Dear Butterscotch,
There is an annoying millennial assistant professor in the Economics department who thinks it is OK to breastfeed her gigantic baby in the faculty lounge.
In my day, I would never have brought my baby into work, let alone bared my breasts in public. My generation fought hard to be seen as on equal footing with men.
Women like her are bringing us all down. It’s unprofessional and frankly gross to see her dripping milk in a workplace setting.
What can I do to confront her without creating a scene that will look like a catfight?
–Grossed Out And Fed Up
Dear Grossed Out and Fed Up,
You have internalized the shame and misogyny forced on you in the workplace and are now inflicting it on the next generation.
Stop!
Women of your generation were told that equality meant being the same as men. You had to suppress any expression of femininity in the workplace, especially childbearing and childcare. The price of admission to the world of paid labor was participating in the patriarchal denigration of the female.
I am grossed out and fed up when I see older women enforce the gynophobic idea that women are impure and must hide their bodies. There should be no embarrassment in being a woman or being a childbearing or chestfeeding person.
It seems you have also extended your body shaming to the poor professor’s “gigantic” baby. Fat stigma begins at birth, it seems.
Instead of trying to teach this assistant professor a lesson, try to learn from her. She is practicing body autonomy and asserting her human right to breastfeed. Something I intend to do next time I nurse my ten kittens on the carpet of the Econ Department lounge carpet.
“Catfight” is the sexist term that suggests women engage in petty conflicts over nothing. It imagines all female interaction within the male gaze of a prison exploitation flick wet t-shirt contest.
The term “catfight” is offensive to women and offensive to cats.
That said, I would advise the assistant professor in this department to make her case for public breastfeeding with a withering stare instead of a sharp claw.
You all have something to learn from felines.
–Butterscotch
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