Breastfeeding vs Sexualisation
UK Breastfeeding Law:
The Equality Act 2010 has extra clarification on public breastfeeding laws.
It is unlawful for a business, or staff, to discriminate against women for breastfeeding in public.
Mothers can apply the law and breastfeed a child of any age, even at work. There is no age restriction on breastfeeding.
There are situations where you can ask a breastfeeding woman to leave your premises. The fact that she is breastfeeding cannot be the reason.
Businesses and employers need to be cautious about these situations. In some cases, you may need to prove there was no discrimination towards breastfeeding. This is more likely to occur if a woman pursues a claim of discrimination against your business.
The UK law on breastfeeding protects you in public places. This includes all recreational parks, public buildings, and sports and leisure facilities.
The Equality Law 2010 also covers you to nurse a baby on public transport such as airplanes, trains, and on buses.
Protection for breastfeeders stretches to all hotels, restaurants, shops, and hospitals. The same also applies to petrol stations, cinemas, and theatres.
The law allows you to prevent a woman breastfeeding in a service which is a 'justified' single sex service for men. As a rule, that refers to a service where only one sex needs it (or needs it more than the other sex).
An example could be certain charities or voluntary groups that exclude women. Some religious organisations offer services to one sex. But, this should only occur when it is in line with the doctrines of that religion.
You can stop or prevent a woman breastfeeding if there are legitimate public health or safety risks. For instance it would be dangerous breastfeeding near radiation or certain chemicals.
The Start4Life information service polled 2,393 UK adults as part of this research. Other findings include:
- 48% agree women should always feel comfortable breastfeeding in public
- 44% agree it is acceptable to breastfeed anywhere
- only 57% felt restaurants were an acceptable venue for breastfeeding
- 51% felt breastfeeding on public transport was acceptable
America:
- All fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have laws that specifically allow women to breastfeed in any public or private location.
- Thirty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands exempt breastfeeding from public indecency laws. (Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Illinois,Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.)
- Twenty-nine states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have laws related to breastfeeding in the workplace. (Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.)
- Seventeen states and Puerto Rico exempt breastfeeding mothers from jury duty or allow jury service to be postponed. (California, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Virginia.)
- Six states and Puerto Rico have implemented or encouraged the development of a breastfeeding awareness education campaign. (California, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi and Vermont.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2760234/Breastfeeding-public-frowned-Mothers-feel-marginalised-ashamed-study-finds.html
- Women made to feel ashamed by breastfeeding in public.
- Maternal guilt- Canadian breastfeeds in house of commons, support against backlash
- Breastfeeding vs sexualisation (personal experience)
- Knitting pattern for breasts, used in anti-natal classes
- Pamphlet for layout?
The treachery of Images:
If something is a photo of the thing it isn't actually the thing itself, does this relate to the topic?
Boobs are okay if on a photograph, because they're not actually boobs. Or purely to sell something, being sexualised to sell a product or lifestyle etc. So when a woman is breastfeeding she si exposing her actual boobs, thus it becomes inappropriate.
- Incentive schemes that pay mothers to breastfeed are being trialled in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, in which mothers exclusively breastfeeding at 6 months receive £200 in high-street vouchers (research) (article).
Breastfeeding in different cultures:
In Mali, breasts have retained their primary biological function and hold no sexual connotations or stimulus. The public hold strong beliefs that breastfeeding is essential to create a bond of kinship, and render the child biologically related to the mother. Needless to say this belief has a positive effect on the rates of breastfeeding with 98% of mothers breastfeeding their babies up to an average age of 22 months.
In contrast, within the Mende culture of Sierra Leone, women choose to use tinned milk to feed their children based on the cultural belief that if a woman were to be disloyal to her husband, the semen of a man other than the child’s father can lead to the production of ‘bad milk’ causing sickness within the child. With disease rates being high due to malnutrition and poor sanitation, childhood illness is common. They therefore prevent accusations of being unfaithful by feeding their children tinned milk.(research)
valie export boob box
In Tapp und Tastkino (1968-71) the performer wears a box that stands for a mini cinema, complete with a stage curtain, on her chest. Her collaborator, Peter Weibel, equipped with a megaphone, asks the consumer/public to enter the cinema with their hands. People are incited to touch the breasts inside the box. Meanwhile the wearer holds their eye contact: the gaze is returned. Tapp und Tastkino radically interrupts what Laura Mulvey would later characterise as the scopophilic gaze. Tast-, meaning touch, yields synonyms in German such as tactile [taktil] and groping [tastend], fumbling or tentative. The touch of the cinema should be a tentative, fumbling, groping touch. A touch that gropes in the dark while walking into a trap?
Three Key Ideas:
- the experience of women in public, comments and slurs.
- the biological experiences of breastfeeding.
- the experience of those breastfeeding in different cultures.
- the biological experiences of breastfeeding.
- the experience of those breastfeeding in different cultures.
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