Newsflash: Breasts are for feeding babies with!

I wanted to take a break in the current usual proceedings of reflecting upon my time in the field as a mother and to write about a more 'in the news' topic. There has been a week of virtual and physical world activity in support of Breastfeeding. I picked up on a record attempt in the UK for the most women (and babies I assume) breastfeeding simultaneously and a surge of campaigning and images in social media promoting support for all mothers in the practice of feeding one's baby with one's breast (novel idea, its bound to catch on!). 

I am at once overjoyed by the amount of beautiful images splayed across the internet of babes happily latched onto their mothers and also annoyed at the fact a week in the year needs devoting to highlight the support needed for said mothers. At risk of stating the obvious, breasts are for feeding babies with, that is why women have them, any other socially constructed benefit such as the beauty of them, their sexual attractiveness, the invention of special cloth devices to put them in and their marketability to entice heterosexual men to buy anything is merely an added extra. Though in some societies they seem to have got that the wrong way round and even more so have turned them into a weapon of offence in a feeding situation. 

I find the whole situation very odd, I'm sure my baby if she could enter into the debate, would be inclined to agree. That of course is my gut reaction to a world of silly rules, but by thinking anthropologically I can think of some more rational explications to this breast utility obsession. What exactly is it about the human condition that throughout time and place we change the way we relate to our bodies and what they do?  For what purpose does it serve to treat breasts as something other than a source of (emotional and physical) survival for a human infant? Whether we choose to use them for that purpose is a separate argument, put ultimately that is why they are there. 

For some cultural comparison here is a brief ethnographic vignette taken from my fieldwork diary: 

When I boarded the combi* this morning I wished it was possible to take a snapshot of the scene that greeted me. Apart from myself with nuzzling babe in arms there are four other women of varying ages from late teen to 30s (as usual at this time the combi was populated only by women going about daily business) all nursing babes or toddlers. As we chatted about the recent thunderstorms, how busy the city centre had become etc. no-one batted an eyelid at the amount of breasts on show, as they never do because if you have a baby or small child who is pining at your chest then you feed it - why wouldn't you?

*A combi is a micro-bus/van with seating that is used as public transport around the city.

That is what I would describe as a healthy social attitude to feeding one's young. This was by no means a special day and justified by a female only presence, it happens on any day regardless of the gender mix. People of any age and gender will stop and talk to you, kiss and coo at the baby without any hesitation about it being attached to a nipple. Here feeding is not a shameful or secret event and nor are women accused of 'making a point', they are simply feeding their child whether it be on public transport, in the workplace, at home or walking down the street (a skill to be valued in itself!). 

Mexico has a stereotype of machismo and of treating women poorly, and I certainly do not dispute the aspects of violence, maltreatment and appalling incidents of feminicide that occur. But lets get beyond the sweeping generalisations to turn the focus back on a so-called civilized and developed society such as the UK. 

Capitalism and Patriarchy Come Hand in Hand

The societies most offended by a woman using her body to ensure the survival of her baby are the most technologically and economically advanced, or that is to say are the most technologically and economically dominant. There has been a long tradition in feminist anthropology and social theory that questions the use of technology as a means of population control (for an introduction see Emily Martin for a distinct analysis of obstetrics and authoritative anatomy knowledge and Vanessa Maher (ed) for a collection of writings on breastfeeding). Population control in the theoretical sense involves the manipulation of social thought (common sense) and bodies for the common economic good of a nation - or for those that govern the nation. What economic purpose is served by controlling how a growing population is fed? Maybe that is one for the formula companies to answer!

From a feminist perspective I would argue that much has to do with the destructive illusion that gender equality is about making women more like men rather than acknowledging that biological difference is a strength particularly in terms of life creation and survival. Women are 'freed up' to enter back into the workplace and therefore should feel liberated about the choice of bottle feeding over breast. This....as opposed to the workplace adapting to the needs of a breastfeeding woman is the type of situation that makes breastfeeding an issue that then needs dealing with. Laws and policies must be devised and rights defended in order to ensure some smokescreen of equality in what is essentially a patriarchal work-space. Only in the most advanced capitalist societies do organisations need to create a policy for breastfeeding because in those societies women's bodies really are commodified and sexualised to a point where people have forgotten what breasts are for. And those that remember have to work hard to defend what is seen as a radical standpoint and feeding one's child becomes a Right rather than a normal bodily function...what a topsy-turvy world we live in!

Obstetric Violence a contested notion?

   I recognise that I have a tendency to immerse myself in all thing Chiapas or Mexico but today I have been burst out of my little bubble. This can only be a good thing in terms of me becoming in danger of forgetting that a world exists beyond the Mexican/Central American border. I've been in that space for some time because without focusing on Chiapas as the centre of my little universe I cannot give it the attention it so rightly deserves. Instead I get distracted by the Global and begin to convince myself that its wrong to pay so much attention to one tiny place when there's so much more going on in the world! I have become strategic in my effort to study and obtain my Phd, I feel that in many respects the rest of the world can wait. Does that sound bad? Is it a mistake to think that way?

