A couple of days ago I watched the tail-end of a Twitter dust-up between a young man and some lactivists that I follow regarding breastfeeding in public (hereafter known as NIP). The tweets got so tense I responded viscerally just from watching the exchange (you know those tight-in-the-chest, tingly arm, itchy finger, head-in-a-vice-ready-to-explode, Oh-no-you-didn’t-just-say!! feelings). The logical fallacies – OH! the logical fallacies just about took my breath away! The ignorant disdain of NIP, conflation of the function of breast and penis, as well as child abuse and feeding your child were really hard to watch.
I had two or three tweets typed out (I kept backspacing) that I was able to prevent myself from adding to the situation and stirring the pot.
What held me back? Part of it was my desire not to have nuker-style posts associated with my Twitter account. Part of it was my assumption that nothing I had to say, even if I could have found a reasonable tone, would have made a difference to this particular guy. Mostly though it was my monitoring of what I was thinking as I was reading the antagonists tweets and the assumptions exposed in the snarky rejoinders rocketing around in my head. This guy wasn’t really saying anything new. It was the same old tropes about NIP regurgitated by a young-than-me male. My responses to him were all about his age and gender (and some blatant privilege) rather than the verbal crap spilling from his lips.
So I sat on my fingers until they hurt and directed the few tweets I did make to the lactivists rather than engaging directly in the dust-up.
What do you do when you see breastfeeding issues being thrashed out on twitter or in message board communities? Do you sit on your fingers? Cheer on the gladiators? Join in the fracas?
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