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Police Officer Promoted for Breastfeeding Quake Victims

Ashley

Apparently some people have protested the promotion of this police officer for her decision to breastfeed nine orphaned victims of the earthquake in China.

Holy moly. Nine kids? She deserves a freakin’ medal for the chafing alone.

The concern of the protesters, apparently, is that police should not be promoted for “good deeds,” but only for “merit.”

The last time I checked, the job description of a police officer (assuming they do it correctly—a big assumption, I know) is pretty much supposed to be that they do “good deeds.” Kind of like firefighters, or plumbers, or pretty much anyone who does something that’s useful to others. So I don’t really see any reason to object to her promotion. I can’t help but think that the real issue for people is probably that she has boobies and she used them, and well, that just makes people uncomfortable.

13 thoughts on Police Officer Promoted for Breastfeeding Quake Victims

  1. If a police officer threw himself or herself over nine babies to protect them from falling rubble, such a good deed would uncontroversially count towards promotion.

    Yet, somehow, when a female officer gives of herself in a way that only a woman can, it’s controversial that her public service above and beyond the call of duty is recognized. What sexist bullshit.

    Bravo, officer!

  2. She used them as boobies are meant to be used and that… is just icky. /snark

    Seriously, the woman spotted a need, was capable of filling the need and put her body on the line for others, that is what a police officer is supposed to do. The fact that she pulled out her breasts and not a gun should not lessen the value of her work for the community.

  4. What an amazing feat, and of course she deserves such a promotion. But I am confused as to how she did that…. did she literally JUST have a baby and go back to work? Because from what I understand about milk and boobs, the milk has to be regularly sucked for the breast to create it. So she either just had a baby or she has magic boobs.

  5. I can’t help but think that the real issue for people is probably that she has boobies and she used them, and well, that just makes people uncomfortable.

    I can’t help but think this is motivated more by collectivism than sexism. This is China after all, a communist country whose government has traditionally had a vested interest in combating individualism of any sort.

  7. Yeesh…..the criticisms are ridiculous…. I don’t think this criticism is just sexism at work, however….but tied in to recent historical factors along with rapidly changing and conflicting values that come with a society undergoing extremely rapid changes within a span of a few decades.

    In addition to the sexism, I detect a whiff of deep cynicism by many mainland Chinese people of anyone who volunteers “to serve society” like the police officer in question as a “tool of the party” along with a possible guilty conscience due to the widespread change of social orientation from volunteering “to serve society” that was genuinely believed in the first several years after the 1949 revolution to the more current society that arose from Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms that were accelerated in the late ’90’s and early 21st century where the current popular belief, especially among the middle/upper classes is to get rich as quickly as possible for oneself and one’s family. To them, altruism is regarded at best as something left to others and at most cynical, as an artifact of the discredited Marxist/Maoist legacy.

    This cynicism towards altruism, especially by public officials rewarded by the government is one that originated from the results of accumulated experiences with institutional hypocrisy, incompetence, and oppression as demonstrated by the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Great Leap Forward, and especially the Cultural Revolution.

    The last event not only caused many deemed “Capitalist roaders” to be abused, beaten, sent to rural work camps, and especially effectively shut down the nation’s educational, academic, and scientific research institutions for 10 years. This not only impaired China’s social and technological progress, but also disillusioned an entire generation who are now mostly in their 50’s and 60s. Some of that cynicism was passed down to their children who are either contemporaries of the younger co-hort of Gen X like myself…or older co-horts of Gen Y who are now young adults.

    To be clear, the cynicism does not undermine the loyalty the CCP commands from the younger generations. If anything, the younger Chinese millennials are some of the most uncritical and vocally Pro-CCP among the mainland Chinese I’ve encountered. This is predicated, however, on the CCP maintaining the rising economic expectations of the aspiring middle/upper classes and not seen as buckling to foreign pressures on nationalist issues such as Taiwan as that could lead to the CCP being compared unfavorably to past leaders who knuckled under Western/Japanese colonialist pressures during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

  8. I can’t help but think this is motivated more by collectivism than sexism. This is China after all, a communist country whose government has traditionally had a vested interest in combating individualism of any sort.

    Though this may have been true before 1979, after Deng Xiaoping instituted economic reforms and especially after the late 1990’s when the reforms were accelerated and the seeds of the current Chinese economic boom started, China is arguably Communist in name only.

    If anything, the current Chinese economy in many ways represents the chaotic laissez-faire ideal better than the US economy with its coherent commercial regulations to ensure no unfair trade practices, fraud, or endangerment of public safety along with the lack of adequate social-welfare programs for the indigent or those who fall on hard times.* In short, the US before Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” outraged middle/upper-class sensibilities enough to demand an agency to regulate the safety of our food and drugs and/or Great Britain during Charles Dickens’ time.

    * To be fair, lot of this has to do with the fact the government is overwhelmed by the sheer scale and the fluidity of changes due to the accelerated economic reforms and the rapid social changes that came with it in a span of 2 decades.

  9. Chel: But I am confused as to how she did that…. did she literally JUST have a baby and go back to work?

    You’re confused because of the American habit (hell, the Western habit) of breastfeeding a baby for only a few weeks and then giving up.

    She’d had a baby some time ago – I think I remember reading somewhere that her infant son was nine months old. He was being cared for (presumably, as usual while she’s at work) by his grandparents, in the province where she usually works. Whatever: her own baby was old enough to be able to cope with being bottle-fed and getting some solid food, and was in any case away from all the trouble and disaster being safe and cared for.

  10. This is such a beautiful story, it’s hard for me to believe that some people want to be negative about it. I wondered why there wasn’t a story like this coming out of our own tragic Katrina situation in 05. I had just had a baby and was nursing her thinking about how there had to be someone there with breastmilk that should be helping the other babies with no food. Perhaps the situation with no food/ water contributed to this b/c people couldn’t maintain their milk supplies? I nursed for 2 years (and worked full time after 13 weeks of FMLA time off) and in the back of my mind thought about my super boobies saving the world if there were a situation where they were needed. Saving the world with my super-boobies was one of the arguments for long term nursing that I used when family and friends would tell me to stop as the baby reached 6 months and beyond.

    Anyway, it’s ridiculious that she wouldn’t be comended or that there is an issue with it. She was doing her best and saving lives. It probably pisses off the men that she could do something they couldn’t. If someone saved 9 babies using their penis, there would be a freaking parade.

  11. She’d had a baby some time ago – I think I remember reading somewhere that her infant son was nine months old. He was being cared for (presumably, as usual while she’s at work) by his grandparents, in the province where she usually works. Whatever: her own baby was old enough to be able to cope with being bottle-fed and getting some solid food, and was in any case away from all the trouble and disaster being safe and cared for.

    She may well have had some milk stored for him too– I always did. Being able to nurse other babies when she was away from him probably saved her some discomfort (though nine tops her up into heroism, indeed).

  12. I have read that once you have breast-fed an infant, your boobies can lactate again whether you have another baby or not. The stilulation of an infact suckling can cause even a middle aged woman to lactate. At least I read that somewhere!

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