Posted on 10/09/2009 6:46:08 AM PDT by Huck
Yesterday, Emily Gillette filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Burlington, Vermont, setting the stage for a legal battle, according to the Burlington Free Press.
Three years ago, Gillette, her husband, Brad, and their then 22-month-old daughter, River, were ordered to leave a plane at Vermont's Burlington International Airport. It was a New York-bound Delta Connections flight operated by Freedom Airlines.
Gillette was nursing River when a flight attendant asked her to cover up. Gillette refused. The flight attendant asked again, offering a blanket. The then 27-year-old mother continued to refuse. The flight attendant "pointed to the exit and demanded: 'Just get off the plane,'" the court documents read.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
If a woman is breastfeeding in a way that exposes all or a substantial part of her breast, she obviously doesn’t care if people look. That’s probably part of the point of doing it that way. Looking is different than touching. Looking is not assault.
That’s why I think crim’s approach is genius. He is making her embarrassed about her immodesty without touching her or committing any crime. He is calling attention to any exhibitionism in a devastating way. Go crim.
And no, the people here are not anti breastfeeding nazis. If you read the comments, some of us have breast fed numerous babies. But we have always managed to do it in a way that didn’t offend or embarrass those around us.
You are so right. In this case, the woman is in the window seat on an airplane. How many people can see her at all? At most, the person sitting next to her (although they can would have to really turn their heads to stare at her breasts), and the people across the aisle, although they’d be mostly blocked by the other people sitting in the row.
But for some reason, a lot of conservatives here at FR think it’s OK to stare at a woman’s breasts in public, and to complain if she uses them for their natural purpose.
Yes, to destroy your vapid argument. Just because something is a natural bodily function doesn’t mean it is appropriate for public display.
You suck at life.
A 2009 study indicates long duration of lactation (at least 24 months) is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease.
According to a Malmö University study published in 2009, women who breast fed for a longer duration have a lower risk for contracting rheumatoid arthritis than women who breast fed for a shorter duration or who had never breast fed.
So breastfeeding a 22-month-old is actually smart, and not at all "moonbat" worthy. A typical moonbat won't breastfeed at all because they have to turn their kid over to the state so they can get back to working like a good feminist.
lol. I don’t know you, but that comment tells me all I need to know.
Or maybe her baby is large, or doesn’t like being covered, or it’s the 4th time today of the thousandth time since birth and she’s just too tired to give a damn anymore and just wants to feed her baby whose screaming, and now there’s some lecherous old man wearing a gun staring at her and licking his lips like some juvenile delinquent, but she can’t do anything about it because she’s feeding her kid and can’t get the mall security to throw the trash out of the mall.
In other words, maybe you found it trivially easy to breast-feed, and therefore it was simple for you to cover up, and you never saw a man who TRIED to stare at your breasts even though you were mostly covered up, and never ran into a woman who screamed at you for even TRYING to feed your baby in public.
But way too many women who breastfeed have gone through all of those things, and to think that a person who would stare at a woman’s breasts while she is breastfeeding ONLY does so because the woman is just “too exposed” is naive.
Knock yerself out...
I harrassed her because she had her tit flopped out...she wasnt even trying to be discrete....
Sorry I’m an alpha male...I got titty radar...
My wife breast fed all three of our kids...she wouldnt be caught dead doing it in public...thats why she got a breast PUMP duffas...
This “I’ll flop my titty wherever I want” attitude has run so far amuk that women have now been ticketed for breastfeeding WHILE DRIVING....
I could care less if someone wants to breast feed their baby in public...but to just sit there with a tit flopped out is just plain rude....so sue me...
I also laugh out loud at people with pants around there knees...so what...
No, she refused the blanket. You know, when it was hot, or something, I could arrange a blanket so it covered me, but not the baby so much. This woman wouldn’t even try.
