There are so many ways in which these inequalities play each other out: Say a young boy is being treated in a way that goes against his liberty and autonomy as a human being, and it’s his mother treating him this way, and I’m another woman- In this situation, even though I might personally have more understanding of the mother’s situation, by responsibility, first and foremost, is to defend the kid, even if it means that the mom will be pissed off or offended- though of course if there’s a non-offensive way, try that first. I guess the gist of it is: One shouldn’t let empathy for another person allow them to let *that* person do something that harms someone else.

And then, of course, there’s the tragic pattern of people being hurt and humiliated by authoritarian systems, who then try to regain a sense of power by hurting people when they get the chance to. It can be towards someone typically less powerful, like a child, or someone who is only less-powerful in the moment. Say a man who grew up in poverty sees a rich woman as one of the people who usually has it better than him, but for the moment, he’s hired muscle in a mental institution and she’s a patient. Now he can even do things without them being violent crimes, because the state has declared such violence to be *legal*! Yeah, it’s fucked up all around… I should really read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, like one of my socialist friends keeps telling me to… Thanks for being a voice.

To carry your analogy a step further: Let’s say that you’re going through one of the biggest emotional and practical upheavals of your life. You’re sleep-deprived, your hormones are all over the place, and you’re in that state of fragility where the least negative comment has you teetering on the verge of tears. During this time, you’ve been feeding your children on McDonald’s. You feel guilty about it because you know it’s not really the healthiest thing you could be feeling them (and, given the way this sort of emotional state magnifies all negative reactions, you probably feel *really* guilty). You’d really like to do better. You know there’s a dietician in town you could consult for advice on how to make the children healthier meals. But… you also know that dietician talks about how inferior McDonald’s meals are, and, in the state you’re feeling at the moment, you’re just not sure you can handle anyone saying anything negative.

Now, you’re a strong-minded and determined woman, and, in that situation, maybe you would seek out that dietician anyway in spite of what she had a habit of saying. But can you see that it’s possible that maybe another woman in that situation would be put off by it?

You know the saying that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar? The problem isn’t that in our aim to avoid offending people we are putting babies at risk of not being breastfed. The problem is that offending people is likely to reduce the chances of them breastfeeding their babies. We should try to avoid phrasing our information in offensive or hurtful ways (where possible, and I do recognise it isn’t always possible) not just for the obvious reason that that’s more pleasant for others, but because it’s likely to increase, rather than decrease, our chances of getting women to breastfeed.

@Arwyn: I’m not disagreeing with the fact that our language has a great deal of effect on the way we think. I’m pointing out the other side of that coin: that our language has great power to harm a situation as well as to help it, and to do so in much more fundamental ways than leaving people with hurt feelings. This is why it concerns me to see someone talking as though our decision as to whether or not we make a particular statement in an advocacy context should be based only on accuracy without also taking into account the potential of that statement to backfire and do more harm than good.

An analogy: dialysis is inferior to a functioning kidney. Would someone on dialysis feel that statement was an “extra vicious punch”? Would they feel guilty about being on dialysis? Of course not. They might hope to get a kidney transplant — also inferior to their own working kidney, but better than dialysis. Those are all factual, inoffensive statements, because we live in a world in which OF COURSE having one’s own functioning kidney is standard, no one is getting dialysis because they “chose” to, and there is no shame in dialysis when it is medically necessary. We are grateful for it, just as we should be grateful for formula and for donated milk. In a sane world, a non-misogynistic, non-kyriarchal world, we would feel the same about formula as we do dialysis: I am trying to talk about how we get there, and our language is a significant part of that.

You talk about language; here is what I know as a feminist: our words matter. It matters whether we say “Congressman” or “Representative”. It matters whether we say “Stewardesses” or “Flight attendants”. It matters whether we speak of “mankind” or “humanity”. Our words help establish a worldview, that can either exclude or recognize the humanity of women; similarly, our words help establish a worldview that is either anti-breastfeeding (including “breast is best” — it is not best, it is the biologically expected) or in which breastfeeding is standard.

Yes, we need to watch our language to avoid unnecessary offense: thus, it is inappropriate to refer to formula as “poison”, or say we pity formula fed babies, or talk about “those irresponsible formula feeders, they just didn’t try hard enough.” Those would be inexcusable, understandably off-putting. But we MUST change the way our culture talks about and therefore thinks about breastmilk and formula, and our language is an incredibly important part of that. When we change the culture, we make it possible for more women to breastfeed, and to be supported in breastfeeding.

If you disagree with such a basic precept of feminist theory, this might not be the blog for you.

