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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