DISGUST AND DISCOMFORT IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

The public sphere is traditionally conceived as being marked by certain (male) norms and activities: rational, individualistic, and civic approaches to work, the market, the government. The types of activities that define the norms of the private sphere, on the other hand, are those that are traditionally female: emotional, relational, and familial experiences related to caregiving, nurturing, and bodies.Footnote ³ “Public,” for many feminists, signifies a sphere from which women have been formally or informally excluded. As Adrienne Rich (Reference Rich1986, 210) notes, “the systems men have created are homogenous systems, which exclude and degrade women or deny our existence; and the most frequent rationalization for our exclusion from those systems is that we are or ought to be mothers.” Women, as a result of their actual or potential maternity, are interpreted as closer to nature and to the messiness of bodies, and as such, they are seen as fitting poorly into the rationalistic, bodiless public sphere.Footnote ⁴ The liberal feminist project of the past century has been a slow progression toward erasing the exclusion of women from the public sphere; if Adrienne Rich's (Reference Rich1986) argument does not resonate today, it is because of the partial success of the liberal feminist project in securing access for those women who conform to norms.

Although participation in the public sphere is no longer tied to being a man, functionally the public sphere is still male. The legal project of guaranteeing access to traditionally male spheres has been undertaken while leaving in place the sexual of division of labor and women's subordination. Women have access to traditionally male spheres, but that access is often contingent on acting male. As Wendy Brown points out, public norms demand that women be “women in private and humans in public” (Reference Brown, Scott and Keates2005, 35, 28). Women can enter public spaces. But if they act too emotional, or not emotional enough, or if they cannot follow norms because of family commitments, they are sanctioned. The liberal project is incomplete—women cannot be considered equal public actors as long as they are subject to these demands.

The problematic imperative of the public sphere, policed through public norms, is that anyone is welcome—so long as they act like the ideal public actor: a heterosexual, white, able-bodied man. This imperative is especially pernicious for those people who are not in a position to distance themselves from their bodies. Breastfeeding mothers, pregnant women, disabled people, people of color, and queer people are all conspicuous in the public sphere because of their bodies and their bodily performance. Breastfeeding mothers are necessarily embodied: because newborns nurse at least every two to three hours, breastfeeding mothers cannot abstract away from their bodies to a public demeanor in which “mind alone matters” (Brown Reference Brown, Scott and Keates2005, 27). Because of this, breastfeeding mothers cannot practice their breastfeeding while abiding by the norms of the public; it is quite simply impossible to act bodiless or to act male or bodiless while breastfeeding.

These “publics”—“the public sphere,” “public breastfeeding,” “public norms,” etc.—do not refer to exactly the same concepts. I use the phrase “public sphere” to indicate norm-governed spaces, activities, and deliberations that are open and available to all. The public sphere thus comprises a family of “publics”: public space, public norms, public deliberation, being “out in public,” the workplace.Footnote ⁵ The “public” of public breastfeeding, on the other hand, generally refers to breastfeeding that occurs in the presence of other people, usually but not always outside of the home. Public breastfeeding can take place in spaces that are usually designated as private: homes of friends or even one's own home, depending on who is present. Feminist thinkers have urged us to remember this complex nature of public and private; Susan Gal, for example, argues that the public/private dichotomy is a fractal relationship. Public and private “can be projected onto different social objects—activities, identities, institutions, spaces, and interactions—that can be further categorized into public and private parts” (Gal Reference Gal, Scott and Keates2005, 265). This sense of the concept of “public” is distinct from the public sphere of, say, Habermas or from narrowly political conceptions of what defines “public.” The “public” of public breastfeeding, in fact, often refers to spaces such as the mall, the park, or restaurants—not places traditionally thought of as sites of public political importance. But, as feminists have maintained, women cannot be conceived as equal peers in political and other important contexts if they are not treated as equals in the mall, the park, or restaurants—they cannot be equal participants in public deliberation and government if they cannot take up space in public without difficulty, if their concerns are chastised as being “inappropriate” for public forums. To create a context in which women (lactating or not) are equal participants in all sorts of publics, female and maternal embodiments must be normalized. Absent this, even nonlactating women are disadvantaged on the basis of their potential maternity or their potential lactation.

