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Tag: Misogyny

Meet Your Local Extreme Breastfeeder

The other day one of my seven year old daughter’s guinea pigs died and it is the first death my two kids have dealt with up close and they love their guinea pigs, and I do, too, and so it was really very sad. Their father was away trekking for two weeks – because I am a saint and I gave him the gift of solitude for his birthday – and so, I found myself alone in a way too, with all of this. (Huge eye-roll in sympathy to the real single parents who do this solo parenting gig all year around and who get crapped on by so many people for their, frankly, friggin’ heroic efforts). The guinea pig death happened on this very chaotic morning. Actually, all the days where I am working in the city are chaotic because ‘school + kindy + workplace’ and back again in the evening equals a whole lot of trips in opposing directions and a very long day for all. The three year old was being a really obnoxious griever, entirely missing the point of why his big sister and I were so upset, and just wanting to endlessly explore the nature of death in gruesome detail. All he knows about death is that it is something that can happen when people fight with guns and it is why his mother is a bit sensitive about gun-play for little kids and why he gets frowned at when he pretends to shoot anyone. So, every second phrase out of his mouth was “who killed her, but who killed our guinea pig?”. Didn’t matter how many times I explained that death just happens sometimes, all he wanted to do was be a frickin’ detective. Meanwhile, his poor sister was getting more and more distressed by her brother’s death carnival. It was awful. And I did think quite a lot – why me, why am I having to deal with this alone while their father is out in the wilderness enjoying himself?

But by that night, when we three got home from ‘work + school + kindy + after-school care arrangements’ and I showed them where the little pig was buried, the three year old finally appreciated the finality of death and he was suddenly on the same page as the rest of us. We were all in my bed together (see the title of this post above), and I was breastfeeding him because that’s what he likes to do when he goes to sleep and also because I thought that breastfeeding might be a better comfort than story books. But he immediately came off the breast because he was sobbing too much to feed and it seemed he wanted to talk to my breasts about the guinea pig’s death. So, if your rule is ‘kids should stop breastfeeding when they are old enough to ask for it’ how do you feel about kids who are old enough to emote their grief to it? I don’t even know how I feel about that.

Sometime in their first year babies go through a developmental stage where they finally understand that the hand you wave in front of them or the nipple you pop into their mouth whenever you appear, is actually part of you and not some random toy you happen to pick up. Considering babies arrive in the world knowing almost nothing, you can see why this would be a concept that would require some thinking about for them, but apparently, that developmental stage can be incomplete. Three year olds exist in this really trippy stage of life where they know puppets aren’t real, and that’s why they’ve stopped screaming when one approaches them, but they are still capable of getting completely lost in ‘pretend’ and they really do imagine that inanimate objects can be kind of real and have personalities. So, when he started talking to my breasts (“breastfeedings” he calls them, in case you were wondering), and he was being so sincere and sad I did not know quite what to do. Should my breasts be answering him, it seems rude to remain completely indifferent to someone who is sharing the most tragic moment of their life with you? I mean, my breasts aren’t cold-hearted. And if my breasts answered him should they have my voice, which, would kind of take you out of the moment, or should they have a unique voice of their own, and in which case, what does a breast’s voice sound like?

So, this is breastfeeding beyond babyhood. It’s both strange and normal.

I hear you have a reality TV show coming to your screens in the US about ‘extreme breastfeeders’ and I thought you might like to know one of those weirdos for yourself. Here I am. Before I had children I thought breastfeeding for twelve months was pushing it. Six months is fine, but if they can eat solids then why breastfeed any further? With the first child I really surprised myself and I breastfed her for just under two years. Now I am breastfeeding a three and a half year old who is tall enough to look like a five year old. We could definitely do an impression of that notorious TIME magazine cover. He’s partial to a bit of standing-up breastfeeding, too. ‘This me’ would totally have horrified ‘old me’. Public breastfeeding? Wasn’t keen on that. Breastfeeding toddlers? Really wasn’t keen on that.

