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The Forum > Article Comments > Keeping up supply: it isn't only about the milk > Comments

Keeping up supply: it isn't only about the milk : Comments

By Petra Bueskens, published 22/9/2015

Pumping and nursing are not equivalent activities and if mothers are to fully participate in working life, including politics, their embodied relationship to infants must be taken into account.

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Ho hum, more claims of female privilege from the feminists.

The self-contradiction is obvious.

The main premise of feminism is that men and women are equal or should be treated as equals. However if you need a whole raft of sex-specific policies, privileges, threats and grabbings for women's special benefit in order to bring this about, then obviously the premise is false, isn't it?

Petra? It's not true is it? Men and women are not factually equal, you yourself don’t value them equally, and there is no reason why their differences should be valued equally, is there? Please answer this question.

This article is just special pleading for others to be forced to pay the costs of women's sexual and reproductive choices, for women to have the benefits of patriarchy and feminism, and for men to have the downsides, costs and risks of both.

The assumption is that there is no way that women could possibly hope to compete in the workplace on merit. And so the productive sub-set of the population are to be forced to have women in jobs on the ground of their sex, in violation of the human right of freedom of association, and all based on the false pretence that there is no difference between men and women, which not even the feminists agree with.

Talk about hypocrisy.

Petra's sneeers at the supposed "neo-liberal" order (without explaining what it's supposed to mean), are in contradistinction to what? The socialist paradise that will be ushered in when no-one has to engage in productive activity having regard to costs?

She assumes that there is an unidentified boundless fund somewhere somehow that can be indefinitely drained to pay for women to have these sex-specific benefits and special privileges, accessed by way of the *unequal* power of the state forcing and threatening people to submit to and obey. Perhaps you could show how you took that into account in your theory of equality, Petra? Go ahead.

Petra stands for sexist hypocrisy backed up by unequal power and force and threats, and should be dismissed and condemned for her bigotry.
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Tuesday, 22 September 2015 10:25:15 AM
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This was a stupid mistake by Scott Buchholz who should have known better – and should have known standing orders. But it was no more than that. To identify the request to express more milk as a manifestation of neo-liberalism is frankly ridiculous. If anything, feminism owes a huge debt to the liberal principles of equality and self-ownership.
Posted by Rhian, Tuesday, 22 September 2015 2:45:49 PM
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JKJ, you should pull your head in.
David
Posted by VK3AUU, Wednesday, 23 September 2015 10:13:05 AM
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From this article it would appear that Miss Bueskens believes fathers to be incapable of being primary caregivers or of feeding their children (with a bottle, obviously). An appallingly sexist and outdated conceit.
Posted by Toni Lavis, Wednesday, 23 September 2015 10:40:05 AM
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David, you should pull your head in. Start by acknowledging your double standards and sexist hypocrisy, and answer my questions which Petra is too cowardly to answer.
JKJ
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Wednesday, 23 September 2015 12:33:17 PM
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Toni

Of course men are capable of being primary caregivers. But there is good scientific evidence both that breast milk is better for infants than formula, and that breast feeding nurtures an emotional bond that benefits both mother and child. There is nothing wrong with using formula or expressed milk, but breast feeding is the preferred default option. It may also be that the father is not able to act as primary care giver, for any number of reasons.

Families make decisions on these things based on a host of circumstances. Where reasonable, workplaces try to accommodate these. Allowing breastfeeding MPs to use a proxy vote is hardly an earthshattering concession.

JKJ

Men and women are not identical (hooray!), but they are equal. Equal treatment does not necessarily equate to identical treatment. You and I might have different skin colour, religion, ideology, gender, height, girth or any number of other characteristics, but it doesn't make me intrinsically of greater or lesser value than you.

I fail to see how the provision that breastfeeding MPs can use a proxy vote imposes any significant costs on the taxpayer, or anyone else.
Posted by Rhian, Wednesday, 23 September 2015 1:44:02 PM
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