We have seen that breastfeeding mothers do not conform to public norms; a result of this is that a sizable proportion of people are unsupportive of and uncomfortable with public breastfeeding. In 2011, a population-based public opinion telephone survey asked New York City residents whether they agreed with the statement “Mothers who breastfeed should do so in private places only.” More than half, 50.4%, agreed (Mulready-Ward and Hackett Reference Mulready-Ward and Hackett2014, 196–97). An unscientific survey in 2011 revealed that 44% of women report discomfort when they see a woman breastfeed in public, with 10% choosing the response “Ewwwww, in private please!” (TheBump.com and Breastfeeding.com 2011).

Public discomfort with breastfeeding creates a context in which women are regularly, if not frequently, asked to leave public places or to cover themselves when breastfeeding their children. And because mothers hear stories about women being antagonized for breastfeeding in public, they anticipate hostility and change the way they navigate public space. “There is a perception of a hostile public environment,” notes Cindy Stearns, so “women proceed with their breastfeeding as if it were deviant behavior occurring within a potentially hostile environment” (Reference Stearns1999, 312). They are well aware that their feeding decisions and the manner in which they undertake them will be subject to public scrutiny.

Breastfeeding mothers today generally possess official access to the public sphere through legal protection; for example, laws in 49 states allow breastfeeding mothers to nurse their babies in any public or private location, and laws in 29 states specifically exempt breastfeeding mothers from public indecency laws (NCSL 2015). North Carolina General Statute §14-190.9 (1993) provides that “notwithstanding any other provision of law, a woman may breast feed in any public or private location where she is otherwise authorized to be, irrespective of whether the nipple of the mother's breast is uncovered during or incidental to the breast feeding” (NCSL 2015). But breastfeeding mothers are still subject to censure in public. I turn next to an examination of why breastfeeding evokes such intense reactions from onlookers in public: namely, because breastfeeding exposes women to the indignity of being manifestly sexual beings and because breastfeeding evokes awkward discomfort and disgust in others.

Groups whose difference is rooted in sexuality are often subject to public shame. Warner, analyzing the experience of queer people and queer identity groups, claims that public shame is imposed on anyone whose sexuality is predominant, noting how hard it is to “assert any dignity when you stand exposed as a sexual being” (Reference Warner1999, 21). Thus, while the public sphere discounts and disadvantages all actors who do not conform to the norm of the ideal public actor, the worst treatment is reserved for those actors whose difference is rooted in bodies and sexuality. Breastfeeding mothers are pushed down what Warner calls the social “hierarchy of shame” by the disapproval, indignation, and moral righteousness of others. The politics of shame is not always overt but also involves “silent inequalities, unintended effects of isolation, and the lack of public access” (Warner Reference Warner1999, 7). This insidious unequal treatment constitutes a fundamentally unequal experience of public life. Warner argues that in a context of “sexual domination, publicness will feel like exposure, and privacy will feel like the closet” (Reference Warner2002, 52). That is, norms of sexuality and the politics of shame deprive groups that are defined by sexuality, including breastfeeding mothers, of the experience of free and equal publicness and privacy, distorting their experience of public and private space.

But even bystanders who are not consciously inflicting shame on breastfeeding mothers can contribute to their unequal position; in fact, the awkwardness that most people feel in public upon witnessing a breastfeeding mother can affect the mother's experience of public space. She is subject to the gaze, she feels visible (or invisible) and vulnerable. Bystanders do not know what public norms demand, in large part because breastfeeding has been increasing over the past decades and, therefore, most people were not socialized to witness public breastfeeding. The situation is marked by social awkwardness. This awkwardness is understandable, but from the perspective of mothers, this means that when they are lucky enough not to experience outright hostility, a barrage of awkward encounters defines their experience of public space.

