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Issues: Live porn aboard an economy train?’

Mon, 10/26/2009 1:52 PM

One day last week I took the train, economy-class, from Sawah Besar in Central Jakarta to Depok in West Java. It was 11:30 a.m., the sun was beating down and it was hot, all the train passengers were sweating heavily in the airless carriage.

I was standing near two mothers sat with their babies aged about 12-18 months old, who were enjoying the breeze coming in through the carriage windows. Twenty minutes went by, it was getting hotter, and one of the toddlers, looking tired, started crying.

The wailing baby grasped her mother*s shirt and tugged, fussing and wriggling, throwing her body from right to left in her mother’s arms. Maybe because of the hot weather, or due to hunger, or tiredness. (Written by Mayasari Oey, Jakarta)

Your comments:
I disagree. People disagree with this article because of the content of the article that implies breastfeeding is porn. Come on, even the title shows that Mayasari’s opinion of breastfeeding in public is porn. It’s as simple as that.

Ryan Octavianus
Jakarta

Breastfeeding is not porn. People should be more mature about this kind of thing. The men surrounding the mother breast-feeding her baby are a group who haven’t grown up yet.

Angga B. P.
Yogyakarta

This doesn’t make sense. You have failed to think about this topic seriously. Please read more books about children’s development.

Leli
Jakarta

It is very difficult for me to understand why there is a lot of fuss about breastfeeding. Mothers are breastfeeding their babies everywhere and nobody really cares.

Why can’t she just ask the men to look the other way if she is disturbed by their glances.

The ones who exploit the situation are the ones who blush, but definitely not a mother taking care of her baby.

Markus
Surheim, Germany

Mayasari Oey, I know your article was supposed to be slightly tongue-in-cheek, but what it does is to highlight the common lack of understanding here about what porn really is. Even politicians can’t seem to grasp it properly (no pun intended).

A quick check on Wikipedia would help those confused as to the meaning. “Porn is the depiction of explicit sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual excitement.”

Using this definition and applying it to the content of your article suggests you feel a breastfeeding mother can be considered sexually exciting to others.

I am surprised you would continue to stare at the woman, along with the men, and then suggest that everybody else would do the same had they been there. Well, no, actually – most decent individuals would have looked away and afforded the mother some privacy.

There is something sacred and special about the mother/baby bond – to try and link the natural act of breastfeeding to pornography defies belief.

Simon
Surabaya

Anyone who feels offended must have missed the point of the story completely. This story is a really great way to show the paradoxical law in Indonesia, in terms of both religious and government law.

I am not a woman, so I found myself intrigued when Mayasari posed the question of, to paraphrase, “What if you were put in the position as such?”

It’s not as simple as saying that the ability to breastfeed is God’s given (which is absolutely true), but the situation should make us think about the relation between religious law, government law, a person’s perception of the laws.

Interesting read.

Mil
Melbourne

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Let’s forget for a minute that the structure of this article gives you no idea what situation actually took place. Out of context, the subject makes itself known as “women breastfeeding on a public train somewhere in Indonesia.” The comments that follow are mostly close-minded opinions of the naturalistic point of view. The final comment is agreeable, stating the nature of the culture in Indonesia and how it creates a paradoxical view of public breastfeeding.

Ringing the “immaturity” bell is a quick decision when it comes to this particular topic. Especially in an area of the world that sees pornography in such a negative light. The question i would pose as a rebuttal to the notion of immaturity is, “How would you expect a man to perceive the same woman, with her breast out, without a baby?” Just because the breast is revealed for a certain non-sexual purpose, does not mean it’s not a breast. If you are asking men to repress thousands of years of primal sexual instinct, then you may as well ask them to undergo child birth. Both have about the same probability of coming true.

Do i personally find the act of breastfeeding sexual, no. If i were to simply stare, blank faced, at the women in question…would I be perceived as immature and deviant as well? Most likely, yes. Should I be? I don’t believe so. Public situations such as this can be seen almost identically to saying anything on a public internet forum. By choosing to conduct such an act in public, you inherently invite the public’s reaction to you. Expecting the world to react as you would in any situation is the immaturity that takes place.

Of course you are going to have immature people on a train! It’s as random and public of a setting that you can find anywhere. Thinking you are safe from immaturity on a train is just as bad as a gambling addict’s rationale for believing he’s going to “hit it big” on the next card. Women should not be deprived of the choice to do so if they feel necessary, but people should not be deprived of their personal feelings in a breastfeeding woman’s vicinity either. It’s funny that I have to state such a thing that way, considering that depriving a person of their personal feelings is impossible anyway.

Granted, I understand that this editorial is based on western thinking and not from an Indonesian’s point of view. Although, the comments above are also most certainly based on western thinking…and it is them to which I am reacting.