The breastfeeding incident: teaching and learning through transgression

Abstract

The authors describe what happened when feminist teaching came head to breast with mothering. The authors' attempt to impact student responses to feminist theorizing in a third‐year social psychology class met with transgressions when a colleague, who had been invited as a guest‐lecturer to speak about social structure and violence against women, brought her three‐year‐old and five‐month‐old sons with her. During her presentation, when her youngest child started to fuss she breastfed him while she lectured. What followed in later class discussions informed the students about their own contradictory investments in dominant discourses, and informed the authors that a breastfeeding feminist university teacher represents transgressions in the academy. The authors discovered through a reflective and layered analysis of the incident that the breastfeeding feminist university teacher is subjected, not merely to a ‘chilly climate’ or an intellectualized ‘symbolic violence’, but, tersely—to violence—because she is a woman who is also an academic.

We all agreed that it was empowering for us to see the image of Mavis [our guest‐lecturer] as a mother, academic and breadwinner. We were given the image of a woman who had conquered all of the domains of life. Yet, when she began to breastfeed some in our group expressed being uncomfortable with the amalgamation of her domestic and scholarly identities. (Comment, written by a student, about ‘the breastfeeding incident’ [also cited in Langan & Davidson 2005, p. 141].)

Notes

Thanks to Dr Mavis Morton for allowing us to share this story.