Relatedly, a disadvantaged place in the public sphere is reserved for those who evoke not just discomfort but disgust, whether or not the disgust stems from a voluntary act. Some (although clearly not all) people respond to the sight of a mother breastfeeding with disgust, as evidenced by the 10% of women who responded to the question about breastfeeding in public with the choice “Ewwwww, in private please!” As Miller describes in The Anatomy of Disgust, the disgusting is a moral and social sentiment that operates to hierarchize; disgust “ranks people and things in a kind of cosmic ordering” (Reference Miller1997, 2). Fewer people respond to the sight of breastfeeding with disgust than with discomfort (it is not as if people vomit at the sight). But an exploration of the disgust response, and of the political theory of disgust, is helpful here in elucidating the culture of both discomfort and disgust. So why would the sight of breastfeeding evoke disgust in others?

Miller presents four main points about the content of the disgusting. First, at the most basic level, the disgusting is likely to be the human, the body. Skin can “disgust as well as titillate,” especially if the bearer of the skin is female and immodest (Reference Miller1997, 53). “There is nothing,” says Miller, “quite like skin gone bad; it is in fact the marrings of skin which make up much of the substance of the ugly and monstrous” (52). Second, Miller notes that the disgusting is often related to orifices, breaks in the seal of the skin, and those things that confuse “the boundaries of the self” (50). A third main category of disgust is evoked by fertility: “What disgusts, startlingly, is the capacity for life … The generator of disgust is generation itself, surfeit, excess of ripeness” (40, 42). Finally, disgust is evoked by things that defy expectations in the social order: “Disgust,” Miller says, “tends to focus its moral work on moral issues that involve the body… . those bodily failings which indicate insufficient attention to the duty to make the social order as uneventful as it can be” (205). On this basis, “any serious breach of norms of modesty, dignity-maintenance, and self-presentability can be disgusting to behold” (80). These four main categories define the characteristics of the disgusting; when confronted with one of these disgusting objects, the universal response is a desire “to have the offending item removed” (25).

With Miller's explication of the disgusting in place, it becomes easy to understand why breastfeeding has the potential to disgust. Breastfeeding mothers are showing skin in a culturally unacceptable way; they are challenging boundaries of the self and reminding us of orifices and of the exchange of bodily fluid; they are evoking images of ripeness, fertility, and excess; and they are defying expectations and disrupting the social order. They are challenging norms of sexuality and evoking deep, if misguided, fears about the sexualization of children.

Breastfeeding and breast milk are sometimes even treated as dangerous or contaminating. Recall this instance of the pop culture trope: in Look Who's Talking, John Travolta's character accidentally consumes breast milk. When informed, he spits it out dramatically. In scenes like this, breast milk is treated in a manner that would generally be reserved for poison or urine. Indeed, public breastfeeding is often likened to public sex, public masturbation, or public elimination. Ken Schram, a news reporter for Komo News 4 in Seattle, Washington, expounds: “It's natural. Well, so is urinating, but most folks don't up and pee in a glass jar in the middle of the mall.”Footnote ⁶ Because public elimination, most basically, constitutes a public health hazard and public breastfeeding does not, the likening of public breastfeeding to public elimination assigns a malignancy to breast milk that has no basis in fact.

Of course, breastfeeding imagery is also evocative of the heavenly, the pure, the angelic. But if American culture simply viewed public breastfeeding as a present-day incarnation of Leonardo da Vinci's Madonna Litta, the disdainful public treatment of breastfeeding mothers today would be a puzzle indeed. Nonlactating breasts that are displayed in a heterosexually available way are prized, not disdained. Even among lactating breasts, there is a hierarchy of shame. Women with larger breasts and those nursing older children bear a larger burden of shame, as do those whose lactation intersects with other forms of difference, such as race, disability, homosexuality, or nonconforming gender presentation. Women who are conventionally attractive are likely to be perceived as being hypersexual while breastfeeding or as flaunting their breastfeeding. So while lactating breasts generally fit into Miller's definition of “skin gone bad,” some lactating breasts go worse than others. The breasts of the Madonna feeding the infant Jesus do not qualify in our cultural consciousness as “bad,” although most terrestrial lactating breasts in public are deviant to some degree.