The thing I didn’t realise back then when I was repulsed by the idea of breastfeeding a child ‘old enough to ask for it’ is that babies ‘ask for it’ right from birth and they never stop asking for it, their methods just get increasingly sophisticated. And that sophistication, like all other milestones your baby achieves, makes a parent beam with pleasure. If you found yourself compelled to respond to their earlier requests you will quite likely feel compelled by their later requests.

Here is how a baby ‘asks for it’: they cry shrilly, they nuzzle you, they suck on your finger, and they turn their face towards you if you lightly brush their cheek. Then one day, while balanced in your lap, they throw themselves backwards to be laying down near your chest. You think, holy hell, your little neck is going to break, because they do this when they’re still in their floppy stage and haven’t developed proper neck muscles. Sometimes, they clamp on to the fleshiness of your arms and they suck you a hickey. If you teach your baby to sign, like I did, of course I did – see the title of this post, then they might even begin signing ‘breastfeed’ to you at five months old. When someone else holding them passes the baby into your arms they will tilt their head sideways with their mouth gaping in anticipation. They can burst into impatient tears at the sight of you undoing your bra. Sometimes they will reach their arms down your dress or lift up your t-shirt. They usually do all of this before they finally ‘ask for it’ with a spoken word and even then their word may be nothing more offensive than the adoption of a particular pitch when they plead “Mama” at you. At what point are ‘they old enough to ask for it’, and at what point is it too much? Depends on you, their mother, but don’t be surprised if you start to find the notion of ‘old enough to ask for it’ absurd.

Maybe you want to ask me, your local extreme breastfeeder, some questions.

Am I an earth mama?

No, I’m an economist, remember? I do not fit the stereotype you probably have of extreme breastfeeders and I would be surprised if you find all that many mothers do. I vaccinate my children, I wear pencil skirts and high heels, I ride a motorbike, I can’t sew, I like sex and violence in my TV shows (hello True Blood!), I used disposable nappies (diapers) on my babies, I am an atheist, I have never learnt yoga or meditation, and I am argumentative (so, I really should have taken the time at some point to learn yoga and meditation). I love earth mama types, they’re some of the most generous mothers I know, but I am not one of them.

Do I feel like breastfeeding for so long has taken over my body?

I think this is the number one concern I hear coming out in discussions where certain feminists are sounding a little anti-breastfeeding, and this notion that breastfeeding undermines your bodily integrity is definately what I sense in some of French feminist, Elisabeth Badinter’s work. I can see that breastfeeding may feel that way for some women but for me so much of mothering ‘takes over my body/life’ that it would be difficult to identify exactly which aspects I can attribute to breastfeeding. I hope women aren’t stuck resentfully breastfeeding for months and months because of the pressure to breastfeed, but the truth is, plenty about mothering is done with a little bit of resentment on the side. Breastfeeding can be terribly annoying when you urgently want to get up off this damn bed and get on with something else for the night, but for the most part, breastfeeding is a lazy parent’s best friend.

Motherhood is a very challenging identity for many of us. There’s a huge fear of losing yourself, and your boundaries, and your sex appeal, and your focus and direction, and control over your body when you transform into a mother. Breastfeeding can push all of those buttons. We live in a very misogynist culture. The worst trolling on my blog has always been about calling me a cow and trying to humiliate me about breastfeeding. Clearly, the concept that we can be lactating animals scares the shit out of some of us.

Do I feel forced into breastfeeding for so long by society’s expectation of what the perfect mother should be?

No. I have really, really enjoyed breastfeeding, it’s as simple as that. I understand that not everyone finds breastfeeding to be so nice but for me it has been a very lovely, intimate, relaxing experience. Breastfeeding fills me with love and that’s a nice thing to feel with your children. And for someone like me, who has had a love-hate relationship with their breasts, I have to acknowledge that breastfeeding has been a rather healing experience for my psyche.

Do I feel smug about breastfeeding for so long?

To be honest, I feel kind of embarrassed about breastfeeding for so long. It’s a terrible thing for a feminist mother who advocates for breastfeeding to admit but the stigma attached to breastfeeding kindergarteners (and beyond) is really strong and I have not really outed myself in my writing before as an ‘extreme breastfeeder’. I think that says quite a lot, that a ranty feminist like myself can feel so intimidated by the prejudices against long-term breastfeeding in our culture.

