What are we afraid of when we are offended by nursing mothers?

The Breasts on a Plane incident has me thinking on so many levels. I'm going to keep writing about it throughout the day. It feels like this is what blogs were invented for!

The backlash comments I've come across that tell Emily Gillette and her supporters that they are overreacting sound something like this (excerpted from public discussion boards on MomsRising.org Critics represented a minority opinion but there were a handful of them):

Good grief, stop "victim stancing"! If you were considerate enough of others to choose a discrete [sic] aisle and a discrete seat at the back of the plane, why not also be considerate enough to cover your breast discretely with a blanket? Big deal, just do it. Just because you're sitting at the back of the plane next to a window doesn't mean there aren't still people sitting around you who feel uncomfortable at the sight of your breast flopped out. I'm all for breastfeeding, but there's a dignified way to do it, and flopping it out like Ma Kettle is NOT the way to win converts to The Cause.

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Half the world is at war, killing from greed or corruption. Let's not sweat the small stuff, like do you actually need to subject yourself to covering up your breast with a blanket while you breastfeed your still perfectly happy child.

First of all, I want everyone to imagine what it would feel like to be settled into an airplane seat with your child and husband, and to be actually kicked off that flight. Can you imagine the humiliation you would feel, not to mention the inconvenience? I don't believe anyone who says that this experience, if they it actually happened to them, would qualify as "small stuff." For those who still think Emily Gillette is making a big deal of nothing, it's important to remember that she was already protected by the law, which needs to be enforced. Interestingly, from what I've been able to find, this story did not come to the news media's attention until after Gillette had filed a complaint against the airline with the Vermont Human Rights commission.

Big Question: What are We Afraid Of when we are offended by nursing Moms?

The cultural question that comes to my mind when we think about our discomfort with breastfeeding is, What are we afraid of? I think we're dealing with at least three separate types of fear and revulsion that we may not even be aware of. This is worth thinking about because as linguist George Lakoff has shown through his work, our unconscious cognitive frameworks have a powerful influence on how we look at the world. Here are my thoughts on the topic of the breastfeeding controversy and what is really bothering us:

First, I sense a squeamishness about bodily functions. I think that for many of us, breastfeeding is mentally grouped into the same category as urination or defecation rather than nutrition. Nursing in public is seen as undignified or gross, like pissing in pubic. No one would suggest that we serve dinner in the bathroom but many nursing or pumping mothers are shunted into bathroom stalls.

This squeamishness is related to the fact that our culture as over-sexualized breasts to the point where they are thought of as "private parts" and therefore shouldn't be shown in public. Perhaps men are so used to being turned on by breasts that they are disturbed to see breasts being used in a non-sexual way. The catch-22 with all this is that the less breastfeeding is done in public, the less normal it seems.

At the root of this issue I believe there is a fear of women's power. This fear shows up as "Who does she think she is to whip out her boob in public?" Females of all ages are still contstrained to narrow path of safety in our culture. We are constantly at risk of being labeled as a bitch of dyke if we are "too frigid" or a slut if we are "too sexual." And the definition of what is "too much" or "too little" is out of women's hands. Straying off this path makes a woman fair game for criticism, even when she has done nothing wrong. When I taught high school my teenage students were publicly harassed on a daily basis as they moved through their city, being called bitches or sluts when they did not give thirty-year-old male passersby the attention they demanded.

A woman breastfeeding in public does not fit comfortably in our cultural script. She activates our discomfort and ambivalence by falling outside the boundaries of our defined categories. If she nurses her child in private, or maybe even "discreetly enough" in public, then she's a Madonna (Jesus' Mom, not the pop star). But if she "flashes her boob" too much for our comfort zone, even if it's our fault that we just can't help but stare, does that make her a whore?

I argue that breastfeeding in public is a radical act, one that we should all encourage and support mothers to take up proudly. Nursing in public proclaims our right to exist in the world as women and mothers, on our own terms. Nursing in public shows that we can courageously respond to the eternal challenge "Who does she think she is?" with our heads held high.