In the case of breastfeeding, breastmilk is best, period. If you have chosen to give formula you are choosing an inferior method and there are risks and side effects of that choice. (Education)
Now if there are reasons that actively breastfeeding causes the mother emotional harm or is just not possible, the only thing I can think of is a history of abuse, a medical reason or death. Then yes, of course we are grateful that formula is an option to keep her baby alive. Yet, that baby still deserves breastmilk, and has that mother done everything possible to provide that? pumping, a wet nurse, purchasing breastmilk…(support)
In our hopes of not hurting feelings we are putting babies at risk. End of story. (responsibility)

All similar arguments can be made for natural birth, another area that is often censored to keep women from feeling badly. If you are part of the 10-15% that actually needed a cesarean birth to keep you and/or your baby alive, then you have nothing to feel bad about and you should already know that (education) – otherwise you put yourself and your baby at risk, period. (responsibility)

Now there are other issues of parenting that I don’t think are that black and white yet again, everyone is sharing from their own experience so parents who don’t agree can hit “X” and close down the page – it’s not the writers job to be sensitive to the possible experience everyone else has ever had in life.

I think an important distinction here is that we are not (or at least I am not) referring to a woman’s actions as inferior. Rather, we are referring to the substance (formula) as inferior.

Personally, I don’t see a big difference between “inferior” and “just isn’t as good”. As far as I’m concerned, they are synonyms.

Also, I think people need to realize that just because something is inferior in absolute terms, doesn’t mean it was inferior in the specific circumstances in which they used it. If you tell me that a Big Mac and fries is an inferior feeding choice compared with steamed vegetables, brown rice and grilled chicken, I will agree with you even if I happened to have fed my family McDonald’s that evening because I was too exhausted to cook anything.

When we *advocate* for a particular viewpoint, we are not merely having a conversation. We are trying to persuade others to change their minds, and, more than that, their behaviour. The practicality of this is that, to optimise our chances of success, we do have to put more effort into avoiding offence than we would if we were simply trading views for purposes of academic interest. If we speak about formula in a way that offends a formula-feeding mother to the point where we make her less likely to seek breastfeeding help in the future when we need it, then we can pontificate all we like about how she should take responsibility for her own reactions rather than expecting us to alter our perfectly-truthful-and-therefore-automatically-justified statements, and maybe we’ll even be right in some abstract sense. The only problem is, none of that is going to get her baby breastfed. But taking the extra trouble needed to modify our statements and make them less harsh, and hence make pro-breastfeeders in general look more approachable, just might.

Because I haven’t seen any. I know it’s a popular theory, but I have seen *no* actual evidence for it. And the problem is, I *have* seen evidence that that sort of criticism is harmful. Not just because it hurts people’s feelings, but for the rather more concrete reason that it may put women off seeking breastfeeding advice when they need it.

Lots of women with breastfeeding problems are using/have used formula – they’ve given their babies bottles when they were having problems because they thought it was what they had to do (or, occasionally, because it really *was* what they had to do), and/or they’ve formula-fed a previous baby. If those women have seen you or other lactivists refer to their actions as ‘inferior’, how comfortable are they going to be in seeking out breastfeeding counsellors?

Bear in mind that the world doesn’t always separate itself out neatly into women needing breastfeeding support and everyone else. That woman reading your article on feeding choices is, a few months down the line, going to be a woman making some actual feeding choices, and some of those women are going to be faced with the decision of whether or not to call a breastfeeding counsellor. If the face of the breastfeeding movement that a woman has seen is making these kinds of comments about formula (and words like ‘inferior’ really do pack an extra vicious punch over and above simply making it clear that there is a difference between formula and breastmilk), then there is a very real risk that she will be put off seeking this help when she’s at her most vulnerable. Maybe you separate out the different situations perfectly well in your mind; maybe you’d never dream of making that kind of statement to a woman who’d actually used formula; maybe the breastfeeding counsellor that that woman could ring would never dream of making such a statement at all under any circumstances. But the problem is, *that woman isn’t going to know that*.

I repeat a point I touched on above: The use of words like ‘inferior’ to describe formula carries an extra-vicious punch that simply talking about the differences between formula and breastmilk does not. You’ve raised the analogy of your experience as a woman without a college degree listening to others extol the disadvantages of being without a college degree. But what you haven’t said is how you’d feel if someone were to make the statement that a high school education is inferior. Not just that it isn’t as good as a college education, but that it’s *inferior* to a college education. How would you feel if you heard that term used about your education at a time when you were particularly vulnerable yourself? Are you absolutely positive that it would make no difference at all to your willingness to approach the person who used it, or other people from the same movement, on the subject of education in the future?

Your criteria for using a particular form of words seem to centre primarily around accuracy. I feel it’s just as important to put our words through a second filter: What harm will be done by these words, and is it likely to outweigh any good that they do? Harshly critical statements about formula do have the potential to harm. Have you any evidence that they do any good that can’t be achieved in a less critical and hence less harmful way?

*I use “woman” and “her” here because the majority of parents who breastfeed are female, and this is a female-centric blog, but I know not all are. Men, both cis and trans, have been known to breastfeed (and even more have been known to nurse for comfort), and I do not mean with this to belittle or dismiss them or their breastfeeding.