very true, and who knows, maybe someday everyone will breastfeed until they go away to college. ridiculers are not always right, and i certainly understand your point. there are many degrees, and i suppose its all personal opinion. some people get ridiculed for having sex with animals, and it could be perfectly acceptable to someone else. yk gets constantly ridiculed for his armageddon predictions, as do the jws in general, but in the end they could be right too.
Whoa! Do you honestly believe that people having sex with animals COMPARES with a Mom breastfeeding her eight year old? I mean, that POOR animal! Come on, Dubla, "YOU KNOW" (sorry, couldn't resist) those comparisons are not even in the same league as the topic of this thread.
I asked the question and I will ask it again: What harm is being done to this child?
You see, this topic touches for me a broader subject of social conditioning and conformity. Ridicule, especially that is done publicly is a very powerful stick to bring down on the head of someone who is not conducting themselves within the dictated social norms. Now, that isn't always a bad thing. We all pretty much agree that murder of innocents is bad and should be ridiculed. Also, we agree that child molesters are a determent to society and such behavior should be punished severely. But, what about those behaviors that haven't been proven to be "bad" but still make the majority of us uncomfortable. There really aren't any compelling reasons WHY, they just do.
I offer for your consideration the following:
In Japan it is normal for whole families to bathe together. That's right, whole families seeing each other naked. Dads, Moms, brothers, sisters, naked...LOOKING AT EACH OTHERS BODIES. Yet, they don't seem to think it is a problem. But, here in the US, such behavior would be/is considered to be of a sexual nature and inappropriate in a family setting. Most likely the police and child protective services would be called. Why is that? Seems to me that Japanese kids and adults don't have the obsession with sex like we do here in the good ole US.
Because we have been conditioned to think that way.
Social conditioning:"Social conditioning is the process of instilling a culture's system of thought, beliefs, and body of doctrine in such a manner that it is, mostly, uncritically accepted."
I have an 11 year old daughter and I am confronted with this issue of social conditioning practically every darn day. Every week there seems to a new socially acceptable behavior that my daughter must meet, change, or discard. And these behaviors are at least in the same realm as the topic at hand.
Example: Shaving legs.
Now, I admit I am a protective Mother. And to my daughters ire, one that does not bend easily to the unwritten social decrees of preadolescent girls. Still, I actually DO remember being that age and can sympathize her attempting to navigate the ever shifting sand world known as Middle School.
So, when she came to me wanting to shave off that "disgusting" hair off her calves, me, trying to get her to think perhaps a bit more deeply about why she desired so desperately to make her legs hair free, tried to reason with her as to why the hair on her legs wasn't so bad. That it wasn't "disgusting" it was just, HAIR. I went into the whole spiel about it being no different from the hair on her head, how women in other countries don't shave their legs, since she bathes regularly it certainly is not DIRTY. But, my lectures were an exercise in futility; she bought none of it. Why, you ask? Because of the ridicule she experienced from other girls at school. Let me tell ya, there is no ridicule more powerful than that of eleven year old girls. Indeed, I put up quite a struggle, but in the end, I allowed the kid to shave her legs. I tried.
Now, even mention to a group of men, and worse, WOMEN about females not shaving legs, or heaven forbid, ARMPITS, and I guarantee the "ewww" meter will be right off the graft. If you ask me, it should be the MEN shaving their armpits if it is cleanliness that is the primary concern. Again, we have been socially conditioned at to what constitutes femininity. But, that's another topic.
And so we have the eight year old breast feeding boy. And I ask again. Why is it so harmful? PLEASE SOMEONE TELL ME! If this was the only reason this child was removed from an otherwise nurturing home I hope she sues the pants off them!
Ah yes, the cutsie college comment. Hey! either he'll be the laughing stock of his college buddies, OR, maybe even the envy, eh? If there is ever a mystery of disappearing college jocks, we will all know the first place to look
Just so everyone knows. Yes, I shave my legs. No, I don't bathe naked with my family. And, NO, I don't and didn't breast feed my kids until they were eight years old.
I never said I was ABOVE the social conditionings. I merely question them.
Andee
Edited by - BeautifulGarbage on 31 October 2002 19:15:33