I like the previous poster — also a breast feeder — who cited her own modesty, as well as her respect for those around her. It doesn’t sound like the woman on the plane had much of either, although the version in the story is her version, obviously spruced up for litigation. She insisted on her “right” to breast feed without inconveniencing herself to try to accommodate those around her or their opinions. And now she’s hoping to reap a financial windfall from it. Although I’m sure she’d just say she doing it “for the children.”
CharlesWayne, you and I are usually on the same side of things :).
You’re not kidding!
Whenever breastfeeding comes up here at FR there’s always people that equate it with peeing - or performing sexual acts in public.
It’s very bizarre.
There is also the assumption that women are sitting half naked with boobs flying about.
Sometimes it is the “offended” folks who are the ones with the problem.
I’ve seen women be perfectly modest and still wind up “offending” someone because they catch a glimpse of a baby being held to the chest.
Some people even get “offended” if all they see are baby feet peeking out from under a blanket - or if they can hear the baby slurping.
Good post.
In fact - I’ve seen more booby be exposed here on FR on the CZJ/Dowd threads than I’ve seen from most breastfeeding mothers.
You can see more at Hooters than from breastfeeding mothers.
It was no easier or harder for me to breast feed than anyone else, I would imagine. As I said, modesty and respect for those around me. All my daughters have likewise breast fed their children without exposing themselves in public. It isn’t that hard to be modest. Anyone who tells you otherwise just can’t be bothered to do it.
I also didn’t allow them to kick the backs of the seats in airplanes, or raise a fuss, to the extent it was humanly possible to prevent it. I’ve sat by people who allowed both. I also didn’t allow my little kids to run around in restaurants or make a lot of noise there, although it was sometimes exhausting to prevent it. Convenience, exasperation, etc., aren’t really much of an excuse.
Life is full of choices. In many situations, you can choose to make it easy on yourself, and everyone else be damned, or you can choose to make a little effort to avoid offending others.
Well said!
So this was a one-time-only event, based solely on a single woman who was particularly offensive to you?
Because in your original post, you said:
You know really freaks out the boobie flippers?WHich makes it sound like you do this all the time, and that you recommend others do it.Stop and watch....lick your lips.....they will cover up real quick...
My wife hates it when I do it...but it ALLWAYS works...
Recommending that armed men should harass women breastfeeding their kids, based on your own opinion of whether they were to cavalier in covering up, does not make you an "alpha male". IN fact, it may suggest something altogether different.
However, if you are now admitting that you were being bragadocious and that in fact you only did this one time, I withdraw my statement, anybody can act like a cad occasionally.
I'll take option C. One of my inlaws is even worse - no covering of any kind ever, just whip it out.
Oh, and for the record, breastfeeding while driving is wrong in so many ways; and it is NOTHING like the situation we are discussing here, or your situation with a woman in a chair at the mall.
Beyond that, I think it’s absurd that a woman should ever have to worry about so-called grown men harassing them for feeding their children. It’s usually the leftists who get all offended at everything and assume the world should revolve around their sensibilities. If you don’t want to see a woman’s breast, don’t look at it.
If she stands up, walks in front of you, and flips out her breast, then I say go at it. But a person sitting in a chair breastfeeding should be left alone, and it’s absurd for any other person to take offense or attack the woman for it.
Crim, I’ll bet that if you noticed a woman breastfeeding under a blanket, trying to be modest, you wouldn’t say a word to her, right? You’re not going around trying to embarrass those women, are you?
It’s too bad the women who walk on the plane wearing plunging necklines w/ a push up bra underneath aren’t subjected to the same treatment.
You know - the ones who bend over to deal with their luggage and expose themselves to everyone, especially to appreciative spectators who take the time to lean and look.
But you never hear about those chicks being ordered from the plane.
Funny that.
Why should she have to take the blanket, like she’s doing something offensive?
The world doesn’t revolve around the offended, at least it shouldn’t. Offense is a personal problem, and should be dealt with by the offended, not by punishing those who are called out as offending.
God forbid a person sits next to someone on the plane, and gets out a book to read that the stewardess doesn’t like. Oh the horrors, we have to watch the person read a Bible, but we are athiests, it offends us, make her put it away.
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