Feminist Anthropology Professor Blasted for Breastfeeding During Class

Feminist Anthropology Professor Blasted for Breastfeeding During Class

Feminist Anthropology Professor Blasted for Breastfeeding During Class | Team Mom - Yahoo! Shine

ETA: Already being debated here: http://www.debatepolitics.com/education/136083-professor-breast-feeds-class.html

Never mind.

Jesh . . . taking a sick baby to work and then nursing the kid during a class you're teaching.

Wow - Teacher's get sick days, you know. :roll: All those supposed brains and in no way capable of using it?

Yeah, she should have never brought the kid to class. It's a distraction to the students, a health risk since it was apparently too sick to go to nursery school or whatever, and it's just plain inappropriate.

As far as the breastfeeding thing goes, I don't think the sight of feeding a baby is gross or offensive, but it is most definitely a distraction, and offensive to some people. No reason she couldn't have just excused herself for ten minutes. The school had special areas designated for exactly that.

NitroHangover said:

Yeah, she should have never brought the kid to class. It's a distraction to the students, a health risk since it was apparently too sick to go to nursery school or whatever, and it's just plain inappropriate.

As far as the breastfeeding thing goes, I don't think the sight of feeding a baby is gross or offensive, but it is most definitely a distraction, and offensive to some people. No reason she couldn't have just excused herself for ten minutes. The school had special areas designated for exactly that.

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I don't think it's gross or offensive. I just think it's horrible unprofessional and not something you do in public.

Why excuse herself from class though?

It's not like her breasts would have exploded had she waited until after class.

Donahue said:

Why excuse herself from class though?

It's not like her breasts would have exploded had she waited until after class.

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Oh yeah, I agree. I just meant that if she felt she HAD to do it right that minute, for whatever reason, the polite thing to do would've been to just excuse herself for a few minutes and let the TA go over the syllabus with the class or something. But yeah, it's not like the kid would have starved to death if she'd waited 20 minutes.

Yeah, I'm sorry, bringing a sick child into class and then breastfeeding in the middle of it is really inappropriate. Hell, bringing a young child to class at all is pretty inappropriate. It's not like they realize that the students are trying to learn and would prefer they not be needy for an hour. It's a baby. You can't exactly explain that to it. If it wants to scream, it will. If it wants to be fed, it will moan until someone feeds it. If it wants to crap itself, it will. That is not a good learning environment.

I go to class to learn, not catch the flu and listen to squalling while having someone flash their boobs at me. Do that on your own time, when I'm not paying good money to get something out of this class.

Sounds like an anthropologist, alright.

"It's socially constructed"...yes, I get that. So stop being so concerned that I am apart of the socially constructed reality.

Pinkie said:

Not that it's all that germane, but unless I misunderstand the word "anthropology", I really don't understand how this subject can be taught as to feminists.

Academia.....where reality goes to be bent.

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What do you mean?

Anthropology is the study of culture . . . I think they weren't saying she was teaching anthropology from a 'feminists point of view' - I think they were saying 'she is a feminist and teaches anthropology'

Which is moot - most people these days are feminists. LOL I've never met a professor who didn't believe in equal pay/equal work - etc.

I first caught the story in the Washington Post and have only just read the Yahoo! story posted in this thread.

The following quote is kind of interesting though:

"If I considered feeding my child to be a "delicate" or sensitive act, I would not have done it in front of my students," Pine wrote. "Nor would I have spent the previous year doing it on buses, trains and airplanes; on busy sidewalks and nice restaurants; in television studios and while giving plenary lectures to large conferences."

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At first I thought it was just kind of bad judgement on her part but now maybe it's a matter of pushing the envelope. Doing it on planes, trains, or buses is bad enough but breast feeding while giving lectures to large conferences? Who the heck does something like that?

Donahue said:

I first caught the story in the Washington Post and have only just read the Yahoo! story posted in this thread.

The following quote is kind of interesting though:



At first I thought it was just kind of bad judgement on her part but now maybe it's a matter of pushing the envelope. Doing it on planes, trains, or buses is bad enough but breast feeding while giving lectures to large conferences? Who the heck does something like that?

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And she truly expected it to not bother anyone.

So much for being a knowegable anthropologist . . . that's their career path - to understand and learn about cultures and people indepth. Well . . . I guess she fell asleep in class a lot.

She might not have issues with it but the average person does - she knew what she was doing and she knows she should have stayed home to properly care for her child.

Pinkie said:

My reading of the news report wasn't that she was a feminist who taught anthropology.

It was that she teaches "feminist anthropology", a term I personally find insensible.

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Hmmm - reading here. Feminist anthropology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia It says

that aims to correct for a perceived androcentric bias within anthropology.

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It sounds like something I can't judge without taking a class . . . because when I took my cultural anthropology class last year I was quite surprised at what it really was about.

And what is true ot anthropology is that there are many 'approaches to learning about it' - different 'disciplines' in the method and 'schools' of thought. It's a bit odd, really - because it's not like science where things just are what they are and you learn it and there you go . . . or math. It's interpretive. There are many ways of learning about and understanding other cultures - and some aren't always favorable.

But I've had serious frustrations when 'hardcore feminists' take a lesson-structure and rearrange everything to 'bring it back to feminism' . . . like my English II teacher - ugh - she drove me nuts. Every little poem and short story that we read - she found some way to bring it back to feminism and how men view women . . . it was very annoying to say the least and out of place for the actual course goal. So I'm on the fence as to whether feminist anthro would be palatable or not. Who knows.

Knowing my anthro teacher from last semester - she spent years of her life with your young son on an island in Micronesia. She said the hardest thing for him was coming to the US for the first time (in his view) and learning how to wear clothes. . . because he was naked most of the time. So for someone like my teacher - I can see the nursing thing happening quite easily. LOL

I think what she did was really inappropriate, and extremely unprofessional. She shouldn't have brought the sick baby to class in the first place. And she certainly shouldn't have been breastfeeding it while in the middle of teaching students.