Why the normalisation of birth and breastfeeding is wrong.

Perhaps because English is my second language I'm able to smell rats behind certain sentences that would at first glance appear perfectly acceptable to native speakers.

There are some posts these days talking about normalising birth and or breastfeeding pictures.

I will never understand these concepts. There is nothing abnormal with my body, my babies' feeding or my giving birth. 

An act that gives origin to our lives and an act that maintains it through millennia, can't possibly be abnormal. 

There is absolutely no need to normalise it.

I do not want to normalise breastfeeding or birth. Saying so would imply that there are strange or perhaps even obscene situations that are actually the hidden and not so hidden arguments behind the current conversation that originated on social media.

The ideas of obscenity about womens' bodies in motherhood come from the perspective of patriarchy. The idea that our bodies are sexual objects which serve a sexual desire for others is what rules all these arguments. Thinking of our bodies in the processes of birth or lactation as disgusting is a problem, and it is a problem that affects us all.

Interestingly enough, looking at zoos and vets always gives us a clue about how distorted our behaviour is. Of course we are not exactly like other animals, we are intellectualised  mammals, but not when it comes to birthing.

Our intellect then becomes a barrier to overcome. 

As I was saying, vets know that a pregnant female gorilla in captivity needs to see a gorilla breastfeeding in order to do so herself, yet we demand discretion for women feeding our babies. 

Any animal programme we see on the TV depicts how dark, quiet and undisturbed mammal birth has to be. No one dares to move an elephant or a horse around when they're giving birth.

We should be birthing like that, with the normality that belongs to 
us. With the normality that is continuously stolen, when female bodies are continuously stolen, when decisions  are continuously made around the world for little girls and women about how to think, dress, go out, marry, be pregnant, not be pregnant, birth or feed their babies. About how much they should show or hide of their bodies, about how they should feel about inhabiting a body that is no longer theirs, about how guilty they should feel to be fat, tall, flat, skinny, blonde, brunette, etc, etc, or about not caring or multitasking enough.

You see, the problem is that yes, perhaps we shouldn't need to see pictures of birth in a different world. 

I do not see what the problem is. I personally do not need to see abused animals, purulent spots or tacky videos and yet they all exist on Facebook, but the reality is that our matriarchal world and our knowledge of it is practically non existent. It is on the edge of extinction and unless we hold onto our powers, our pictures and our understanding of ourselves, our essence and the ownership of our decisions and our bodies may quite possibly be eradicated. 

The fact we are still arguing and suggesting to normalise something that used to be socially accepted with the same normality as breathing is already pathological. 

We observe flowers opening, new lambs feeding, elephants birthing, we are moved by new life in every way in this planet. If we despise our own species coming into life we should be trying to figure out why that is and what has led us to understand it that way. 

And even though all those processes are normal I still think we women and our bodies are pretty amazing, too amazing in fact to carry on forgetting who we are and what are we capable of.

        

    A Mother Feeding Her Baby at a Chattanooga Bus Stop - 1943

Picture taken from this link : http://www.buzzfeed.com/southerndisposition/25-historical-images-that-normalize-breastfeeding-jlw6