Sooooo much
The Jesussy 😳
My Religion Teacher explained it from several perspectives, including this, and he determined that God doesn't have a gender, he is above human concepts, and Jesus is God, so why did he choose a male name and body? He gave a shit ton of arguments, he unfortunately could never post his thesis though, he got it ultra rejected by the Holy Catholic University back then
Aw... But erm, wouldn't he still have a copy in his hand even though he didn't post his thesis?
Well, as we all know Mary reproduced asexually, so it makes sense that Jesus was born a little girl. >!/s!<
Yeah, everyone knows Jesus was trans. He CLEARLY transformed water into wine!
My US Government teacher would frequently get distracted by Black Panther (he likes that movie)
well that's ridiculous they should have played the Thor movies
Winter Soldier was more recent (and imo Cap’s movies are better anyway). This was in 2015 so WS had just come out (2014, the last Thor movie was 2013, and it was The Dark World) 😂 I vividly remember my teacher saying Bucky was the Christ figure because they had the same hair 😂
We watched law and order SVU for health class lol our teacher just told us to not be stupid and that was the end of that
Most based religion teacher
Fr we had to write an essay for him once and I compared Jesus to Batman and Superman and he gave me extra points for it 😂
To be fair, at least in my home country the subject is called history & political education. So we‘d also talk about current events and the politics surrounding them, which sometimes led to random discussions
I can get behind that. I used to have classes called sociology, or even in religion class, biology maybe, but history just seems out of place ;D Back in trade school we used to have a religion teacher that used to be a pastor. Was my favourite class, and one of my favourite teachers! We rarely talked about religion like itself, but often had discussions like in the post. I once rememberd that he asked us if we would care if, when our parents die, they take their organs for donation. After a few people gave their answers, he asked "what about their eyes? What if someone needed them, would you be okay with that?" And it evolved into a really interesting discussion about ethics why we care more about the eyes f.e than the liver or something
We dont have religious studies in NZ (to my knowledge), but my calculus teacher used to teach both in the UK, so every now and again he would get bored of teaching maths I guess and do religion just for fun.
We had civics and economics at my high school, which was social studies, which all the history classes also fell under. In civics we had “debates” about popular social topics of the time. All the queer kids in my class had to defend gay marriage, we talked about abortion, etc.
"had to defend" like that was their role or they just couldn't help it?
Couldn’t help it. I grew up in rural NC. Defending gay rights in civics class was the most common way of being outed at my school.
We had current events talks in my history class and breastfeeding in public has been a hot topic for a while. And yes some people find it disgusting just like some view acknowledging periods as disgusting.
History class is where you get all the weird conversions
My entry level world civilization class in college was one of the most fun classes I’d ever taken. My professor fit the stereotype of wise but definitely misfiring on a couple cylinders.
I was a history major, and on the Raid Area 51 Day, I got my professor to spend the entire class talking about how he was stationed at Area 51 when he was in the army in the 80s. Then we talked about aliens and conspiracy theories until class was over and he gave up trying to get me back on track.
Teenage boys find any bare breast hot. This is a fabricated story for anger points.
I mean, I have argued for hours with adult men who told me that feeding my baby publicly was the equivalent of them taking out their penis and pissing on a table. So yes, there are weirdos who think like this.
I do. But that is independent of whether there is a baby attached to it. Having opposite opinions on those two situations is just one of the many paradoxes of allosexual people that I do not understand.
I don't disagree with their opinion but this shit simply did not fucking happen.
No this really happend I was the classroom.
I was the chair OOP sat on
Nice now if we find the teacher I think we have everyone.
I was the teacher the class was about niki minjaj I got fired the next day
I was the motivational poster in the classroom
Why were you fired though? Niki and her stance on breastfeeding played a very important role in the civil rights movement. I think we should dox your boss.
I also am used to pronounce her name like that since this hilarious vine🤣😭
Also everybody clapped.
I was there, everybody started clapping
It may have, but not quite in the way our biased narrator is saying it did.
I suspect it's also that it's one of the only interesting things to happen to OP in particular. Most people have unusual high points and low points in their life, and this happens to be OP's W.