MORAL EQUALITY AND DISGUST

A problem, then: how can the liberal ideal of moral equality coexist with a public sphere that interprets certain groups of people, such as breastfeeding mothers, as discomforting, disgusting, or out of place? Liberalism is tempted to declare victory once public rights are secured, absent considerations of the lived experience of oppressed groups navigating cultural norms. But cultural norms, which are intertwined with the politics of shame and the politics of disgust, discipline norm-defying actors, threatening their equality, autonomy, and ability to lead authentic lives. In this section, I focus on thinkers who discuss “disgust” rather than “discomfort”—both of which are at play in the case of public breastfeeding. This discussion of the concept of disgust, however, is relevant even to cases of mere discomfort.

A conservative approach to this puzzle is to reject the idea that moral equality must be sought for groups who evoke disgust in others; conservative Leon Kass argues for the “wisdom of repugnance,” claiming that disgust is a sentiment that should be respected. “Revulsion is not an argument; and some of yesterday's repugnances are today calmly accepted—though, one must add, not always for the better. In crucial cases, however, repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it” (Kass Reference Kass1997, 20). In this formulation, it is easy to see how a bystander's disgust at the sight of a woman breastfeeding could be taken as evidence of the act's impropriety, and indeed even as grounds for her removal. But Kass is right to point out that revulsion is not an argument. Indeed, although there is some extent to which disgust operates at a universal human level (there seems to be a universal disgust with feces and incest, notwithstanding the fetishization of “disgusting” objects), the specific content of the disgusting is subject to cultural context (Miller Reference Miller1997, 15).Footnote ⁷

In contrast with Kass's un-nuanced argument, liberals attempt to wrestle with the problem of discomforting or disgusting groups but often encounter trouble of their own. Indeed, the problem of disgust is implicit throughout much of the liberal canon. Mill's On Liberty is devoted to discovering when society is justified in restricting the liberty of others, whether by law or by norms. In many ways, On Liberty is an eloquent defense of the importance of difference, and therefore it has direct implications for the question of dealing with difference based in discomfort or disgust; to wit, “the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service” (Mill [1859] Reference Mill1998, 74). To protect difference (or “eccentricity”), Mill proposes the harm principle: that the “only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others … . In things which do not primarily concern others, individuality should assert itself” (14, 63). That is, when an action does not harm others, it is permissible. Moreover, Mill's is a fairly circumscribed notion of “harm”: the “mere displeasure” of others does not itself constitute a harm (70). There are some, says Mill, who “consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings … . But there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it” (93). These people, offended in their distaste, impute “moral delinquency” to what is uncustomary; they “teach that things are right because they are right; because we feel them to be so” (76, 93). Mill demands that liberals guard against this situation. Distaste, says Mill, is not a reason for prohibition.

Mill, though, admits of certain restrictions on liberty that diminish his claims about the importance of difference. Mill says, for example, that “the fool,” as long as his or her actions do not harm another, should not be denied liberty but that social sanctions, the “natural consequence of his faults” may be “very severe” ([1859] Reference Mill1998, 86). The fool is marked by “lowness or depravation of taste,” “want of personal dignity and self-respect,” or “defect of prudence”; he or she compels us to judge and evokes distaste in others (85–87). Certainly Mill did not intend these passages to be wielded against breastfeeding mothers, but it is notable that the descriptions he provides seem easily applicable to mothers who breastfeed in public and to other groups that suffer from intolerance in public space. Breastfeeding mothers in public are routinely accused of lacking dignity, self-respect, and modesty. Mill's canonical position on liberty admits that certain people may suffer “severe” consequences on the basis of actions that harm no one. Moreover, it seems likely that dominant groups are those empowered to define “the fool.” Why is the case of the fool not just another case in which “mere displeasure” does not constitute harm? This is a problem for the liberal ideals of equality and autonomy and may have wide-ranging effects for norm-defying groups.

Miller takes disgust more seriously as a political problem, arguing that disgust is a “powerful anti-democratic force, subverting the minimal demands for tolerance” (Reference Miller1997, 206). Miller explores the problem of equality and disgust at length in a chapter on George Orwell's socialism. Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, discusses frankly his experience as a middle-class social reformer, experiencing disgust toward those beneath him whom he would like to help. Orwell claims that the basis of class inequality is that the bourgeois “cannot without a hard effort think of a working man as his equal. It is summed up in four frightful words … The lower classes smell” (Miller Reference Miller1997, 240). The problem of disgust, for Miller, is that rational desire is often overcome by the senses: by the physical manifestation of the disgust response. So, concludes Miller, disgust “works against ideas of equality” (251).

