It’s selfish for mothers to breastfeed in public to make a political statement

You are supposed to feel bad if a mom breastfeeding in public makes you a little uncomfortable.

It’s an issue that the feminist cause has taken up over the last few years and there’s some validity to their points, but they’re so militant in response to anyone who dare question what they’re doing.

Case in point: Lydia Davis, a mom in Spokane, is outraged that some employee at a public pool told her to breast feed her child in the bathroom.

Now, it is legal to breast feed in public in Washington. It’s state law. But this employee obviously didn’t know. But we’ll treat it like some affront to womanhood.

Related: Should this be allowed on public roads?

“I’m not ashamed of breast-feeding,” she told the Spokesman Review. “I don’t ever want anybody to be ashamed to feed their child if the child is hungry. We’re at a public pool where people have bikinis on. How is me breast-feeding any worse than people wandering around in a bikini?”

Well, the difference is a bikini covers up a sexualized body part.

We get it, you have no shame. You don’t want to feel ashamed, but you’re doing it in public because you want attention; because you know something like this gets you attention and you absolutely love it.

Because that’s what this is about.

Many of these moms are breastfeeding in public not because they have to &#8212 not because they have no alternatives or no other place to go &#8212 but because you want to make some feminist point.

And this is a clear case of that to me, because this mom immediately complained to the Spokane Parks and Recreation Department and they immediately apologized and said they would provide extra training for the pool’s staff.

The mom was apparently pleased by the response. In fact, the staff did end up getting the extra training.

But this mom &#8212 and other mommy activists &#8212 decided to hold a “nurse-in” on Friday at the pool. So despite getting an apology and being pleased with the reaction from city officials, Lydia Davis held a protest with her friends.

Apparently about a dozen moms and their kids showed up to breast feed in public.

Lila McDermid learned about the event on Facebook and brought her children down, according to the Spokesman Review.

“I just never want to lose my right to feed my child anytime and anywhere I need to,” she said.

But she didn’t need to go to this pool to breastfeed. She chose to, like all these women, because they’re trying to push against ideas of etiquette.

There’s a big difference between breastfeeding in public because you have to (there are no reasonable, private accommodations) and because you want to; because you don’t care how uncomfortable it makes people feel.

The Review paraphrases McDermid’s beliefs: “Society has sexualized women’s bodies so that breast-feeding is seen as sexual when it’s not…”

Society hasn’t done that. No one thinks breastfeeding is sexual. People think the breast is.

And if you want to blame society, fine. Society has defined your breasts as a sexual body part and if you don’t think that’s right, you should start off by talking to your fellow women who get breast implants, who wear clothing that accentuate the breasts, who purchase lingerie that highlight the breasts, because it’s women who are pushing the notion that that body part should be viewed as sexual.