Do I find breastfeeding for so long to be sexual?

Very much not. Three cheers for women who manage to have a discreet orgasm while breastfeeding because they like the sensation so much. There are not enough orgasms in motherhood. But for me, breastfeeding is not a sexual experience. And let me clarify, no mother finds the concept of their child breastfeeding to be a sexual experience; really, they don’t. You might just as well try to convince us that wiping toddler’s bottoms is sexual. So Much No.

Does my child find breastfeeding sexual?

No. He doesn’t find sippy cups sexual either. He’s a little kid and he doesn’t know about anyone finding breasts sexy yet.

Does my partner resent me for breastfeeding for so long?

If I’m going to be really honest here (why not?) – I think he feels a little impatient with the fact that significant amounts of breast-play have been off my menu for a while but he doesn’t feel in any way competitive with his son for my body, and he doesn’t find breastfeeding repulsive, and he doesn’t think my decision to breastfeed is particularly any of his business. (He knows that my breasts belong to me – he successfully went through that developmental stage as a baby).

When will I stop breastfeeding?

Soon, I hope. I am getting a little sick of breastfeeding and the right time for weaning for me is coming soon. Get in now with your questions before I am no longer your local extreme breastfeeder.

(Post-script: my blog is bluemilk.wordpress.com and you can follow me on twitter @bluemilk).

A Tale of Two Countries

One of the great things about the Olympics is that women’s athletics gets the spotlight for a couple of weeks every four years. And it seems as though every Olympiad, the IOC or the governing bodies of various sports get it together and agree that the world will not end if the IOC gives its blessing to women doing X for a medal (where X might be marathoning (not added until 1984 for women, while the men had been doing it for decades) or boxing (just added this year)). There are still sports, like ski jump, where women are kept out of competition at the Olympic level because of fears for their girly bits.

So it’s incredibly inspiring to learn that one of the most-watched and most-supported athletes in the current Games was a female boxer from Ireland named Katie Taylor.

LONDON – They came from Cork and Kerry. They flew in from Dublin and brought their daughter from across town. They came for a 5-foot-5, 132-pound woman whose hands deliver hammer swings, happiness, and hope.

They came because Katie Taylor – Ireland’s Katie Taylor – was boxing for the gold medal.

They came because this might be the most perfect Irish story ever, and the Irish love stories. The humble kid, mesmerized by her father shadow boxing in their kitchen along the Irish coast, winds up trained by dad in a sport few believed should even be allowed – a girl fight? She turns into the four-time world champion, humble, hard-working, and wrapped, literally, in religion: “The Lord is my Savior and my shield,” her robe reads.

“She’s an everybody,” said 17-year-old Aifric Norton, who flew here with her older brother Aonghus.

They came because, back home, the recession drags on and drags down. And when Katie Taylor hits someone in the mouth it feels, even for a brief moment, like Ireland, too, can hit back.

“Everybody forgets about the recession when she fights,” said Con McDonnell, who flew in with three buddies all wearing “Katie Taylor Made for Gold” T-shirts.

They came because they were the lucky ones who got tickets. “Half of Ireland is here,” marveled Barry McGuigan, the old Irish champion. Others just came over to hang around outside the ExCeL Center, stuffing the bars and restaurants in what was once a slum of East London. “There’s 1,500 paddies down the road in the pubs,” said Graham Regan, noting he knows because that’s where he watched Taylor’s semifinal victory on Wednesday.

They came because they know back in Taylor’s hometown of Bray, in County Wicklow, there were 10,000 people gathered outside to watch on a giant screen. They had to move the viewing to a bigger spot because 6,000 showed up for the semifinal and the town square couldn’t hold them all. Across the nation, everyone else just crowded into pubs and living rooms. Many bosses in the city centers of Dublin and Galway just let workers go early rather than pretend they wouldn’t sneak off anyway. “The country will stop today,” said fan Tony Barrett.

