Author Virginia Blackburn has come in for some severe criticism online after she spoke out against breastfeeding in public, comparing the maternal act to anti-social behavior such as urinating in a public place.
Appearing on ITV’s This Morning show, Blackburn responded to a story about a woman being asked to leave a public swimming pool because she attempted to breastfeed her child.
“If you are in a public place, it’s not something that you necessarily want to see, and the very fact that it happens so often, that complaints are made, shows I’m not exactly alone in thinking this,” the author of several celebrity biographies argued.
“It’s on a level with urinating in the street. You have a path that leads to increasingly anti-social behaviour and I’d say it’s on that path,” she added.
Blackburn also said that although breastfeeding is natural, there are many bodily functions that people do not carry out in public. She elaborated on her point in a piece in Express.
“Why should you suddenly and unexpectedly be forced to get an eyeful of some stranger’s secondary genitalia – because that is what breasts are – when you’re minding your own business on the bus or in this recent case, the swimming pool? This has always been the accepted norm – always,” she wrote.
The writer’s comments sparked a flood of reaction on social media, with numerous people expressing anger at her comparison.
There were some, however, who tweeted in support of breastfeeding, but not at a public swimming pool.
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