[lbo-talk] Breast milk ice cream...

[Mark Bennett]

No, I wasn't referring to rich women, who obviously don't need the money and
want little to do with breast-feeding.  I mean just ordinary working class
and professional women.  Although it is becoming more common, breast-feeding
was uncommon for decades in the U.S. (I've read that this to attributable to
Spock's influential book, which recommended against it.  I don't know if
that is accurate.)  It took state and federal legislation to make
breast-feeding in public legal, fairly recent legislation, and I believe a
few states still prohibit it.  I've known very few women who breast-fed
their babies. It was always the bottle and formula.  Does lactation stop if
the breast milk is artificially removed?  In either event, I agree that this
is a nauseating "innovation".

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 3:45 PM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:


> Historically, rich women have refused to breast-feed, getting peasant
> wet-nurses to do the job instead. This is because breast-feeding is held to
> be animal-like, and because it supposedly causes breasts to sag. So your
> hypothetical makes no sense. If rich women refused to breast feed it's
> because they would not want the bother of lactation and would want the
> process to stop ASAP. It does after about a week of non-use. Moreover, they
> do not need the money.
>
> There's no question that the poor sell themselves piecemeal to survive and
> have been doing so for a long time. This story just struck me as a
> particularly stark example. The only thing more nauseating than the story
> were the accompanying comments, which praised the entrepreneurship of the
> ice cream shop.
>
> How good the milk is has a lot to do with the mother's state of health and
> state of mind. The processes you mention, would of course make it less
> healthy.
>
> Joanna
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Bennett" <bennett.mab at gmail.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 2:47:41 PM
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Breast milk ice cream...
>
> The Swiftian connection indeed clear here, but poor folks have been selling
> their blood for decades, women have been selling their hair for even
> longer,
> prostitutes have been selling their bodies more or less forever, and
> virtually all of us sell, or rent, ourselves to our employers, so one more
> ingenious means of exploiting the exploitable is mere piling on by now.
> Wouldn't much of this milk come from relatively affluent women who don't
> breast feed anyway?  And why would human breast milk be uniquely healthy
> once it is put to commercial use?  I would suspect the pasteurization and
> refinement of the product to make it safe for all would destroy many of its
> uniquely beneficial properties.  I'm still waiting for the implementation
> of
> the proposal that I read about in Fast Company at the height of the
> dot.comboom and during the heyday of Enron: The commodification of the
> individual
> by allowing her or him to to sell shares in themselves.  It's bound to
> happen.
>
> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 12:57 PM, <dperrin at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > A breast milk farm would be interesting to see. Clearly, the milk givers
> > would be from the poverty/working class. A new form of exploitation --
> and
> > healthy for you too!
> >
> > Dennis
> > ___________________________________
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> >
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