They came because coming had developed into a movement. Each Taylor fight during these Olympics saw the 10,000-seat venue filled with green shirts and homemade signs and Tricolour flags. For the finale, the venue manager estimated 8,000 Irish were in attendance, even with a Brit fighting for gold in a different weight class.

Oh, and the building filled with noise. Lots and lots of noise. Unbelievable amounts of noise. The fans, often these burly men, would sing soccer songs and chant “I-er-LAND, I-er-LAND” and “KAY-t, KAY-t.” Louder and louder. This was the wildest scene of the Games, electric and exciting. The International Olympic Committee measured the noise at every session of the Olympics, and nothing matched the decibels of the introduction for a Katie Taylor fight. The second-loudest event was the final seconds of a thrilling Great Britain cycling victory at the Velodrome. . . .

The most popular athlete in Ireland is female. Where else is that true? Where else could that be true? And it’s real, with men, grown men, old and young, coming because of what she can do in the field of competition. There was no stigma. This was boxing. Not women’s boxing. Twenty years ago to the day, Michael Carruth – also coached by his father – won gold in Barcelona, making him a forever legend. His gold wasn’t any bigger than Taylor’s.

Compare that to the reaction of many Saudis to the fact that two Saudi women participated at all:

Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani returns to Saudi Arabia as the first woman to represent the Kingdom in judo, but while her participation has been celebrated globally the domestic reaction to her accomplishment has ranged from lukewarm to openly hostile. Her father, a judo referee who said he wanted his daughter to make “new history for Saudi’s women,” is reportedly incensed at conservative Saudis who showered her with racial slurs on Twitter and called her a “prostitute” for participating.

The Kingdom bent to a combination of international pressure and the increasingly powerful Saudi vox populi by announcing—just a month before the Games began—that Shahrkhani and Sarah Attar, a California born-and-bred track runner at Pepperdine with dual citizenship, would compete at the Games. But while the decision was a baby step toward gender equality for the approximately 11 million women and girls who call Saudi Arabia home, the move trigged a powerful conservative backlash from clerics and others. . . .

Even as the pressure builds for Saudi Arabia to allow women to participate or risk becoming an outlier even in the Islamic world—Iran and Yemen have women’s soccer teams, for instance—the state has tried to hold the line. Its Olympic athletes have barely been brought up in the state-sanctioned press, and much of the Twitter conversation about them has been hostile. Steps of the Devil: Denial of Women and Girls’ Rights to Sport in Saudi Arabia, a devastating report by Human Rights Watch details the profoundly deviant yet tenaciously held religious objections of Saudi clerics to women engaging in sports. Allowing Saudi girls and women to compete would invite them to engage in immodest movement, aberrant clothing, and performances in front of unrelated males that would lead to immorality and desecration of the purity of the Saudi female, influential clerics insist. They argue that vigorous movement is a threat to the health and honour of the “virgin girl,” a profound deterrent in a shame-and-honor-centred culture that places extraordinary value on the intact hymen of an unmarried woman.

Dr. Mohammad al-Arifi, an influential cleric who preaches at Al-Bawardi Mosque in Riyadh, is on faculty at King Saud University, warned Prince Nawaf against sending Saudi women to the Olympics:

“Women practicing sports … is fundamentally allowed … but if this leads to mixing with men … or revealing private parts … or men watching her sometimes run, sometimes fall down … sometimes laugh and sometimes cry or quarrel with another female athlete … or mount a horse … or practice gymnastics … or wrestling … or other sports … while the cameras film and the [television] channels broadcast … then there can be no doubt that it is forbidden.”

Attar can go back to California, where she was born and raised, and avoid much of the backlash to her participation. But Shahrkhani has to go back to live under this repressive regime. At least her father, who is also her coach, is on her side and is willing to stand up for her, using the rules of the regime:

The father of judoka Shaherkani was so incensed that he contacted the country’s interior minister to demand action against those who had insulted his daughter. Under Saudi law, punishment for insulting a woman’s honor and integrity can be up to 100 lashes.

Didn’t think NBC’s Olympics coverage could get worse?