Nussbaum (Reference Nussbaum2004), following the general line of thought in Mill and in Miller, explores the role of discomfort and disgust in the law in Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law. Because of the hierarchizing effects of disgust, Nussbaum argues that “the cognitive content of disgust is deeply problematic … and its social operation poses dangers to a just society” (70). Indeed, she argues that disgust cannot be a basis for law or public policy. Nussbaum argues for a modified Millian harm principle focusing on actual harm done for and refusing to consider disgust as “harmful” merely because it causes displeasure. Nussbaum discusses alleged cases of “disgust-as-harm” but shows that even in these cases, disgust is not the relevant criterion for legal impermissibility—a person's disgust cannot be a “legally salient factor” in a liberal society (163). Disgusting actions cannot be banned because they are disgusting; they can be banned only if they are shown to produce harm. If a disgusting action causes harm, it can be banned on the basis of that harm rather than on the basis of the disgust. I follow Nussbaum's formulation of the harm principle; indeed, it is imperative because, as we have seen, the social operation of disgust is fundamentally illiberal.

From this theoretical foundation, it is clear that the content of the disgusting is socially constructed within the context of the oppression of women, queer people, people of color, and disabled people. This forges the disgusting into a sword that can be wielded against oppressed groups with the moral superiority and sure-footedness of natural, universal law. Because of this, the conceptualization of public and private spheres absent domination and oppression must use as its “starting point of departure the perspective of those at the bottom of the scale of respectability” (Warner Reference Warner1999, xi). The experience of breastfeeding mothers and of others who evoke disgust (or who evoke the less intense response of discomfort) is therefore of primary importance in conceptualizing ideal manifestations of public and private spheres. The goal is to create a public sphere marked by equality and autonomy in which disgust and discomfort no longer distort people's experience of public space (Warner Reference Warner1999, 39).

IN PUBLIC WITH THE BREAST

In order to theorize the ideal of an equal and autonomous public sphere, we must understand the current lived experience of breastfeeding mothers; how exactly do breastfeeding mothers today encounter oppression in the public sphere? I identify three responses of breastfeeding mothers to their poor fit in the public sphere. The first is exclusion, through which mothers are removed from the public sphere and public visibility despite their legal right to be there. The second is accommodation, through which mothers discipline or manage their own behavior in order to accommodate their deviance within the norms of the public. The third is affirmation, through which a small portion of mothers challenge the norms excluding them.

Exclusion is a response in which the mother either removes herself from the public sphere for breastfeeding or in which the mother is functionally excluded from the public sphere to do so. The logic of exclusion maintains public-space-as-usual. The most basic form of the logic of exclusion occurs when a mother decides to stay home or leaves the public sphere when her baby gets hungry. Stearns, in a series of interviews with women about their experience breastfeeding, found that many “went to great lengths to make sure that they were not seen breastfeeding outside their homes. Women would nurse in department store dressing rooms and cars” (Reference Stearns1999, 314). In this view, public life is antithetical to the enactment of breastfeeding.

