this woman’s work

You probably missed this so here’s a heads-up:

May 31,2006

Contact:
Carrie Patterson
Executive Director, ProMoM.Org
http://www.promom.org
carrie@promom.org
678-513-6329

Popular Blogging Site Restricts Use of Breastfeeding Photos
LiveJournal cites breastfeeding images as ‘inappropriate’ and sends mothers to the virtual restroom

Women on the popular blog site LiveJournal are calling foul at the company’s decision to brand images of breastfeeding as ‘inappropriate.’ Many users of the site have joined together to urge LiveJournal’s parent company SixApart to address their concerns and reevaluate the policy.

Small “userpics” of no more than 100 by 100 pixels represent LiveJournal members throughout the site. Users can define one of these icons as “default icon” which plugs it into the user’s public profile. These default icons were originally not permitted to be ‘sexually explicit or graphically violent.’ Recently, icons which depicted breastfeeding were cited as being ‘inappropriate’ by the LiveJournal abuse team, a group of volunteers who monitor complaints on the site. After clarification was requested, LiveJournal changed their FAQ to reflect a no nudity rule and is claiming that icons with visible areola or nipple are not permitted. Whether or not areola is visible in a photograph is dependent on a number of factors, including skin tone of the mother and physical changes during pregnancy.

Claimed Live Journal Abuse Staffer ‘Erin’ in a post on the site, “That’s really a matter for the FCC to decide. LiveJournal’s policies on this mirror what would be allowed on primetime TV or in a PG-13 movie.” However, this is not true. The FCC does not consider the act of breastfeeding on television to fall under the definitions of indecency or obscenity.

Breastfeeding is exempt from nudity laws throughout the United States as well as countries such as Canada. Advocates are urging LiveJournal to adopt the same criteria. “It is regrettable that LiveJournal has chosen to target breastfeeding mothers instead of standing up for the protection provided them by law,” says Carrie Patterson, executive director of ProMom.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing public awareness and public acceptance of breastfeeding. Advocates state that the feeling that breastfeeding should be hidden only fosters the idea that the natural act of nourishing a child is scandalous.

Breastfeeding bloggers who have refused to change their default icon have been suspended from the site. These users, as well as others questioning the policy, have been treated poorly by the site’s volunteer abuse team, something that is not unusual according to other site users.

More than 1,000 LiveJournal users complained, and SixApart issued an apology to the group. However, the company refuses to consider modifying their policy and continues to suspend users whose default icons are deemed inappropriate. Although LiveJournal stated a clarified rule, mothers are still reporting major inconsistencies in its application.

The breastfeeding debacle is only the most recent in a long line of incidents that have people wondering if the abuse procedures as a whole should be reviewed for fairness and propriety. Complaints have been raised about users’ privacy, inconsistent enforcement of the Terms of Service, conflicting information and responses from abuse team members, and discourteous replies to users seeking clarification on the rules.

Activists are now working together to get this policy changed and to clarify the policies and procedures of the LiveJournal abuse team. While some are refusing to continue paying for the service, others have moved to different journaling websites to protest what they feel is a violation of their rights. For more information, contact Carrie Patterson at 678-513-6329 or carrie@promom.org or visit http://www.promom.org/bf_info/mp.html.

It’s just crazy stuff, eh? I don’t pay for LJ and I never was a paying customer at MT but if I was, I’d be rethinking that now. Meanwhile, you can always fill out the 3-minute activist letter over at ProMom.org (love how easy they make it to make some noise!) and let LJ know that their policy is nuts.

These are impressive — I hope they make real change. Note the italics (mine) especially. It’d be great to see more practical support and information around induced lactation.

AAP Releases Revised Breastfeeding Recommendations:

For those of you in the position to consider whether to breast or bottle feed in the future, I want to add my voice to the chorus of the pro-breastfeeding faction. You all already known that breast is best and why it’s best (and if you don’t, you can read this) but what you might not know is that for the parents, formula feeding is a big, giant pain in the ass. Not to mention that it smells bad.

It’s harder to get up and fix a bottle — even when getting up means rolling over and grabbing a bottle of water and a container of formula off the sidetable to mix up before rolling back over to stick the bottle in the baby’s mouth. It’s a nuisance to do formula-math before every outing, being sure to over-pack because you never know when your trip will be extended. It’s annoying to lug a diaper bag everywhere because you need to bring along your feeding supplies when if you were breastfeeding, you could just stick a diaper or two and a small pack of wipes in your purse and head out the door. Formula is stupid expensive, too, as are bottles and their various nipples and it’s worse if you need one of the specialty formulas.

I can’t think of one pro to bottlefeeding. Does it help daddies bond to their babies to help feed them? Not my kids’ daddy. Brett always did his fair share of rocking, bathing, feeding of solids, diaper changes, etc. Adding one more chore to his list of things to do has not made him instantly closer to Madison than he was to Noah but it has given us another thing to bicker about — whose turn it is to wash the bottles. Is it nice to have someone else to feed the baby? Listen, it doesn’t make up for losing the ease of lifting your shirt and plugging the baby in.

