Feeding frenzies

I have nothing against seeing someone breastfeeding in public. In fact, given a choice between a breastfeeding baby and an unoccupied one, I'd rather see the first any day, owing to that quirk of physiognomy that makes us all less prone to being annoying when we've got our mouths full. I cannot think of a single public circumstance in which I'd find breastfeeding inappropriate; it's a marvellous feat of animal engineering. It's just the breastfeeding lobby that gets on my tits.

Last month, MSP Elaine Smith launched a private members' bill making it illegal for anyone to object to breastfeeding in public. Under the terms of the bill, which will only apply in Scotland, you can be charged and fined if you badger a nursing mother into the loo, or otherwise restrict her feeding plan.

On a practical level, this is just daft, since any cafe or restaurant that continued to object could sidestep the fine by banning children altogether. Conceivably, you could then try to legislate against that, but you'd have a job on your hands - I can't be the only voter in the country who would lay down my life defending an establishment's right to ban ankle-biters. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence would suggest that people who do disapprove tend not to do so openly, but obliquely, with snooty looks - and you can't legislate against those, either (which is a shame - imagine what fun we could have with the royal family).

Granted, Smith's move doesn't come close to the solipsism and futility of the lactating English MPs, who devoted so much time last December to gaining the right to breastfeed in the chamber of the House of Commons (in whose imagination is that democracy? Which of their constituents were they representing?). But it's still pretty futile.

Yet what really irks is the underlying notion behind all these moves. One journalist writing about Smith's bill bemoaned "the continuing sexualisation of breasts". Barbara Littlewood, a sociologist, remarked: "Breasts are so turned into fetishes, as sexual things, that women feel thoroughly uncomfortable using them for something else." People talk of "eroding" this attitude, as if it's basically aberrant. The overwhelming implication here is that we're all being unspeakably puerile, and until we stop associating our sexual characteristics with sex, well, of course we're going to be uncomfortable around a nursing mother. This is absolutely right - a lot of the awkwardness around a nursing woman is due to the fact that people don't like to see boundaries blurred. How much more blurry can you get than innocence and experience sharing the same cup?

But there's nothing childish, or bigoted, or misogynistic about liking breasts in a sexual way. There's nothing obscene about men and women sexualising each other. All of the key body parts lead a double-life, functionally speaking, and there is no earthly reason why one function should take precedence over the other. The institution of a pro-breastfeeding law introduces the notion of right and wrong into a situation that overwhelmingly calls for compromise and flexibility. In some circumstances the convenience of the mother should prevail. And in others priority should be given to people who are trying to get drunk and get off with each other.

That will never happen, however, due to the mysterious coordinates of the moral high ground. Mothers are unshakeable in the notion that they must come first, in exactly the same way that people who get up early feel that they've won some obscure moral battle against late risers. The reasoning, in the latter case, is unfathomable - in the case of breeders, it seems to centre on the notion that they're doing us all a favour. Never mind the fact that the appearance of children generally presages the abandonment of all social conscience (hence all the private tuition for the spawn of the red-blooded socialists); never mind that anyone who truthfully had a social agenda would more probably adopt; this feeling prevails that we owe them.

Obviously, if you look at it like that, anyone who puts her breasts to practical use is due more consideration than those who press them into service in the pursuit of enjoyment. The feeding function is all; the sexual function is just a cross (one of many) the mother has to bear. At the axis of this is the contention that procreation is morally superior to sex, ergo, that productive sex is superior to non-productive sex. If it sounds a lot like Christianity, that's because it is.

So, back to all the mewling tots. They should be fed when they're hungry. Anyone who openly objects should be laughed at, and disregarded. But let's remember, before we legislate to criminalise them, that they are not criminals. They might be prudes, they might be insufficiently evolved, they might be very easily embarrassed. But all they're really saying is: "I still see those as sexual characteristics, and therefore I'm not comfortable sitting opposite a stranger's." The answer involves a bit of discretion on the one hand, and a bit of getting used to it on the other. The answer is not a flat denial that breasts are sexual. Where's the fun in that?