Because of this, many liberal feminists and others have advocated for lactation rooms in public places, special private rooms in which women can comfortably breastfeed their babies out of sight. Lactation rooms are found in public places such as malls, museums, and churches.Footnote ⁸ I argue that the rise of nonworkplace lactation rooms is a form of exclusion masquerading behind a benevolent veneer. That is, while lactation rooms provide choice to breastfeeding mothers, they provide choice within a public context of discomfort and disgust. Many mothers have reasons for wanting to breastfeed in private, whether it is because their baby is too distractible to nurse in public or because they have other children and need an enclosed space. Lactation rooms provide choice, but it is worth noting that the beneficiary is not just the mother but also the bystanders who no longer have to see her breastfeeding. As Alison Bartlett notes, some “women would no doubt be grateful for such consideration, saved from the hostile public gaze. But I feel insulted, being locked away out of sight” (Reference Bartlett2000, 181). Lactation rooms offer the appearance of deep care for breastfeeding mothers but functionally isolate and remove women from the public sphere. Moreover, lactation rooms deny women the one publicly acceptable reason for feeding in public: that it is necessary for their babies. If feeding in private is available, women who want to feed in public without being excluded or isolated have no publicly acceptable excuse for doing so.Footnote ⁹ Thus, the “choice” that the lactation room provides actually operates to restrict choice by defining the appropriate place for the activity. In this definition of the appropriate place, lactation rooms function to “conceal the lactating body from the public eye” (Lane Reference Lane2014, 204), allowing the public once again to forget that breastfeeding mothers exist and have needs. In an ideal context, lactation rooms would provide women with welcome choice; in cultural context, however, and especially to the extent that they render public breastfeeding even less acceptable, they are troublesome.

Accommodation, on the other hand, occurs when mothers breastfeed in public in a way that attempts to abide by the norms of the public sphere. While some people think breastfeeding in public is never acceptable, others believe breastfeeding in public is acceptable if the mother enacts a requisite set of accommodations. The most common qualification placed on women's public breastfeeding is discretion. Discretion—the demand to hide the act from view—“is how the contradiction between the intimacy of breastfeeding and the antithetical ideals of public space” are reconciled (Lane Reference Lane2014, 202). The discretion of the accommodating breastfeeding mother takes two forms: invisibility and signals of apology.

Many women attempt to be invisible while breastfeeding—that is, they attempt to pass as if they are not breastfeeding (Stearns Reference Stearns1999, 313). In order to approximate invisibility, mothers engage in a number of practices, such as wearing special clothing or nursing the baby in a carrier. Women frequently “speak with pride about no one even knowing what they were doing, when, in fact, they were really breastfeeding” (Stearns Reference Stearns1999, 313). The goal of invisibility has political implications—unsurprisingly, invisibility. To achieve invisibility, the mother must go out of her way not to draw attention to herself. In this way, the goal of invisibility forces the mother out of active participation in public life. Mothers need not always pursue active participation in public life, but it is key that they retain the ability to do so; invisibility precludes the ability to be an active participant. Moreover, if she is successful in achieving invisibility, the outcome of her success is to reinforce the idea that the public sphere is a disembodied place and to render maternity politically invisible.

When invisibility is not possible, accommodating breastfeeding mothers enact what Lane calls a signal of apology: “The performance of public breastfeeding must involve some sort of gesture or form of bodily comportment that will convey to others the mother's modesty” (Reference Lane2014, 203). A signal of apology can include wearing a nursing cover or blanket over the baby, ending conversation, averting eyes, or stepping back (Lane Reference Lane2014, 203).

In recent years, it has become commonplace to buy a specialized nursing cover rather than to cover with a blanket. The nursing cover considers the comfort of others while discounting the comfort of the mother and the baby: Stearns finds that many women will use a cover even if they worry that it is unsafe for the baby because of extremely hot conditions (Reference Stearns1999, 313).Footnote ¹⁰ These covers, which look like large tents, have rigid material that keeps the top open so the mother can gaze at her nursing baby even while covered. It is notable that in promotional materials for nursing covers, the mother is generally looking lovingly at her baby rather than engaged with the outside world. The culture of the nursing cover in this way reinforces the split between motherhood and publicness—while the mother is breastfeeding she is engaged in breastfeeding, not with the wider world. She is passive, not active.

The signals of apology of accommodating breastfeeding mothers are the dunce caps or scarlet letters of the public sphere. Women are made to apologize for being in public, for being women, for choosing to breastfeed. It is an enactment of inequality. Accommodating breastfeeding mothers, although they remain in public, are functionally excluded from active public life. Breastfeeding that is practiced in this way maintains the norms of the public sphere by reinforcing the split between embodied activities and public participation, between motherhood and active public life. The onus here is firmly on the mother to take into account the discomfort of others rather than the comfort of her and her baby.

