something unsettling from nonpunish.net

[satsuma]

I was enjoying reading Parenting without Punishing, especially the family stories he shared, when I arrive to chapter 10, the one with the most graphic and gratuitous descriptions of parenting practices in the past and most societies, with an obsessed description of sexual practices that I find unnecessary.

The most appalling one bit is when he writes about New Guinea mothers:
"Their mothers too, readily and commonly prey upon their children for sexual satisfaction, having begun with orgasmic pleasure experienced while breastfeeding".

I find it shocking he would blame breastfeeding for mothers turning sexual abusive. Does he have this stance towards breastfeedind in general?

[PancakeGoddess]

I haven't read the book, but to me that statement doesn't sound like the bfing is to blame - only the context for the sexual abuse.

That said, I can't imagine getting orgasmic pleasure from bfnig without some other stimulation going on. and, ew.

[Mizelenius]

How very, very odd. I can't imagine (as you said) what that has to do with the rest of the book????

[Ravin]

I would be very wary of any book that makes absolute moral judgements about other cultures. Don't get me wrong, I think there are somethings that should perhaps be considered as moral absolutes. But when coming from a Judeo-Christian background, one can all too easily misunderstand what was actually going on, as well as judging differing sexual mores from the standpoint of Western ideas of shame, privacy, and the exclusivity of appropriate sexual behavior to certain proscribed situations.

[flyingspaghettimama]

Originally Posted by Ravin

I would be very wary of any book that makes absolute moral judgements about other cultures. Don't get me wrong, I think there are somethings that should perhaps be considered as moral absolutes. But when coming from a Judeo-Christian background, one can all too easily misunderstand what was actually going on, as well as judging differing sexual mores from the standpoint of Western ideas of shame, privacy, and the exclusivity of appropriate sexual behavior to certain proscribed situations.

And I would add that I think it's unfortunately common (don't flame me) to back up an opinion using first peoples/native peoples as examples of whatever childrearing practice a person likes/finds offensive. There are probably as many examples of harsh childrearing as compassionate; but these are labels we apply based upon our cultural lens and understanding. In any case, it gives me the willies to think about a whole class of people being labeled sexual predators right from breastfeeding days in rather generic terms (i.e. what does he mean by orgasmic - a modern-day anthropologist would describe what behavior he's seeing and not ascribe pejorative labels to the behavior - maybe he does this later?). Many anthropologists until the latter 20th century did operate predominantly from a very Western locus of understanding with little concern for subjective/objective methods.

Margaret Mead infamously completely misunderstood the tribes she was studying (i.e. the sexual license) when people later found out that the teens supposedly having a lot of sex were just telling her stories and not the truth. So I think there's a lot of nuance lost when a person is not a native language speaker and/or just cross-cultural communication barriers.