It’s been pointed out that NBC can’t seem to broadcast events live from London, yet the Mars rover Curiosity can send images from fucking Mars with only a 14-minute delay.

Their coverage of the Olympics has been widely reviled. Who the hell decided that the viewing public wants to see so much manufactured drama instead of, I don’t know, actual athletic competition? Or medal ceremonies. Or the entirety of the Opening Ceremonies.

They’ve spoiled the outcome of competitions they’ve insisted on tape-delaying so they can be shown during prime time. They aired a commercial showing a monkey doing gymnastics right after Gabby Douglas won gold. Their boxing commentators (the only ones allowed ringside) have been asked by Olympic officials to stop talking because they’re interfering with officials.

And now they’ve gone into creepy, soft-porn videos of female athletes taking off their pants, among other things. And called it “Bodies in Motion,” advertising it as an appreciation of athlete’s bodies (at least the thin, hot, mostly white ones).

God, I miss Jim McKay.

War on Women Timeline

If you find yourself needing to convince anyone that the War on Women is real, EMILY’s List has put together this handy interactive timeline.

I realize there are some who will nevertheless refuse to be convinced — or who will discount anything from this source — but you might change a few minds.

Or, you might look at it yourself and realize HOLY FUCK IT’S WORSE THAN I THOUGHT.

Maeve Binchy, Childless, Soulless Automaton

Maeve Binchy
Maeve Binchy, who had no children upon whom to lavish her affections, and thus could know nothing about human emotions.

Well, this is a lovely and moving tribute to a much-loved writer who’s passed away.

Among the obituaries for the much-loved Irish novelist Maeve Binchy, few omitted to mention that she was childless. Once, that was the norm for successful women writers. These days, when even lesbian authors such as the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Emma Donoghue, writer of the Booker-nominated Room, have children, it is sufficiently rare to be remarked upon.

Yet the debate about whether motherhood and writing are compatible is still an issue discussed by magazines such as Mslexia, a specialist publication for female authors, and at almost any gathering of women writers. Do you miss out on something essential about the human condition if you eschew childbearing? Or is the pram in the hall, as Cyril Connolly said, the enemy of promise?

As STFU, Parents said on Facebook, Amanda Craig has mommy-jacked Maeve Binchy’s obituary.

Is the effect of having children on one’s time for creativity a legitimate topic for discussion? Certainly. But Craig is not advancing that discussion. Instead, she’s using the occasion of Binchy’s death to take digs at writers who are women without children. Not only do such writers luxuriate in free time (as much time as men, she notes, which raises the question of why men with children have as much time as men without), but their writing betrays a lack of understanding of human emotion. Because — say it with me now — you just can’t really understand what it is to love until you become a mother.

I have often wondered whether the Orange Prize should be renamed the Navel Orange Prize, given the difference in time and energy available to women writers before and after motherhood. If any lingering prejudice against the female sex can be assumed to have vanished, which is debatable, there is no practical difference between a man and a woman writer when the latter has not had children.

All novelists who have had children are acutely aware that the very best of our sex — Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës, Virginia Woolf ­— were childless. We all worry about doing two things badly rather than one thing well. Some novelist mothers, such as Antonia White, have been denounced as monsters of indifference by their children. I myself have a stern rule about not being interrupted when writing unless a child has broken a leg — but it isn’t, of course, obeyed. Even if you wanted to, you can’t ignore screams of pain, rage and misery.

Yet that same pain, rage and misery is also hugely enriching. It starts with your own, for even with pain relief, the shock of giving birth changes you for ever. The feelings of intense vulnerability (your own and, more importantly, your child’s), passionate love, joy, bewilderment and exhaustion are unlike anything else.

Maeve Binchy’s warmth and interest in other people included their families, but I can’t help but feel that her detailed portraits of ordinary life might not have been so predicated on the relationships between men and women had she had a child. “We’re nothing if we’re not loved,” she said in an interview. “When you meet somebody who is more important to you than yourself, that has to be the most important thing in life, really.”

No matter what your experience of adult love, there is nothing as strong as the bond between a mother and a child. One reason why so many contemporary women writers have focused on this is that it is new territory, precisely because the great female writers of the past had not experienced it.