It is important to note that my argument does not imply that women who exclude themselves, use lactation rooms, accommodate the public norms, or otherwise discipline their own breastfeeding are doing anything wrong or blameworthy. On an individual basis, given the constraints, these actions are understandable. My argument should not be construed as saying that the desire to breastfeed in private is itself blameworthy or necessarily evidence of false consciousness.

The third response of breastfeeding mothers to the poor fit between breastfeeding and the norms of the public is affirmation. Unlike exclusion and accommodation, affirmation represents a challenge by breastfeeding mothers to the norms excluding them. A mother who reacts to the poor fit between breastfeeding and the public sphere through affirmation refuses to accommodate the norms of the public, does not attempt to be invisible, and does not enact signals of apology. She is often subject to censure, the severity of which depends on context. Others often describe the way in which these mothers perform public breastfeeding using the phrases “whip it out” and “flashing.” “Well, you just don't want to whip it out in public—you know, whip your boobs out for everyone to see,” says one of the mothers Lane interviews (Reference Lane2014, 207). The phrases “whip it out” and “flashing” are notable because they indicate that the mother is transgressing norms of sexuality (showing her breast, at least for a moment while the baby latches).

Women who engage in this type of breastfeeding are not engaging in gratuitous nudity or flaunting anything. In fact, affirmation may often look similar to invisible accommodating breastfeeding—the difference is found in the intention and actions of the mother while doing it, not in the amount of skin she is showing. What is so transgressive about the affirming breastfeeding mother is that she insists on breastfeeding in public in a way that rejects public norms. Affirming breastfeeding mothers refuse to ignore their own desires—for comfort, for participation, or for equality. They could meet their babies’ nutritional needs through exclusion or accommodation, but they do not. Affirmation also actively challenges the politics of shame and disgust that marginalize breastfeeding women as described by Warner (Reference Warner1999): affirming breastfeeding mothers may or may not be immune to the pangs of shame that occur when treated as an object of contempt in public, but they have made a decision to privilege their own desires above the comfort of others, to demand equal treatment, and to remain in the public sphere.

Although much affirmation is not explicitly political, it can be: nurse-ins have become a commonplace protest against institutions that discriminate against breastfeeding mothers. In these protests, many mothers gather and occupy a space while nursing their babies. These protests are effective because they make visible what was invisible and because they explicitly challenge the split between maternal practices and public life. Here are mothers engaged in a female caregiving activity that, when done together, constitutes a political act. Nurse-ins are one of the most tangible ways that mothers have been agitating to challenge the norms excluding women from full inclusion in public life.

Breastfeeding that is enacted as an affirmation challenges norms that would exclude breastfeeding mothers. Affirming breastfeeding challenges public-space-as-usual, making visible the embodied aspects of women's lives. Affirming breastfeeding stands as a counterfriction to the politics of shame and disgust that operate to rank and to disempower norm-defying actors. It is also true, though, that affirming breastfeeding relies on a good deal of privilege. Mothers whose breastfeeding intersects with other forms of difference would experience more public backlash against affirmative nursing than would normative, attractive, heterosexual mothers. Some mothers are in a better position to practice affirmative breastfeeding than others.

Will affirmative breastfeeding make others uncomfortable? Probably. As we have seen, discomfort and disgust are often implicated in public breastfeeding. Miller writes that the disgusting “force[s] us to look and notice, or to suffer self-consciousness about not looking or not not looking” (Reference Miller1997, 82). What does respect demand? There is no answer to fit all occasions, but in an ideal society we should like to see others treat a breastfeeding mother as a fully human actor—one who is entitled to embrace in public all parts of her human life—not as someone who is temporarily circumscribed into a realm of invisibility. In the next section, I turn to the theory of an ideal equal and autonomous public sphere.

EQUAL AND AUTONOMOUS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES

If breastfeeding mothers and other norm-defying actors experience marginalization in the public sphere, the question is how an ideal public could espouse equality and autonomy. The goal is not equal access to the ability to act like the normative actor but rather true equality as the ability to experience public space, to participate in public life, and to opt for privacy while fully experiencing one's difference. What is needed is an ideal in which “publicness and privacy [are] equally accessible to all” (Warner Reference Warner2002, 21). As discussed earlier, I agree with Nussbaum that the first requirement is that it is impermissible to prohibit acts on the basis of the disgust or discomfort of onlookers; that is, any discomfort or disgust onlookers feel at seeing public breastfeeding does not constitute harm. But legal permissibility (the right to breastfeed in public) is not enough. An equal and autonomous public sphere must achieve more than legal access; in this section, I argue that this ideal has three main features.