Welcom to r/tumblr, enjoy your stay
Yeah, this is perfect L'esprit de l'escalier. It’s too succinctly and elegantly phrased for casual conversation
I find it very believable that veterans of Tumblr discourse would have talking points prepped and ready to go on many more issues than the average person would have ready
That must be why they’re so annoying
If It did happen IRL the boys wouldn't have silently at there with their mouths agape. Instead they would've called her bitch, said she was being misandrist, blamed feminism for the decline of women, claimed she was being dramatic or making things up, etc etc.
yeah exactly there's no way they would just gawk, they'd say at least SOMETHING as a comeback no matter how stupid
For fuck's sake, it's a tit. Everyone has them. You wouldn't wanna play with mine, and I can't feed a kid with them. Okay so technically that can happen, but I'd rather it didn't. Women do not exist for your sake, or your pleasure. Leave em alone and let them do what they want.
Idk if it's just me but I rarely see men take issue with breastfeeding mothers. In my own anecdotal experience, it's usually women that have a problem with it. Can't imagine seeing it as "gross" though, that's just weird
Idk about gross but people do seem to think of it as shameful in some way because most people seem surprised that I'm willing to publicly breastfeed. (Picture a woman shopping at the mall and her baby gets fussy so she whips out her boob and puts the baby in her arm and continues shopping). The way I see it, it's not indecent because this is the natural purpose for which boobs exist. Thankfully I live in a pro-family state (TN) that ensures no woman can be asked to leave any space, public or private, on account of breastfeeding.
Obviously, it’s anecdotal because it’s my experience, but it has only ever been women I’m with that comment on it, I think even if men don’t like it, they’re usually too uncomfortable to say anything
Check my comment history from a few months ago, I was in an argument with a few men who fully find it gross and shouldn’t be a thing.
You can say this with full confidence knowing that no one wants to go back several months into a reddit user's comment history. I just choose to believe you
It’s only ever been men in my experience
Fair enough, maybe it's a cultural thing?
No idea about the validity of THIS story but it reminded me of my college ethics class, I think we were talking about cultural relativism and this white boy in front of me puts his hand up so fast and starts advocating for slavery, basically like, you can’t criticize slave owners because in their “culture” they weren’t doing anything wrong. I hate talking in lectures but I couldn’t sit there any longer and listen to it, so I raised my hand and said something along the lines of, “I don’t believe there’s no such thing as cultural relativity, but I do believe that there are some things that are wrong no matter who does it, especially when it comes to the abuse or harm of other people.” I don’t remember what happened after that, the discussion probably just moved on. And I know there’s a decent possibility this kid was just trying to ‘play devils advocate’ but he was making it sound like slavery was actually pretty cool. And this school was in upstate New York, where a lot of the students were from other cities in the state, making the demographic pretty mixed between a lot of different races and cultures, so it’s not like every class was just a white kid echo chamber. It just made me feel gross. But that’s also classes like ethics for you I guess.
Things that didn’t happen, Pt. 38848447733
I'm a guy, I find it uncomfortable, but my uncomfortability is my problem, not anyone else's.
I’m a woman and I feel the same way. And I breastfed my children, but always privately in my own home. That’s what was right for me.
OK.
and then obama walked in hit the whip
People who think breastfeeding in public should not be a thing, should be booted off this world. We already have enough dumb people. There is no need for more.
Dumb people tend to multiply at a much higher rate so i think we are getting more anyway
i wish reddit had a sad react instead of just upvote
Yeah if they didn't remove awards, there definetly were sad options among those as well
Problem is I'm pretty sure everyone can be classified as a dumb person. Everyone is stupid in one shape or form and yet we can be incredibly smart also. Idk I just felt like putting in my two cents
some of us are actively working on becoming iteratively less stupid over time whereas others sincerely believe that their ignorance is as valid as other people's knowledge and experience
Yeah maybe but I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility for those people to change and reflect upon themselves
I have yet to see it happen. People who know they don't know something can improve. People who learned something incorrectly can improve. People who sincerely believe that something they just made up is as valid as educated knowledge cannot improve because they don't understand the difference between factual information and opinions. They can't even grasp that they need to improve.
