Gilda

Breast milk can be bottled and fed to the baby that way, and many women do use a breast pump for that purpose. The milk is a lot like any other; it goes bad rather quickly outside the body if not refrigerated.

A woman's breasts have two biological functions: Feeding a child, and giving her sexual pleasure. In that sense, they are secondary sexual organs. I count myself among those for whom observing a nice set of breasts is sexually stimulating, but when a woman takes out her breast to feed a child, she clearly isn't doing it for a sexual purpose, so the sexual function is

The argument isn't just that breast feeding should be allowed in public because "it's natural". There's a bit being left off of the end to avoid redundancy. Breast feeding should be allowed in public because it's the natural way for a baby to eat. We have different standards of behavior for babies and adults. Babies are allowed to eat and eliminate in public. You want an analogy to a man urinating? Put a diaper on him, and allow him to pee in it, and you have one.

The analogy also breaks down when you consider that the penis is a primary sexual organ. It has three biological functions: Urination, providing the man with sexual pleasure, and delivering sperm. For this to be analogous, the woman would have to be exposing her vagina to breast feed; she isn't.

The problem with finding an analogy here is that there isn't any analogous male behavior. Breast feeding a baby is an activity unique to women*. You can't say "If women are allowed to breast feed, men should be allowed to X" because there is no male equivalent.

That said, breast feeding should be treated like any other public behavior. There are polite and impolite ways to eat in a restaurant. We remove hats and close umbrellas upon entering. We use silverware instead of our hands. We wipe our faces with a napkin, eat with our mouths closed, cover our mouths to burp. Breast feeding should be no different; it should be done discretely when in the presence of others.

*It is technically possible to induce lactation in a male. Men have all of the same equipment in their breasts as women, mammary glands and milk ducts and so forth; they just don't become developed in the absence of the female hormones progesterone (primarily) and estradiol (secondarily). Post-hysterectomy adoptive mothers, MTF transsexuals, and even normal males have all be able to produce breast milk, although (in that order) in a lesser volume and with less nutritional value than that of a woman who has recently given birth or a wet nurse (a woman can maintain her milk indefinitely after giving birth so long as she's continually nursing or pumping).

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