  But when I listen to the radio and hear programmes like Crossing Continents - Forced Sterilisation in Uzbekistan   I cannot ignore the world and what is going on in the realms of Reproductive Health Care and Population Control. My emotional reaction to this programme was tied to so many things - overall what hurts me most about my obsession of trying to understand life and how it is created is the DISGUSTING and UNACCEPTABLE VIOLENCE that women are subjected to in the name of 'protecting mothers and babies'. 

"They told her husband she needed to be stitched up...so he signed a piece of paper the doctor gave him. But instead they gave her an aesthetic, cut her open and tied her tubes. When she woke up she didn't know why she'd been operated on. She's devastated, now she is sick all the time" (woman interviewed in programme).

This programme and the issues discussed are very distressing - even more so in that these woman are not alone in being subjected to the unnecessary opening of their abdomen and uterus, the insertion of foreign objects by coercion or more permanently the removal of the uterus - the sacred space where new life begins. 


Last night I lost some sleep... not because I had some magical foresight that I would here this provocative programme today but on a more selfish note I was dwelling over comments sent to me by an anonymous reviewer from one of my submissions as a fledgling academic.  Not unconnected to the story of these women and the many more I come across in my all consuming search for answers in fact it probably contributed to the emotional outburst I had when I listened to the radio. The reviewer in all gave me some excellent pointers as to how I should restructure a paper on Obstetric Violence and Unnecessary C-Sections in Mexico. In fact I should be relieved that for the first time my work wasn't completely trashed and sent back with a "thanks, but no thanks" message.... I have taken a step forward, I have reached the infamous rewrite and resubmit stage - the academic journal second chance! 


That is an improvement but I can't help but feel a little troubled by one sentence in my reviewers' comments. I was reminded (as apparently I should be very aware) that Obstetric Violence is a contested notion within feminism, critiqued for being a reactionary radical feminist thing. Firstly, HOORAY I'm categorised as radical haha! I didn't know that was bad, apparently in post modern feminism it is - Am I to understand by this that I going in the wrong direction to feminist obscurity? In quite a radical fashion I must say NO! nay, nay and thrice nay! I can swallow many a bitter review pill, but denial of Obstetric Violence as I took the time to define in my paper I cannot do. This calls for some deep consideration and philosophical pondering about the nature and representation of violence in cultural and global context!


Women's bodies Check! Internal Organs Check! unwanted physical invasion of both Check! threatening behaviour from people in positions of power Check! complicated by structural violence and population control strategies Check! Being told you cannot decide over what you do with your body Check! Religious overtones and appropriation over existential meanings in the name of Rights Check!..... Must I continue?? or can I just say = VIOLENCE within the practice and name of OBSTETRICS = OBSTETRIC VIOLENCE??!! a case where no, a rose by any other name WOULD NOT smell so bitter! 


In an insightful essay on Testimonies of Violence Philosophy Professor Ken Parson's writes:

"..a recognition of violence within philosophy must include that those occurrences or outcomes were avoidable or can be, or could have been, prevented. Restricting our thinking to a social understanding of violence may seem trivial, but the importance of analytic clarity of this conception has far reaching normative considerations." (my emphasis)

By treating violence as a social phenomenon and according to Parson's definition I can quite strongly defend that the appalling treatment of women around the world in the name of population control can be defined as obstetric violence. There are many steps along the social, cultural and healthcare path that make forced sterilisation, unnecessary caesarean, episiotomies, verbal abuse, permission to operate by proxy etc. COMPLETELY AVOIDABLE and PREVENTABLE. 



As one woman so eloquently puts it in the Crossing Continents programme:

"If population is a problem why don't they tell people - "Don't have babies" - why don't they educate us? No, instead they take our uterus' out!"

I am not making women out to be victims and therefore oppressing them by describing the nature of this violence, which on many occasions is also carried and out and supported by female medics. I am simply describing what I hear - VIOLENCE !! I do view all women of the world as constant survivors and champions over a strange, strange world where the joy of being alive is often peppered by attempts to CONTROL, Control and abuse physical and psychological movement.

I am someone who believes and interprets Foucault in a way that does not restrict docility to physicality as if psychology had no role to play. Resistance comes in many forms - but when you are over powered by a state structure,govt. policy and legislation, institutions, person in white coat with scalpel, removal of your body parts and later your husband because you are unable to have more children in a culture that prizes large families... I don't see that as docility in terms of laziness, I understand that docility as a survival tactic until some form of collective action can make change and make the sadness go away...