The first feature of an equal and autonomous public sphere is that every person must be able to occupy public space and the public sphere while embracing all significant aspects of their identity. Thus, demands for actors to cover or to tone down their difference would not be tolerated.Footnote ¹¹ Individuals are empowered to define what aspects of their lives are significant to their expression. As Iris Marion Young puts it, the ideal of the public must include “persons stand[ing] forth with their differences acknowledged and respected, though perhaps not completely understood, by others” (Reference Young1990, 119). Breastfeeding mothers would not need to exclude themselves from the public sphere, to discipline their own breastfeeding, or to offer signals of apology for their difference. They would have the ability to participate actively in all public life, even if a baby is along for the ride, nursing.Footnote ¹² The ability to experience life in the public sphere would not hinge on the ability to act like the ideal public actor.

The second feature of an equal and autonomous public sphere is that the comfort of others cannot weigh more than an individual's own needs in public. A breastfeeding mother may reasonably take into account any number of social factors in her decisions about how to undertake her public breastfeeding. But it is problematic if the needs and comfort of others become the primary factors under consideration. It is even more problematic if her own desires and needs and the needs of her baby are actively denied to preserve the comfort of others. What must be avoided are cases like the one Stearns (Reference Stearns1999) found, in which women use nursing covers even though they worry that the cover is endangering their babies in extreme heat.

The third feature of an equal and autonomous public sphere involves the ability to leave the public sphere—all people must be able to opt for privacy in a way that does not entail invisibility or coerced exclusion. Some women may continue to prefer to breastfeed in relatively more private places. Some women may not be comfortable baring their breast, or they may not be comfortable doing so because of the specific people they happen to be in public with. Moreover, many babies go through phases of being too distractible to nurse in public and may require privacy in order to feed. This is the definition of “autonomy”—that women can freely choose how and where to enact their breastfeeding.

How can we safeguard women's ability to opt for privacy in an autonomous way? A liberal scheme must allow women the ability to make choice for privacy without second-guessing those choices. We must keep in mind Young's definition of privacy as “an aspect of his or her life and activity that any individual has a right to exclude others from. I mean here to emphasize the direction of agency, as the individual withdrawing rather than being kept out” (Young Reference Young and Landes1998, 441). The important characteristic of autonomous privacy is that it is distinct from invisibility. The problem is that in the context of an unjust reality, we cannot assume that women's desire to breastfeed privately is an exercise of autonomy.Footnote ¹³ Breastfeeding mothers have not been equal partners in the construction of the norms that regulate public breastfeeding; the choices women make about public breastfeeding are constrained within the current, unequal context. Today, “the carefully managed and often secretive nature of much breastfeeding reveals volumes about women's status” (Stearns Reference Stearns1999, 322). But in a context of equal and autonomous public and private spheres, the use of lactation rooms, for example, can be considered unproblematic. The key difference is that privacy should be privileged, but invisibility should be guarded against.

At this point in the argument, it is necessary to consider whether the ideal I have defended is generalizable beyond the case of breastfeeding in public. I take it to apply fairly easily to the cases of queer people, disabled people, and people of color in the public sphere. But what about cases that moral intuition may deem impermissible, such as public nudity or public sex? I have no firm conclusion about these cases, but, like Nussbaum, I insist that the permissibility of these behaviors must not hinge on the disgust or discomfort they evoke, or on custom, but on evidence of harm. It is certain, as my argument shows, that disgust and discomfort are used to marginalize and to oppress. Prohibition of these acts would have to hinge on clear, demonstrable harm. Nussbaum applies her theory to the case of public nudity:

What is key is that argumentation must not admit disgust or discomfort as harm; discussion must focus on harm done, not on the fact that some people experience discomfort.