Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Cracked comment on coworkers breastfeeding

Today's another Carnival of Breastfeeding, but I'm not participating in this one because I was so out of it until recently that I didn't check the due dates. But I'll still link to it here, and I encourage you to read all the participants' posts.

The theme this month is humor in breastfeeding, so here's my own little post for the day. Just be aware that this is not a carnival-authorized post! :)

Sam enjoys the humor website Cracked.com and often directs me to hilarious posts. Today he found one that would be pertinent to my blog (actually, both my blogs):

9 Islamic Fatwas We Can Get Behind

Scroll down to the bottom and read "#1. THOU SHALT be breastfed by your female coworker, and call her Mommy." Keep in mind that Cracked is a humor site, so we can go to the source they cite and read the cleric's reasoning:

"In Islamic tradition, breast-feeding establishes a degree of maternal relation, even if a woman nurses a child who is not biologically hers. It means the child could not marry the nursing woman's biological children. Attiya ... argued that if a man nursed from a co-worker, it would establish a family bond between them and allow the two to work side-by-side without raising suspicion of an illicit sexual relation."

Well, there you go.

Now, the cleric is facing discplinary hearings, so don't take this as Islam's final word on the subject. It does parallel other cultures' take on wet nursing, however, that children of a wet nurse are generally considered "milk siblings" of her own children, and it would be incestuous and forbidden for them to marry.

Anyway, my favorite quote from the Cracked article:

"America's paradoxical fascination with--and aversion to--the breast has a long and sordid history. We don't care to relate that story here, but suffice it to say Janet Jackson, Pamela Anderson and Howard 'Man-boobs' Taft figure prominently. What better way to get over our North American prudishness and breast-obsession with one fell swoop, than state-mandated suckling at the teats of our coworkers?"

Well put.

0 comments:

Related Posts with Thumbnails