Breastfeeding has yet again found itself in the news. Once again the question has been raised as to whether images of breastfeeding or a woman breastfeeding in public are “indecent” or “obscene”. In this somewhat hyper-conservative society we live in something as natural and normal as breastfeeding seems to always be in the center of one debate or another.  People in North America seem to be unable to see the difference between an image of breastfeeding and an image of a breast as sexual.

This time the debate is about whether or not images of a woman breastfeeding her child are indecent and if they should be allowed on social networking sites. Members of the online social networking site, Facebook, posted personal photos on their personal Facebook page, some of the photos were of the women breastfeeding their children. Facebook moderators considered the photos to be obscene and removed the photos from the pages. When one mother asked why her pictures were removed her Facebook account was closed. Similarly, earlier this year the social networking site, Myspace also removed breastfeeding images posted on a Tacoma, WA woman’s myspace site.

As you can imagine this has “lactivists” (lactation activists) outraged and they have begun speaking out on behalf of breastfeeding mothers everywhere. They have started an online petition that already has over 10000 names on it. The goal of lactivists is to educate people about breastfeeding and to foster better laws for breastfeeding mothers. This time the focus is on their rights to use their personal online accounts to share images of themselves, including those that show them breastfeeding.

The purpose of social networking sites is the give people a place to keep in touch with old friends, meet new ones, and share information (including photos) about themselves. On Facebook your personal page is not even visible to the general public; you have to acknowledge someone as a “friend” before they can see what is on your page. So are personal photos of a woman breastfeeding her child too obscene to be posted on a personal page?

Breastfeeding is a very natural part of raising a child. In many other cultures and societies it is perfectly legal and publicly acceptable for a woman to feed her child in public, and images of a woman breastfeeding certainly don’t result in outrage. Here in North America we somehow have turned this very natural part of motherhood into an “obscene” act, that to me is obscene.

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