@Megabyyte - I agree with you.  Oh, dear.  I hate the poo/pee comparison to breastfeeding.  As if producing food was the same thing as producing waste!

@ShimmerBodyCream - Well, those of us who have served would have liked to work for our pay, but I reckon no shirts on the job wouldn’t have been too bad in Puerto Rico!  lmao

@lonelywanderer2 - I was talking about this with my sister this weekend.  She’s not a mother.  She said women should go nurse in the bathroom stall. And I said, “Would you sit on a toilet and feed a baby a bottle?”  She gave a nasty face and was like, “No way, that’s gross… Oh…”  She got my point.  That was the first time I thought about myself sitting on a toilet.  WTH?  They don’t have lids, do people really expect a woman to sit on a public toilet with her clothes on when some of us don’t sit on the toilet to even pee!  Argh.  Well, at least she won’t suggest a toilet as a good place to eat anymore.  

@TrueBritt - People eat in public all the time.  The problem is people still insist that breasts are only for the sexual enjoyment of men.  Once we get over ourselves, nursing in public won’t be an issue.  Hell, in Islamic countries where women can’t show their face, they can bare their breasts and nurse in public.  America should be ashamed.  

@pikachooseyou - That’s your problem… you don’t whip your titties out to feed your baby.  You feed your child with your breasts.  Titties are in strip clubs, breasts feed babies.  It’s not about being gung ho, it’s about respecting women.  You obviously fail to respect women as people.  You should probably think about why you’d see a mother nursing a baby and think to yourself, she’s showing her titties instead of thinking “oh, she’s feeding a baby”.  It’s a total lack of respect for women, which even women fall into.  Whether or not a man has sexually touched a woman’s breast doesn’t negate their function for feeding babies.  It’s like saying all women should have C-sections because a penis goes into a vagina and there’s no way a baby should ever come out of there.  Way to shove women down into everything about her body should be for men.  Blah!  

And just because breast pumps exist, that doesn’t mean any woman should use them, we aren’t cows after all.  

@vivachu - Oh, please.  I’ve stood by while Navy guys watched our shipmate nurse her baby in the duty office while she was in uniform.  Yes, some were stunned, some were shocked, and a few couldn’t believe anyone was making a big deal out of it.  Yes, it was a hot gossip topic for a bit, as is anything else in the Navy.  But scuttlebutts die, and everyone goes out does their job!  None of the guys treated her less at all because of it. 

Women serving in the military are not men and shouldn’t be treated as such.  Women get pregnant and nurse their babies.  It’s what women do. 

@vivachu - Yeah, if people want to complain about an issue this would be one to look at.  The stories he told us about life in Afghanistan both before the Soviets invaded, after the Taliban took over, and after the US went in were just horrifyingly amazing.  His immediate family left before the Soviets took hold, but he had a lot of family still there.  He had some family he didn’t hear from for years during the Taliban rule.  I think it is all very sad, but the saddest was he said that the Taliban would shoot you dead on the street if you laughed in public.  Now, that is just so horrible.  Laughter is so human.  Sad.  

@npr32486 - What? I was in the Navy.  I’ve been there while a woman nursed her baby in Navy dungarees in the squadron’s duty office and our squadron did not fall apart, not even a little bit.  I would say that the uproar over it (and this girl let it all hang out for all to see) was about equal to the uproar over the ATAN and PR1 who Security caught screwing in the line shack and all of that was FAR less than the grumbling about the guy who crashed while drunk, broke his leg badly, and sat in the Duty Office on a limited duty chit for two months.  Men in the military aren’t all a bunch of dumbasses who can’t get the job done because all hell is broke loose over a mother nursing her child.  I actually would say that there was more stress working with assholes who went off to the whore houses on detachment than dealing with the guys who saw our shipmate nursing.  But I’d reckon the only issue here is a woman who nurses her baby?  Forget the married guys going off to hookers or all the guys who got caught drinking and driving, it’s the breasts of Navy woman nursing her child that is an issue.  In my experience, the boys who saw it did their job just fine after they saw it. 

It may be a Navy with a history of male sailors only, but damn that’s been decades and decades.  It’s about time men get over themselves.  Women, can and do serve effectively in the Navy whether they expose a breast in feeding a child or not!  Women can serve and the military will need to adjust itself to the fact that it’s not just the “good old boys’ club” anymore.  And plenty of guys defended that woman’s right to nurse where her sick baby needed to be fed.  Surprise, surprise not all men are cry baby boys.  I also served with guys who didn’t care if they served with gay people, but I’m sure you’ll tell me they don’t exist either. 

@vivachu - I’m not okay with continuing to allow only men to make the rules.  Any time society must make changes (like assimilating freed slaves into common society) people resist the change and everyone else allows them to do so.  When, I was in the Navy there was a female chief retiring.  One of the airman (E3) started complaining about standing the retirement ceremony for a woman.  Now, it’s true retirement ceremonies are long and you stand a lot.  He was going on and on about a woman being in the military and he shouldn’t have to stand the ceremony because she shouldn’t be in the Navy in the first place.  I just don’t tolerate that kind of bullshit.  But not one single guy was saying a damn thing so I spoke up.  I asked him how old he was and he was still a teenager.  She had served for 22 years.  So, I pointed out to him that he had no right to complain because she had been in the Navy longer than he had been alive.  Finally, another chief stood up and chewed him out, and that airman walked out and stood the ceremony.  And the antics over the nursing sailor in the duty office wasn’t stopped until someone else told them to grow up. 

Not speaking up, not getting back up for women is the issue.  So, if these women get no backup from any men to breastfeed in their uniform, the rest of the troops will act like babies.  Now, I know damn well when you are working right next to each other to get a job done some of that personal issue stuff works itself out.  I’ve seen guys have to work together to get a plane up and in the air, after one found out the other had slept with his wife.  These issues of various sorts happen all the damn time in the military.  It’s about time women stand up for ourselves and say no more!  It’s been over a decade since I served in the Navy and if much hasn’t changed, that’s because women haven’t demanded it.  Men sure as hell aren’t going to give it.  Their mentality that only men get to make the rules as women are allowed to tiptoe around them won’t solve a damn thing.

Until men are literally kicked out of the military for breaking the UCMJ for buying prostitutes, for having affairs, for sexually harassing women, they won’t stop because they are allowed to continue to think that women are just sex objects for their pleasure.  Yes, there’s a die-hard culture in the military, but some guys come into the military with it already ingrained.  Because it is an old culture doesn’t make it right.  Women deserve to be women and serve in the military.  Men don’t own the United States Armed Forces anymore.  (As for training, I remember a whole heck of a lot of training on a lot of stuff, but never anything on the importance for mothers to breastfeed.)

@pikachooseyou - I live in California and women here have to right to expose any part of their breast to feed their child, even the much hated nipple.  Nobody has the right in any state to not see breasts in public.  Prudishism isn’t a protected right.  Babies has a right to be fed, adults don’t have the right to be crybabies over some fat cells and a nipple.  Titties is disrespectful of a woman’s natural state when it comes to feeding a baby like God intended.  

@pikachooseyou - Don’t come to California then, because we don’t need to cover ourselves in shame like women in burquas when we nurse babies.  In California, you have no rights to not see a breast when a mother is feeding her child.  It’s not immodest to feed a baby like God intended.  You’re in public and have every right not to stare at any exposed breast as a baby feeds. 

Because breast pumps and covers exist, doesn’t mean any woman has to or should use them.  She’s just feeding a baby, not putting on a peep show for people too immature to look away if a baby eating is offensive. No way would I ever pump just because some people can’t handle something God created to nourish babies.