{"id":2277,"date":"2006-04-25T04:11:11","date_gmt":"2006-04-25T11:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/04\/25\/screw-you-fred-meyers-the-story-of-the-reluctant-lactivist\/"},"modified":"2006-04-25T04:11:11","modified_gmt":"2006-04-25T11:11:11","slug":"screw-you-fred-meyers-the-story-of-the-reluctant-lactivist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2277","title":{"rendered":"Screw You Fred Meyers: The Story of the Reluctant Lactivist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many discussions on Alas have boiled down to the idea that much would be solved if people would just begin to trust women. Trust in their intentions, trust in their motivations and trust in their decisions. The simple phrase ‘trust women’ has been introduced in conversations about rape and abortion consistently here, and even highlighted in one of Maia’s stories as she reminisced about a banner that was in her high-school that really spoke to her. It’s this phrase that resonated with me when I came across a story via my parenting group that launched the blog of Chris Musser<\/a>, who has dubbed herself the ‘reluctant lactivist’.<\/p>\n

So yeah, I’m going to launch into another one of my rants about the importance of supporting mothers in their decisions to breastfeed their children. Here goes.<\/p>\n

Reluctant was out a few weeks ago at Gateway Freddie’s (Fred Meyers) shopping, when much to her inconvenience, her wee one of three months decided he was hungry. They do that to you, and they don’t do it on your preferred schedule, but their own “\u201c fancy that. Having to maneuver herself, her three month old and<\/i> her three year old daughter, she looked around for a safe and contained place to nurse her son so she could get on with her shopping. She chose a bench near the check-out. And guess what happened then “\u201c you’d be right if you said rude people happened, but it wasn’t enough that customers wanted to be asshats, management decided to get a piece of the action too.<\/p>\n

On April 4th I sat down on a bench at the Gateway Fred Meyer to nurse my two-month-old son. It was about five o’clock on a busy Tuesday afternoon. The last place I wanted to be nursing was in that spot as it was noisy and distracting, but at the time, I couldn’t think of better place to attend to my baby’s needs. I also had my rather flighty three-year-old daughter with me, so wandering around the store to find a quieter spot would’ve left me instead chasing a toddler while carrying a bawling baby. […]<\/p>\n

After nursing for five minutes or so, my son seemed comfortable enough for us to start shopping. As I reached into my bag to get my sling, Troy Hardig, Gateway Store Director, approached me. He had a weird look on his face and as I was trying to figure out why he was approaching me when he opens with, “Oh, good. You’re getting a blanket.” He told me there had been complaints about my nursing, not that he minded, but that some people were offended. I was so stunned I couldn’t think of what to say, except to remind him that Oregon law protects a mother’s right to nurse in public. I felt absolutely humiliated. His comments left me feeling like I’d been doing something lewd.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reluctant spent a few days feeling mortified before letting her very righteous anger replace the hurt, and she contacted one of the regional operations managers, and here’s what he had to say:<\/p>\n

Unbelievably, when I spoke with Todd Heinle, Fred Meyers East Portland\/SW Wash Operations Supervisor, a couple days later about the incident, he supported the store manager’s claim that I should have been more “discreet” and that three people had complained.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, my heart went out to Reluctant, but I also became severely pissed off when I read this. While it isn’t the closest or primary shopping place for our family, it is right smack dab in front of our doctor’s office so we do in fact go there. Well, did go there prior to this anyways (though I admit, Maddox has an appointment on Wednesday afternoon, and I’m ever so tempted to drop in and nurse her on that damn bench as an act of solidarity and support for Reluctant).<\/p>\n

The story got the attention of KATU news<\/a>, which did a good job of supporting nursing women by interviewing Reluctant while she nursed her son. And while Fred Meyer has at least offered a lame ‘oops, that shouldn’t have happened’, they get no cookie from this breastfeeding mother until they decisively make it clear to the public and to their employees that nursing mothers are not only welcome, but to be treated with respect and dignity. Reluctant has made a blog entry<\/a> for people who want to offer support to her and other breastfeeding women by speaking out to Fred Meyer.<\/p>\n

Following the links around, my favorite comments were from a woman named Marrit Ingram<\/a>, who offered this:<\/p>\n

American people want their lives to be totally antiseptic. We want to float around all day long in our individual bubbles of privacy and personal comfort. The world is our living room, and we want everyone on their company manners. If you don’t like mothers and babies, then by all means they should be expected to hide from you and not offend. It’s their problem, not yours. What’s a three-month-old doing in a store anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be on house arrest? Don’t you know that children annoy all the Real People who have a right to assembly? You might inconvenience someone.<\/p>\n

These are strange times. Women are losing our reproductive rights, but we’re expected to raise children entirely in private without burdening anyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This got longer than I intended, but I’ll close with a customization of the rant I opened with, even though I know I’m mostly preaching to the converted:<\/p>\n

Trust women that breastfeed to know when their child needs to be fed. Trust women to not be breastfeeding their child out of a malicious need to cause others discomfort, but rather solely for the nourishment and well-being of her child. Trust women when they decide the best place for the child to be fed when needing to nurse them in a public area. Trust women.<\/p>\n

And beyond that, give ’em a fucking break already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many discussions on Alas have boiled down to the idea that much would be solved if people would just begin to trust women. Trust in their intentions, trust in their motivations and trust in their decisions. The simple phrase ‘trust … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,31,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breastfeeding-lactivism","category-feminism-sexism-etc","category-popular-and-unpopular-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}