Breastfeeding As an Ecofeminist Issue | The Outer Womb

As mammals, all women have the potential to be lactating women until we choose not to be. The genius of formula marketing and advertising is to get women to withhold from their offspring that which they already have and to instead purchase a replacement product of questionable quality. To me this feels like being a given a “choice” between the blood already flowing through your veins and a replacement product that marginally resembles blood. We are mammals because as a species we nurse our young. This is a fundamental tie between the women of our time and place and the women of all other times and places, as well as between the female members of every mammal species that has ever lived. It is our root tie to the planet, to the cycles of life, and to mammal life on earth. It is precisely breastfeeding’s connection to the physical, the earthy, the material, the mundane and the body that challenges men, feminists and society. Breastfeeding is a feminist issue and a fundamental women’s issue. It is an issue deeply embedded in a sociocultural context. Attitudes toward breastfeeding are intimately entwined with attitudes toward women, women’s bodies, and who has “ownership” of them. Patriarchy chafes at a woman having the audacity to feed her child with her own body, under her own authority, and without the need for any other. Feminism sometimes chafes at the “control” over the woman’s body exerted by the breastfeeding infant. - See more at: http://pathwaystofamilywellness.org/The-Outer-Womb/breastfeeding-as-an-ecofeminist-issue.html#sthash.BPcFNNdi.4xaPr4hG.dpuf


Breastfeeding As an Ecofeminist Issue | The Outer Womb