Community Profile

The right to breastfeed, for both mother and child, is a fundamental human right. Only the mother, can choose to walk away from her normative biology and refuse access to her own baby, to her own breast. She has every right to do this: it is her breast, her body: she chooses.

The problem is that it is rarely a free choice. Women's bodies are still contested in public spaces, across the Globe. Ownership of the female body, where it goes, who views it, and what it does, is never simply about the woman and her biology: it is always culturally controlled and prescribed. Sometimes the control is light, sometimes it is heavy: it can usually be seen very clearly, as soon as a woman takes a baby into her arms, and allows it to her breast.

Motherhood often reduces a woman's status and freedom even further. Children, and their own human rights to be born, grow and learn in freedom: freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom to flourish... they are often the trigger for more censorship and curtailment. In the most affluent places on the planet, a child at the breast is often a trigger for censorship, exclusion and ridicule. Women need to work and exist in public spaces, babies need the breast: these two simple fundamentals of human existence seem to cause immense challenge to the human race.

Breastfeeding, as a natural bond between mother and baby, is a threat to many cultural mores. It's a threat to industrial profits. It's a threat to industrial work practices, and it's a threat to those who wish to divide and conquer women in order to control their activities.

And yet, breastfeeding is the fundamental building block of human health and well being. A building block often kicked out from under the feet of women and their children, and cast onto the rubbish dump.

Lactavist_central is place for those fighting for equal status for women, for mothers, for children, to come and chill out, exchange ideas, discuss frustrations and celebrate achievement.

And to bitch about being called a bitch, once more. ;-)

You'll need an invite. Find someone to give you one.

If you need support and help breastfeeding, go to the breastfeeding community.