As someone in the comments to this story noted, there are two people involved in the mother-child bond, and some of them grow up to be childless female writers. So to say that childless female writers have never experienced this bond is overstating things.

There is a reason that the great female writers of the past had not experienced motherhood: because they really, truly did have to choose between writing and being a mother. Women had little autonomy unless they had their own money.

Of course, the idea that women aren’t full human beings unless they’re mothers is not a new one. Woolf, Austen, et al.? They all experienced being viewed as less-than-fully human. Let’s look at the example that Craig gives for Austen’s shallow understanding of the human condition:

Had Austen, for instance, had a child I wonder whether her focus on romantic love would have survived; childless Anne Elliot’s saintliness as an aunt in Persuasion would certainly have been mitigated by very different feelings.

Austen had the opportunity to observe families up close as a dependent single woman, and indeed wrote about them. But given that marriage and family were central to a woman’s societal acceptance and security in her milieu, and that making a bad choice in partner could be disastrous, was it really so unusual that she would focus on the process of finding that partner? Craig glosses over the sharpness of Austen’s observations about the pursuit of marriage and the stakes involved for women of little means. Her writing is not all hearts and flowers, after all. Her characters make mistakes, judge poorly, but eventually figure out that character is important, as well as money.

Also, she seems to be oblivious to the fact that the whole point of Anne Elliot’s saintliness as an aunt was that she had no other role in society, haven given up on finding a husband, so she was at the family’s disposal (and, though Craig does not credit this, she loved her nephews). She also found acceptance within her in-laws’ family that her own family refused to provide her because as an unmarried daughter who was not needed to serve as the lady of the house, she was unwanted. Even among the Uppercross family, she was surplus, and was acutely aware of that fact. Sort of like Austen herself. Had Austen been a married woman with children, would she have been able to present Anne’s dilemma so sympathetically?

Women without children can see and feel human life just as acutely and can imagine the feelings of parents convincingly.

How very generous of you. Craig goes on to compare Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall with A.S. Byatt’s Possession on the subject of writing about the loss of a child. Mantel can not have children due to endometriosis; Byatt’s child was killed in an accident at the age of 11. Byatt, says Craig, “goes much deeper into the emotions of it all, the tigerish nature of maternal love, presumably because she could draw on her own life.” Leaving aside the fact that Mantel was focusing on a father’s love rather than a mother’s, it is no guarantee that feeling deeply or having experienced something necessarily provides a writer with the ability to convey those emotions on the page. Moreover, Mantel writes historical fiction. Why no criticism of her ability to write about Tudor England, not having experienced it directly?

Binchy, whose first novel was about a 20-year friendship between two women, didn’t need the experience of motherhood to write about love and friendship in a way that charmed millions. But she might have dug deeper, charming less but enlightening more, had she done so.

Remember, gals: you are unable to feel unless you’ve birthed a child.

HuffPo Live, 2 pm Eastern

Hey all, I’ll be chatting at HuffPo Live in about 18 minutes to talk about the criticism four-time Olympic swimmer Leisel Jones has received about her weight. Because fat doesn’t float, or something.

You should be able to find the conversation hereabouts.

Feminism + Housewifery

I realize the rest of the feminist internet is going to disagree with me on this one, but I loved this Elizabeth Wurtzel piece on 1% housewives.

Is it mean? Yes. Is it representative of most women’s lives? No. But maybe it’s time modern “internet feminism” made room for polemics and hard-nosed viewpoints and positioned itself as a serious social movement, instead of focusing on identity and making everyone feel good.

In defense of the Black Widow

After the underutilization and literal objectification (Tony Stark: “I want one”) of the Black Widow in Iron Man 2, I was looking forward to seeing what would happen with her character in The Avengers under the directorial lens of Joss Whedon. I was not disappointed. Twice (once in IMAX). What did disappoint me? The same things that pissed off Fempop’s Kickpuncher, who found that no amount of badassery on the part of the Black Widow could direct men’s attention away from her (minimal) cleavage.