I get where you're coming from but I just can't help but disagree. A lot can happen in a human lifetime that can change people and although some people don't change all that much, i feel like there are too many variables that can change someone down the line to really rule out that someone can change.
The only thing that makes this story unbelievable is that idea that not having a good response is enough to stop a teenage boy from saying something stupid
I mean this is correct but there’s no way it actually happened.
So like. I kinda agree, and obviously breastfeeding in public is just whatever, feed your baby when they need fed. But I've only ever seen guys have the opinion of "women should only breastfeed in private" that also have the opinion of "if she's not my wife/girlfriend showing her body for my pleasure, she's a filthy whore." Yes, including the ones they seek out in porn.
Did they clap?
I feel there’s a way to vouch for breastfeeding without implying all men are predators but to each their own.
Not all men, but those who say breastfeeding is not okay in public
Trust me, OOP means all men. I used to be pretty misandrist, and this is exactly the type of language I’d use to be misandrist while still having plausible deniability. Hell, I got banned from r/curatedtumblr for using this type of language. Plus OOP literally says “all the boys” lol.
Yeah all the boys of that class. Not all the boys of the planet
Not that it matters at the end of the day, but I'm 90% sure OOP is making up or at least highly exaggerating events (unless it's a class of like 6 people, which happens) so it feels a little telling that one would specify "all the boys" in a made up situation like this
I've been in classes of 30 kids where all the boys were like that. They usually grow wiser later.
You guys it really happened!!!!!
Funnily enough, this exact post appeared under this one on my feed, except it was on r/CuratedTumblr.
Correct take but no they did fucking not, theyre high school boys.
My feelings on this are the same as my feelings on free the nipple stuff. How you present yourself to society at large is inherently performative. It's even there in the word; "presentation" a show. Like with any show or any art in general, it's interpretation depends on the viewer. The author is dead, intentions don't matter, and you are viewed through the lens and biases each individual person brings. It is likely, in our current society with our current societal norms, someone will view any display of boobs as inherently sexual. If that makes you uncomfortable then don't display, because you can't change what other people think individually. You may be able to influence biases and cultural norms over time, but you will be fighting current society the entire way. TLDR: Thinking to yourself "I'm breast feeding, this can only be viewed in a non-sexual way" is all well and good, but your intentions have literally no influence on how others see you.
Someone who views a mother feeding a baby’ as sexual is sick and shouldn’t really be part of society. Luckily, those people are just a small minority. Loud and stupid. But just a minority. Also someone feeding their child doesn’t present themselves in any way. It’s not an art installation, it’s a child getting fed. People have to learn to mind their own business, not the other way around.
Literally fed my baby in the middle of a crowded mall yesterday. He needs to eat. You see plenty of breasts in life. I know I’m postpartum fat and not a super sexy woman, but The Public can handle seeing half my breast and some of my belly while the boy eats.
They could not be creepy about it. They can see things however they want, its how they're treated in public that matters. But also you absolutely can. What do you think activism is??!?