I am telling you all this because I think you deserve a life of ease and luxury and I know that sometimes (often) at the beginning, breastfeeding is a figurative or literal pain. Noah and I had a hell of a time getting started but my god was it worth it in the end.

Forget the health benefits, forget the risks to formula feeding — this is all about what makes mommy’s life just a tad bit easier.

If I had it to do over again, would I relactate? No. I still think I made the right decision and formula exists for situations like mine. And it may be that formula is an inevitability in your life, too; that’s ok, that’s what it’s there for. But if you can get through any initial challenges, you’ll be glad you did.

Shamhat wrote:

A woman who adopted told this story at a table in the library, to another woman who wanted to adopt, in the context of recommending her attorney:

The birth mother was in Miami, had 2 school age children already, and the father went back to Columbia, thus she wasn’t going to get any child support. She had no health insurance and she could not afford infant day care. The adopting couple was in New Jersey. They agreed to pay all of the medical expenses.

The birth mother agreed to have a scheduled cesarean despite having given birth twice, for the comfort of the adoptive parents–both so that they could schedule their flight, and apparently because after infertility they don’t trust the natural process. They were in the operating room, and held the baby, who was then taken to the NICU due to slight breathing trouble (not uncommon for an early c/sec).

The next day they went to see the baby and were told by the nurses that the mother had initiated breastfeeding and they expected her to decide to parent.

They called the fabulous lawyer, who called the hospital to inform them that the woman in room XXX’s expenses were no longer going to be paid by his client. Apparently they got someone from the billing department into that room while the baby was still on her breast to ask her for financial information. Her bills were higher than they would have been for a vaginal birth, and there were also those NICU charges for complications that were caused by the slight prematurity inherent in scheduled cesareans.

The adoptive mother says this “brought her back to the reality that she really couldn’t afford this baby,” and she signed the papers immediately. What a terrific lawyer!

It scares me to think of someone finding out that his mother did that to his mother. It also scares me that we have women relinquishing their children because they can’t afford health insurance and child care.

Reading this literally made me sick. Unfortunately is not the only ugly horror story I’ve heard.

I think that it’s vital that those of us who are adopting or considering it think hard about the issues that are inherent in any adoption, be it domestic or international. Issues of coercion, classism, sexism, racism and all of the other ugly -isms. Those of us who adopt are the “have’s” just by virtue of being able to adopt. Most of us wouldn’t use an abusive lawyer to force a woman to give us her child but differences in power is always an issue in any adoption.

At the beginning of our adoption discussions, Brett said that when he thought of adoption he always thought about a baby left in a basket on church steps with a little note pleading for the convenient little orphan.

I get this want for a disappearing birth parent, I do. One of my favorite movies used to be Grand Canyon because a character finds a baby hidden under a bush while she’s jogging. What a great way to get a baby, eh? But that was before I started reading about adoption realities.

Even when the birth parents are not present physically, they are present and they need to be honored. Children are not generally given up voluntarily even when their placement seems voluntary. Children are given up when their birth parents’ hands are forced by poverty, illness, government policy, cultural expectations, family demands, etc.

In a best case scenario, a birth parent is made aware of her options and is free to choose adoption. However, it’s impossible not to wonder if her circumstances were different — if quality, affordable childcare was available or if she had a loving family to help her parent — whether or not adoption would still be of her choosing.

I don’t mean to paint a pitiful picture of birth parents, rather I mean that those of us who are blessed enough in our circumstances to adopt need to always honor the birth histories of our children. Like white privilege or straight privilege or rich privilege, we need to recognize that we have a responsibility to those whose losses lead to our gain.

To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what to do about the obligation that I feel I have by participating in the adoption triad. As a waiting adoptive parent, I know what my obligations are to my child and I trust the parent who places with us to let me know what expectations she has of me, however I’m not sure what to do about the broader societal issues.

I’ve got unofficial rules for this blog but I break them now and then. They are as follows:

I have three books in progress right now but none of them is really interesting me much. I used to finish every book I started but since having Noah, I’m not willing to commit that much time to something that doesn’t hit me right away. This is too bad because as we all know, some books are slow starters.

I’ve also lost patience with books that do weird things with punctuation. For example, one of the books I’m reading now doesn’t have any quotation marks. Instead whenever anybody says anything, there’s a hyphen. Now that’s just stupid. I mean, really, this book isn’t doing anything else unusual or inventive to justify making it so hard to figure out when someone stops talking.

I’ve also got several books sent to me for review, which I only scan to see whether or not they suit our audience. Many of them don’t and it’s just lazy PR people, I guess, not bothering to think about where they’re sending the books. A book on heart disease, for example, is hard to place in a pregnancy magazine since nowhere within it does the author talk about pregnancy and heart disease or breastfeeding or heart disease. No, in fact this book seems to be targeted to an older audience who is likely not pregnant or nursing or even raising small children. I got one that was an outrageous, irreverent book on retirement. What the heck? But I still like getting free books because every once in awhile there’s a really great one in there — one that’s appropriate to my job and that I can promote and actually make my job a bit easier. Very nice.

I have a folder for things started and not finished. Some of the essays and articles have been there for months and some of them have been there for years. This is the first paragraph in a handful:

There’s a super-secret (well, not really), very small email list for folks parenting through infertility.
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