Commitment, or lack thereof...
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Commitment, or lack thereof...
| Tue, 01-08-2008 - 1:56pm |
So I just saw something somewhere else (won't specify where, but I bet a few of you will figure it out!) where a woman indicated that she WAS planning on breastfeeding, but now because of a heated debate about it, she doesn't want to anymore.
Ummmmm, are you kidding me?


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The ¡Kung! people of Mali, West Africa are said to be a people who don't see the breasts as even remotely sexual. In fact, when informed of "western" ideas about using the breasts during sexual foreplay, they are either amused or horrified or both. They see it as unnatural and perverted. In "Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives", the book by Kathy Dettwyler, there is this exerpt on breasts and sexuality:
"In their cross-cultural survey of patterns of sexual behaviour in 190 cultures around the globe, Ford and Beach had this to report about the role of female breasts in sexual attraction: 'In a few cultures the size and shape of the woman's breasts are important criteria of sexual attractiveness' (Ford and Beach, 1951:87). In their table 5 (p.88), they cite 13 cultures, out of the 190 surveyed, where men viewed women's breasts as sexually attractive. In nine of these cultures men preferred large breasts, in two cultures men preferred long, pendulous breasts, and in another two cultures men preferred 'upright, hemi-spherical breats.' Clearly 'a few cultures' was transmuted to 'many cultures' by Anderson because the reality undermined the purpose of his argument, which was to explain male attraction to female breasts in a pan-human, evolutionary manner." (1)
Bibliography: (1) STUART-MACADAM, Patricia and DETTWYLER, Katherine A., Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives, New York, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., 1995, pp. 179-180.
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We could perhaps accept funding from the Lottery. ;-) At least that has little to do with health, except perhaps mental (ie gambling being an addiction). ;-)
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That is true. You can't tell how breasts were *treated* pre-historically. But they *can* tell some about weaning practices in pre-history, from bones that have been found. That study practice is discussed as well in Breastfeeding: Biocultural Perspectives and it is VERY VERY interesting. :-)
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>>You need to acknowledge that breast are sexual and many other cultures also accept and rejoice in the sexuality of the breast while also rejoicing in their functionality.<<
Pardon? I don't need to acknowledge anything.
Breasts are not inherently sexual. I suppose you could say "many" cultures sexualize the breast, I mean there are more than 10 or so, but still the vast majority do not. I do not believe that breasts serve a dual function - they serve one function, and just like a lot of other body parts, they can be sexual. Sure, as we've said in previous posts, you could say that ears serve a dual function - hearing and sexual pleasure, but I think it's a stretch.
"(I guess we can go further back to primitive story tellings and sculptings - but even from some clay sculptures you can see both the treatment of sexuality and funcitionality of breast). "
Like these
ok, I guess you don't need to acknowledge - but you are denying a great part of human experience - across many cultures.
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