Being completely fair, we've reached a point where anything even peripheral to sexuality is considered taboo (and often conflated with the sexual anyway). Horny teenage boys might be all for titillation, but I feel pretty confident in saying that's because raging hormones and the societal pressures against acting upon or, critically, talking about sex--as a human experience, I mean, and not a clinical or academic hypothetical. What I mean to say is, most well-balanced people aren't explicitly for or against the display of women's bodies in comparable ways, but only the immature and/or frustrated make a big deal of out of either way. Among that segment that takes leering pleasure in it, such a display in periphery to function gives it obvious purpose, an explanation, a reason other than aesthetic. It's confirmed *not* sexual or titillating, replacing the layer of arousal with a social one that suggests it is a private moment one should not intrude upon, which makes it jarring to be done in public. They have nothing to say because it's confusing. Because "men think the display of a woman's body is good until it's no longer for their pleasure" is by no means wrong but also not even close to a full accounting of the issue, and even if they can *sense* that, they don't have a handle on it. The best they could do might be "that's not fair," which isn't particularly persuasive. *Hi ♪~ I'm skidding in here after the fact just to clarify: I went through teenage boy^(\*) puberty and seem to have digested the experience differently (can't imagine why \s). My purpose here is to add some information that may help describe how this idea might come about culturally and thus provide a more nuanced understanding as--ever the optimist--I think that's a step on the road to making shit better. Maybe I'm just hoping my perspective offers uncommon insights, so all that time spent bewildered and confused might be worth... somethin'.* *All that to say, it can be two things, and the feeling that something which exposes a body part generally considered private "should" be done in a private space such as a restroom has a specific origin that is not necessarily sexist. The result is that public breastfeeding becomes this clash of several different cultural ideas and men are arguably less able to sort through that in a sensible way. This should not be taken as excusing or denying the sexism present in the issue, nor as a valid argument against public breastfeeding. Even trying to puzzle through it at the time, I firmly believed if it is acceptable to feed your baby in an area, it shouldn't become not okay simply because you're breastfeeding. Makes no gott damn sense. If I had an issue with it, it was on me to puzzle through why, and if I was going to assert that it was inappropriate and insist someone should not be allowed to do so, that would have been on me to argue. Frankly, people gotta get over it instead of making their weird issues everyone else's problem.* I dunno how we get from here to a better place. We have layers of self-reinforcing dysfunction and we're currently taking several steps backward with scapegoating porn because people made dysfunctional by puritanical pressures discover the lowest rung of erotic media available and binge on it like they're eating Maccas 4 meals a day because it's all they've ever seen and they had to overcome a lot of pressure to get *there*. They aren't going to peruse at their leisure and find the sex positive stuff if, when caught, they know their community won't see a difference and will only interpret further attention or care given to it as a further indictment against their character. It'd probably help if we stopped pretending people who base their entire lives around do-it-or-else advice books from millennia ago aren't, at a baseline, maybe just a little prone to misinterpret the applicability of society's equivalent to YA fiction to everyday life. That got away from me. Please pretend I phrased that like a civilized conversation between two disagreeing friends over a cup of tea and not like a chronically bewildered internet denizen punching words into an edit box without the benefit of all those subtle, non-verbal cues and contexts to play off of. ---- Also, I call bullshit. Not that it couldn't happen, but there'd be an obvious need for relevant context to address the obvious questions raised by the impression that a debate on the acceptability of public breastfeeding broke out in response to the normal curriculum of that "history class".
In HS English class we had a debate about marijuana and whether or not it should be legalized. Fuck if I know what the point of the class was. I sat on the anti side. The debate began to get heated and the girl across from me hit me with "if we illegalize it people are just going to do it anyways." then she sat back and fixed me with this smug look like she had constructed the perfect argument. With confusion on my face I replied "we should legalize murder. People are just doing it anyways." She sat silently for three seconds then engaged the dude next to me.
In case you really wanted arguments in front of you: whether murder is legal or not, it will be used the same way and have the same consequences around it: lives will be taken for no fair reason (the law's definition of self-defense is a good reason). But in case of drugs, illegal drugs are sold by gangs and people who endanger poor people to make the drugs travel. It's more likely to murder a dealer if the drug is already illegal than if it's not (are tobacconists being killed for asking more money than the guy has ? I don't think so). People who don't know how to take drugs get overdose, and when they have bad symptoms they are afraid to ask for help if it's illegal. Anyone can pretend to sell drugs and it can be actual poison, how would someone find it was you ? Now when drugs are legal, the product is controlled, the retailers are controlled, there's tax on the product that goes to the State, since people don't hide there are more traces of everything and since it's not already illegal, it drives people to avoid doing something illegal, in countries where it's legalized there are centers where you get clean materials and get advice to avoid health problems...
I believe the scenario and even think she has a good point. I do not believe a bunch of teenagers would just shut up in the face of being wrong, and so I don’t think she said anything.
I don't believe this tumblr post!
“Holy shit the quiet one’s dropping bars”
I fully support public breastfeeding, but the it’s natural argument is stupid. Shitting is also natural. Death is natural. I don’t want people shitting and being dead in a place I can see it.
Just saying even though i agree that was a valid point theres no way everyone would’ve shut up the boys wouldve kept going
Hold on, aren't they supposed to stand up and clap. Isn't that how these stories are supposed to go?