#21: There are few things more morally satisfying that running up and down offering little bottles of water to the thirsty.
The last convention I went to (not an SF one) was held in the south, in the summer. A pair of kids stood at the door of the registration room, handing out small bottles of cold water and pieces of chocolate. I'm sure that the increase in con expenses was more than made up for by the decrease in frazzled tempers.
(Boy, do I ever love these numbered comments!)
I have no use for the 'feminists' I''ve met in my life. They usually dismiss me because I've got a happy marriage and therefore have to be a brainwashed clone. I beg to differ but they're usually so impossible that I just refuse to waste my time.
Great! Now all we need is someone to post about how feminists reject women who shave their legs, and we'll have collected the whole set of tired stereotypes.
Friends of ours were evacuated yesterday. I am glad to be living in one of the highest-elevation neighborhoods in Baltimore (we're feet and feet above sealevel) with no rivers nearby.
John Stanning wrote: Can someone tell me - just for information - why it's so important to have a picture of breast-feeding as default LJ icon?
It's an effort to push back against the cultural assumption that the "normal" way to feed a baby is with a bottle. It's surprisingly common in U.S. society for a young woman to reach the point of childbearing without ever having seen a baby breastfeeding; this inevitably affects her choices about how to feed her own baby.
It's also an attempt to desensitize people to breastfeeding, so that women will feel more comfortable about breastfeeding wherever they happen to be with their babies and so that other people will get over their breastfeeding squeamishness. Even some people who are pro-breastfeeding see it as a private act, something that should involve mother and baby gazing deeply and intimately into each other's eyes in a quiet, peaceful, private place. Which would be great, except that real life dictates that those conditions probably aren't available as often as babies are hungry.
Thank you, Teresa. (And Alison.)
Teresa wrote: Here are the ground rules: [...] Not all mothers breast-feed their babies. If that's their choice, that's fine too, and I don't want to see or hear anyone saying otherwise.
That being the case, would you (or Patrick) consider editing out the inflammatory part of bohemiancoast's quoted post? Surely it's not necessary to the discussion, if the discussion is to be limited to LJ/6A's actions.
(I take the inflammatory part to be: "But there is only one way to feed babies properly, and that’s breastfeeding. Artificial feeding is a poor substitute.")
I'm not looking to debate the pros and cons of breastfeeding, honest. No one is less eager to have that argument than me. But bohemiancoast's quote characterizes me as having done something awful, and I really object to being told that I can't protest or defend myself on the relevant thread.
Go ahead and disemvowel me, or ban me, if you consider it necessary. I'd hate to have it happen, but I'd hate just swallowing that quote a lot more.
I agree that it would be nice if the Mommy Wars didn't intrude upon Making Light. But as long as the main body of the post tells me that I didn't feed my daughter "properly," but with a "poor substitute," and implies that I must be ignorant and uneducated to have done so, the Mommy Wars are already happening here. Sarah S. didn't start them, and I hate like hell to see her apologizing for having done so.
I'm all for breastfeeding, all for breastfeeding icons, and all for breastfeeding in public. But I'm having a hard time being all for this protest, because its strongest proponents seem to spend so much of their LJ time bashing women like me. There has to be a better way of promoting breastfeeding, but most of these folks don't seem very concerned about finding one.
Whoa. I am rocked to my foundations. Are there no certainties in life, then?
Hey, congratulations! It couldn't have happened to a better blog.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 8 |
| 2005 | 2 |
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