🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <53tm42$p1l@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>, Debbie O'Leary
<doleary@falstaff.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote:

> jam81@columbia.edu (Jake Minas) wrote:
> >In article <53m9sr$pft@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>, Debbie O'Leary
> ><doleary@falstaff.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote:

> >> You teach law or you are studying to be a lawyer? Either way, I'm 
> >> surprised with the logical leap you just took here. 
> >> Debbie
> >
> >Its easy to make snotty comments, but if this is such a "logical leap,"
> >surely you can point to the hole in my analogy. 
> 
> I really thought you would be able to figure it out after you reread the 
> posts. Sorry, I'll be more specific. 

Oh, great.  Please enlighten me.  I am obviously awed by your analytical skills.
 
> Poster 1 favors that
> >public breastfeeding be prohibited, curtailed, or regulated.  Poster 2
> >claims that anyone who proposes that must have some sort of fetish for
> >breastfeeding, children, or something.  The principal poster 2 seems to be
> >articulating is that if you propose the public display of some act, you
> >must find that act to be sexually arousing. 
> 
> Historically breasts have had a dual purpose, unlike feces. They have 
> been used for feeding babies and they are also an erogenous zone -- like 
> the neck. Feces doesn't historically have a sexual purpose (at least not 
> for mainstream society).

That depends on how you phrase the question.  Actually the analogy is
misplaced.  You mix the product of the act in one case (feces) with the
organ that delivers the product of the second place (mammaries).  People's
backsides are just as much erogenous zones as women's mammaries are.  If
one includes the entire "butt" as well as the muscle ring through which
the feces passes.  Unless you want to argue that Sir Mix-A-Lot's hit
"Baby's Got Back" is about something else than sex.  

And I'll alter the hypothetical to fit whatever new objections you throw
in my way in a more obvious way.  If society favors bans on public
urination, even bans on public urination which does not raise public
health concerns (e.g. public urinating in a jar), is society rife with a
sexual fetish for urine?  Since genitals are "dual purpose," have been
used for evacuating liquid waste and as sex organs.

>  Therefore, I say, it should
> >follow that if the vast majority of Americans favor the banning of public
> >defecation, said vast majority should be coprophiles.
> 
> There are many acts that are banned in our country, to now include 
> smoking in some restaurants. It doesn't automatically follow that because 
> some people find smoking foul, they must be sexually aroused by it.

Uhh...that's the point that I was making.  Thanks for agreeing with me,
especially after acting like such a brat.    That just because someone
favors banning an act, someone does not necessarily find that act sexually
arousing.
 
>   Unless you think
> >that people only oppose defecation as a sewage issue (think: would it be
> >okay with the Joe Sixpack if I were to walk down the street and shit in a
> >jar?), the analogy fits.
> 
> Just gross -- smell, sight. No smell to breastfeeding, but if you find 
> the sight of breastfeeding gross, then we may need to ask Dr. Freud about 
> that one. ;)

Again why?  I surely find it a little gross.  Not as gross as defecation
but a little yucky.  But definitely as something that I think should not,
if it can be avoided, done in public.  Not that I'd necessarily ban it. 
Now go psychoanalyze me all you want.  But if you are going to do so, I
expect you go into a little more depth than just some cheeky back-handed
remarks.

> >Poster 2's claim strikes me as patently silly.  The only reason that I
> >responded to it was the visciousness of the ad hominem, essentially a
> >claim that poster 1 is some sort of sex criminal.  Such accusations are
> >serious and should not be made lightly.  It was highly uncalled for.
> 
> You might think so, but I think it needs to be discussed and the 
> possibilities explored why women and children are being forced to conform 
> to some societal standard that doesn't fit in with our biology.

Ok, you apparently like this stupid game.  If you want "possibilities
explored" why don't we discuss your apparent felt need to demonize your
opponents?  Between you and b@bb.net, it shows that there is plenty of
this on your side of the table.  And your cutesy little condescensing
attitude.  It's all the product of a highly arrogant and true-believing
mind which equates disagreement with your argument with mental illness. 
Therefore, it surely goes to the credibility of your argument, the reasons
why you take the position you do.

And I find this "forced to conform to some societal standard that doesn't
fit in with our biology" to be, alternately, horseshit or vacuous.  You,
and many others, equate bans on public breastfeeding with outright bans on
breastfeeding accross the board.  Try as hard as you want, the former does
not equal the latter.  The fact that breastfeeding is a "normal" bodily
function which women with children need to do periodically does nothing to
help.  Again, evacuation of bodily waste is something everyone needs to do
occasionally.  Now, does that means that bans on such evacuation in
public, even bans on such public evacuation in a sanitary fashion, are
situations where everyone is "being forced to conform to some societal
standard that doesn't fit with our biology?"

-- 
Jake Minas
Columbia Law School
jam81@columbia.edu