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charlie meadows wrote: c2w?,

I prefer the shorter snarkier version to the needlessly bloated explanation.

I addressed my post above to brainpanhandler, and he understood some to most of my sentiment immediately.

I didn't colour the text in my post above 'green' because it wasn't exactly sarcasm.

What are the colours for irony, satire and tragedy?

Breastfeeding Women Viewed as Less Competent
Tuesday 22 March 2011
by: Tom Jacobs | Miller-McCune | Report

A study emerged out of Oxford University last week suggesting babies who are breastfed end up doing better in school. Yet despite such well-documented benefits for both mother and child, the percentage of American breastfeeding women remains “stagnant and low,” according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Why are only one-third of American mothers exclusively breastfeeding at three months, and only 43 percent breastfeeding at all at six months? Perhaps because they’ve gotten a sense of how harshly they are being judged.

Research just published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (“Spoiled Milk: An Experimental Examination of Bias Against Mothers Who Breastfeed”) reports mothers who breastfeed are widely viewed as less competent than otherwise identical females. This disturbing finding was obtained in three separate studies, one of which also found breastfeeding is a handicap for women hoping to be hired for a job.

“Importantly, we did not find evidence that gender of the participant influenced perceptions of the breastfeeding mother,” notes the research team led by Montana State University psychologist Jessi L. Smith. Women, it seems, are just as likely as men to hold this bias.

In one experiment, 30 students told they were engaging in an “impression formation study” were given biographical information on actress Brooke Shields, including the fact she had just written a book about motherhood. Half were told the volume included information on her “experiences with breastfeeding, bathing and overall care of a newborn;” for the other half, the word “bottle-feeding” was exchanged for “breastfeeding.”

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Afterward, the participants answered a series of questions gauging their overall assessment of the actress. Those who read she was breastfeeding her baby viewed her as “significantly more warm and friendly compared to the bottle-feeding mother, but significantly less competent in general, and less competent in math specifically,” the researchers report.

In another experiment, 55 students were told they were participating in a study of how people form impressions of others in the face of limited information. They were asked to judge a woman they got to know by listening to her telephone answering machine.

Specifically, they heard a message in which a man talks about changing the time of their dinner date. The rest of the message varied: Some participants heard a neutral conclusion, while others heard a reference to breastfeeding (“I figured you would want to go home and breastfeed the baby”), motherhood (“I figured you would want to go home and give the baby a bath”), or sexuality (“I figured you would want to go home and change into your strapless bra”).

The breastfeeding woman “was viewed significantly more negatively compared to the neutral voicemail on all measures of competence,” Smith and her colleagues found. The woman in the strapless bra was also labeled as less competent, suggesting that the bias faced by breastfeeding woman “is similar to the once experienced by a woman for whom the breast is sexually objectified,” the researchers add.

Asked if they would hire this woman for a job, the participants gave the lowest ratings to the breastfeeding woman — even below that of the woman with sexualized breasts. Interestingly, the woman giving her baby a bath was not penalized in this respect, suggesting it isn’t parenthood per se that makes her less desirable as an employee.

Rather, the culprit seems to be the mental image of her breasts, whether they’re being used as instruments of sexual allure or infant nutrition.
“A woman may not breastfeed because of worry over how she will be evaluated by other people,” the researchers conclude. “Data from the current project suggest this worry may be warranted, to the extent that breastfeeding is a devalued social category.”

Smith and her colleagues suggest that health professionals should “teach pregnant women about the sexism they might encounter” when they choose to breastfeed. In terms of society as a whole, they argue the only way this bias will diminish is for more women to breastfeed openly.

“More visible breastfeeding mothers should prompt people to wrestle with and debate the issues,” they write. “With time, greater numbers of women who breastfeed translates to less prejudice.”

charlie meadows wrote:"I do know what time it is when an elephant sits on the fence, though. If that's any help."

Time to decide that no fence is needed?

"ON EDIT: Hey! What happened to the "long time, no [Spoiler:c}?"

Well, I stayed up late and I was really tired and I overslept and I was late for the bus, but fortunately it was late so I caught it on time so to speak. And I was really thankful that I made it so I was just sitting there thinking about all of the great things that have happened to me, and how there are others less fortunate than me, you know, so I wanted to apologize to Nordic because I really didn't mean to say those things about him and I just wanted him to know that I really love him and OP ED too. And even Stephen, and I'm not trying to be coy here, he might have had something to offer here, except that he didn't understand that this thread is not about him or the laws that have been passed, because those laws have only been passed because there is a reason for the misogyny in the first place, and where was I... oh yeah... Groucho Marx and You Bet Your Life... yeah right... oh yeah... Simplify. Simplify. I edited it because it's better just to say one thing at a time, or to say less rather than more, and just what is necessary to communicate the information that I am trying to communicate. It's better not to make people read a whole bunch of unnecessary information just to show that hey I'm really here, I have feelings, and I've suffered. I mean why not use just one word when 1000 words will do just as well, and hundreds and hundreds of people will read them, and reread them--my words.

Simplify. That's what I'm about really.

Does that answer your question? Or let me put it another way... Or maybe not. Oh, well, I think I've made my point perfectly clear. Although, you're entitled to think differently if you really want to.

I hope that makes it clear to you.

norton ash wrote:You know when you're in a restaurant and there's a table of eight women and things are pretty quiet, and then they all explode in laughter at the same instant and it's like a bomb went off and you're so startled that you spill your coffee?

I fucking hate that.

Canadian_watcher wrote:

norton ash wrote:You know when you're in a restaurant and there's a table of eight women and things are pretty quiet, and then they all explode in laughter at the same instant and it's like a bomb went off and you're so startled that you spill your coffee?

I fucking hate that.

or you know when you're walking down the street and it's peaceful and you're feeling personally empowered for whatever reason, enjoying the sun on your face and thinking about your future when a carload of men drive up, slow down, honk, and cat call thereby jarring you back to earth and North American culture and all those positive feelings you had only moments ago are replaced by feeling like you did something wrong just by just being there and being young and female?

Of course you don't.

But I fucking hate that.

norton ash wrote:Sorry, forgot to include the green text for our more deadly serious readers.

Dontcha just hate flying these days? No wait, that one's really not funny anymore...

If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution.

norton ash wrote:If you can't recognize any joke at all in someone using the word 'hate' because he spilled his coffee, which makes him a petty aresehole, in an effort to steer things jokingly back on topic after the fraught personal exchange directly above, then I guess I've failed everyone, CW.

If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution.