>> and to me this is really interesting because i feel like nudging raises all kinds of really interesting questions when you look at it through the lens of race baiting advocacy. the first question might be what

counts as a nudge in who gets to decide what to nudge, and what is more like a shaman to kick. it occurs to me that what week is doing by withholding food from women who are already at nutrition risk and babies at nutritional risk, that doesn't seem so much like a nudge to me. as a matter fact sunstein doesn't study can want i don't know if he would think that was a nudge, but i think for the government wic probably thinks it's a nudge. at any rate it would make you think you need to think carefully about what counts as a nudge. then the second question i think breast-feeding advocacy this whole story raises is, should we worry when nudge is don't just target particular behaviors? the behavior of people randomly scattered across society but instead these nudges

consistently seem to target particular categories of people. the third question, this is something we could get a handle on it if we could get a hold of sunstein's data come is to look at what is the demographic differences. so is it the case that african-americans are as inclined to accept or endorse government nudges as white americans might be? or is it the case of poor people would accept them as much as wealthy people might be? is it the case that people have a different answer when they are thinking the government may be going to nudge me, or is the government going to a nudge all those other people that are surrounding me who have bad behavior but i will not be nudged, right? it raises all of these questions about, i think it forces us or

ought to force us, it got to convince us to sort of look carefully at what really are reasonable nudges to embrace. and finally i want to close with another thought that links back to this idea of a public health issue. since the 1970s or so, united states public health in the united states has focused increasing attention on individual behaviors as the cause of adult. first it was smoking, then unsafe sex. around this time, around the time this all started in 1975, the "chicago tribune" offered the opinion that the idea of preventive medicine was quote faintly un-american. because it means recognizing the enemy is us. it's faintly un-american because it means recognizing that the enemy is us. it occurred to me that, in fact, the idea is profoundly american.

it extends the horatio alger story from wealth to help. we all have the potential to be healthy, we just need to work at it, exercise the mora moral fortitude. we need to pull ourselves up by the bootstrap and we will succeed. so this is privatizing responsibility for health. i think this is another way in which breast-feeding fits conveniently into an american health paradigm that increasingly blamed individuals themselves for poor health outcomes, and for the soaring cost of american health care. but it's not just a matter of blaming individuals, the point i was making before. when we blame individual lifestyle choices for the crisis of american health care, we are not only blaming random unhealthy individuals in our

society, we are consistently blaming some category of people. the unsafe sex, for example, is associated with th gay men, prostitutes and iv drug users. smoking is more prevalent among people who are poor. obesity is more prevalent among people who are african-american. and the failure to breast-feed is the failure of women, but not all women. women who are poor, african-american, unmarried, and women who are young. p. so the deal with breast-feeding is basically that it is practically perfect in the sense that it serves so many purposes in the united states today. for all kinds of people it stands as a marker of who we are and what we believe him. for a fast-growing, breast-feeding accessories support and supplements market, it is a huge source, it is a

source of huge mostly untapped potential profit. the demographic and social distribution of breast feeders shores of many of the divisions and hierarchies that have long characterized american life. and breast-feeding privatizes responsibility for health. blaming mothers not only for infant infections but for cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, asthma, allergies. pretty much any condition that their children may get over the course of an entire lifetime. and that, my friends, is the deal with breast-feeding. thank you. [applause] >> and now she will comment on my book. >> it's a tough act to follow, but i am really happy to be back

at the new school. above all, back to with my dear friend and former colleague, courtney, talking about her book "lactivism." so first i want to say that this book has been ditched courtney. it is brilliantly argued. it has are characteristics tone. it's often hilarious, and i have really enjoyed reading it. they are are going to be three parts to my comments are unlikely to speak for more than 10 or 15 minutes so that were. i'm a first go to talk about what it because of the strength of the book. then i'll make a couple remarks about areas where i thought the book was ambivalent or needing some approved by what i just to make two points about a bigger picture of the broader replication or how we think about gender equality. so first i think that the book, and she didn't mention all of it today but the book does a real demolition job of extremists in

a way that's reminiscent of jimi's book, why we lost the era. it shows that single-minded overcommitted activists can end up undermining their own cause because they are so kind and tolerant and ideological. the second thing is it sort of brilliantly analyzes and traces the evolution of breast-feeding, which means breast baby into breast milk feeding, which he did talk about today, the of the pump. she also also for policymakers and the business interests who would seemingly make motherhood compatible with working via pumping without any change to the structural conditions of the policy framework. the second to last point,

courtney shows the way that breast-feeding is just the tip of the iceberg. the breast-feeding is here but underneath a water of the iceberg it's a whole package of agendas, worldviews, ideologies. so people are investing the humanly active breast-feeding with so much more than just the way to the children. i think today she succeeded in mapping out what those agendas and actors are. and, finally, on a personal note i think that this book has succeeded in calling out people, including myself, who have looked down on and felt superior to other women who are not breast-feeding or not breast-feeding as well. i am actually grateful to courtney for staying the hand in that kind of behavior. so what are some of the ambulances? courtney says -- ambivalence is.

this is a book about lactivism, that she is a problem with lactivism, not with breast-feeding. so lactivism is a social movement and a political project. rossini is the humanly practice that has sustained the human race as long as we've been around. but at times in the book there is a conflatioconflatio n or a slippage of lactivism and breast-feeding. i think perhaps as a consequence of the slippage, i'm not going to be so anal and go and point out the passages but we can do that later. perhaps the consequence of the slippage as points court and the has a tendency to blame breast-feeding for a series of social ills that are not breast-feeding fold. in political science terms would say she exaggerates the causal

power of breast-feeding. so harassment of women in the workplace, women who want to take time off to pump or women who are exposing a breast in a closet. i don't think that is the fault of breast-feeding. i think that's the fault of sexism and generally supported position of women in the workplace more broadly. i think that the marginalization, the subjugation and the targeting of african-american women is not the fault of breast-feeding, but is a response to serve pervasive racism and breast-feeding is a vehicle to further racism. women leaving the workforce is not the fault of breast-feeding but another symptom of pervasive gender inequality. and even the kind of competition, judgment and shimmy, women that i even admittedly been guilty of. i don't think that's the fault of breast-feeding but rather breast-feeding is just a vehicle to express that kind of

competitive behavior and shaming. the next ambivalence that want to mention is that especially in courtney's critique of the science there is a presumption or a portrayal of parenting decision as a cost-benefit calculation. the formula is sitting right there but if i breast-feed now, i'm going to be one-sixth of my way towards one fewer infections, or i'm going to be like have an iq point higher. and that's, that's not the way i ever made any parenting decisions. they were actually never responding to a cost-benefit calculation about the relative payoff of certain types of behavior. for me it was kind of about instinct and survival. the other thing i think it was an ambivalence in and i didn't

recognize myself in some of the description of people who breast it is that i didn't feel at least the beginning like i was breast-feeding to advance an agenda, such as tb green, to be feminist, to oppose corporate control. i felt like i was breast-feeding because that's what m he wanted and needed. further on down the road yes maybe i put it to use other agendas but i think many people in daily life are not making cost-benefit calculations. they're not furthering the agenda. they are just doing. i'm going to wrap up and a couple minutes here, some broader reflections. i think that the question that courtney is addressing and that she calls it the moral fervor, but how about all the discussion and debate even the book is provoking? hundreds of comments on the "new york times" webpage. lots of colors, lots of action

on twitter, even people responding to my facebook page. why are so many people be worked up about this? what he does give us an answer. she says that people with diverse agendas have a lot invested in breast-feeding. the discussion is quite polarized. breast-feed, formula feed. good parent, grandparent. what is largely absent in this discourse are the voices of actual women who are ambivalent, who are through trial and error, there are diverse experiences, their own i don't want to say something about their own, the nature and the self understanding of, i don't even want to call them choices because choices are so rational, what the instinctual behavior

out there followed when it comes to parenting. i think if we listen to these voices it would be hard for us to degenerate into a polarized debate about breast-feeding, formalized. it would be much more richly complicated. i think when we think about why there's a debate at all and what the debate is like, it's important we see this as another reflection of the gender inequality. that women's voices, often even in this book, are not the most prominent when it comes to talking about breast-feeding. there are male scientist, male policymakers. that's a reflection of a society that continues to subjugate women. if women were speaking about breast-feeding i think the debate would be different. just finally what about gender equality anyway? let me juxtapose sort of divisions or two models of how

to achieve it. on the one hand, we have the kind of liberal individual choice model for what nancy fraser is characterizing as mainstream feminism. to having adult feminism. that to be like successful, to be a fully realized woman who's having adult we need to be ceo or president. we need to be fully present in the public sphere like men are, kind of unburdened or unattached to accessories. accessories, meaning screaming children, aging parents, et cetera. formula feeding is conducive to this type of feminism. it presumes i can outsource or delegate the care of my baby to someone who's going to feed formula. that's one model. an alternative model is one that makes humanly ties of dependency, caregiving roles, intimate human relationships,

chaos, competition. actually central to our normative conception of the actor in the public sphere, of a politician, of the ceo, of the worker. i think in this model the public sphere is defined by and includes receiving. in fact, i think breast-feeding is a good teacher for this model. it teaches us that life is unpredictable because we can't control things, that it's messy. and i think, therefore, and i believe in breast-feeding as a mechanism to be masculinized the public sphere but i'm grateful to courtney for teaching me that it is not the only mechanism may not even be the best mechanism. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, mala. we are going to take questions. [inaudible]

>> -the key difference, so the differences between the united states and other advanced western democracies, the difference is in breast-feeding initiation and duration are actually not all that stark. one difference that you could point you would be between the united states and canada in canada you have an 89% initiation rate. in the united states the initiation rate is 79%. in the united states at the six months, 49% of women are breast-feeding and in canada 52% of women are still breast-feeding. so the numbers are fairly comparable but the huge difference between canada and the united states of course is that women, women have maternity

leave in canada. so women can make a choice more freely about works for them because they have the time and the space to breast-feed, if they choose to. so although the are breast-feeding advocacy programs and projects in canada, they are not as draconian as they are in the united states. it's not about withholding food from people who don't breast-feed. it's just sort of advertising in the subways or something like that. because instead they have maternity leave and that maternity leave does make it a lot easier for women to actually, for women to be supported if, in fact, they do decide to breast-feed. and, of course, as i'm sure you know, the united states is one of only four countries in the world that has a federally

mandated paid maternity leave. the others are swaziland and papua, new guinea, and somewhere else. >> i'm interested in coming to talk about the research from the pump companies another promoted their way of thinking and the way, in terms of natural breast-feeding. i'm curious of any kind of research that is being done on the form aside. with nestlé so blown up by the 1950s movement, they just never got on the bandwagon begin. it would seem to me this is all good conversation, but somebody on the other side would be, whoever we paid the million dollar to, that they would actually promote a research study of their own.

>> so they were partly completely blown up by nestlé. nestlé and abbott and other formerly companies, they are not sponsoring studies on breast-feeding or infant feeding because those studies would be roundly dismissed. since the op-ed was published in the "new york times," a number of people have written to me and accused me of being funded by formula companies. the idea of having researched wanted by formula companies if something can't be done. which is not to say that formula companies are not still making a lot of money in the infant feeding sector. said at the breast pump industry is $2.6 billion annually, the

formula industry is $7 billion annually. i expect the breast pump industry is, it's set to take off. its highest growth areas of the world is asia. it's actively marketing, aggressively marketing in asia. and so it's not, 2.6 billion, $7 billion, there's a vast difference but it's not completely apples and oranges. the breast pump market really is something. so what point do companies are doing now, they were definitely sat back on their heels all of this advocacy a red breast-feeding. what they are doing now is basically creating new products for niche markets that they are creating. so it's follow on formula for when you weeding, as if there's a particular food that your baby needs for when it weans. and there's formula specifically geared for your two year old.

so they're trying, they are inventing all of these new categories and they're selling products in those categories, and that's how they are remaining competitive. >> was a fascinating exchange. i haven't read the book yet. i heard you on the news this month i just know so i feel i possess a certain outline you. i didn't hear it how -- compress it is the cause of all this. i thought more of a symptom in the way in which inequality is managed, and you could take it another 10 possible instances, manipulation. i just think it's an instance of how these things are done. how you can, i mean, that women who are forced to use formula, women who are forced not to use formula. the fact that the store is very

complicated and better than progressive moments for each side in a way, but i think the absence of women's voices is partly to do with the fact that store your telling us about, you know, the silencing of the complexity and ambiguity. i can imagine a feminist position which doesn't exist here that talks about better conditions for breast-feeding, you know, maternity leave, a number of things you need. in order to make this work for you in the complex life you have, which i think, you know, i'll unequal women are is partly due to the maneuverability have. but it's in your discussion and also in mala's, if

breast-feeding is the key thing, that's in, out, up, down, then disappear, and then disappear from the discussion. it's fascinating to me that people who have written about how inequality cannot be achieved without men taking real central fundamental charge of children along with women. and lots of feminists are ambivalent about the. think about all the women who say he can't do it. only i can do it. there's this huge number of places where people don't want to hear about this. this is women's fear, women's bodies. i think you could easily configure a feminists position that says what ever one of these decisions you are making, issue

would be, arguably sharing the domestic work? because inequality is deeply embedded in the lack of sharing a domestic work, and in the break between public and private space. so that the meat is where it happens. how it's reproduced. so i love your argument because i think it shows the lack of leverage about with the changing the conditions under which women do these things. the up and put down, just shows you the weakness of women's control over any of these situations. i guess mala's final point, inequality. a lot of my students did a study of male breast-feeding. why do men have nipples?

and he said he studied them that were manually breast-fed, you know, the woman in the class got terribly upset. here they are appropriating everything. and i was fascinated. i'm not advocating that men should necessary take on breast-feeding but i do think men should take on early care of children, and that's a very fundamental feminist value of mind. so, you know i guess i just opened it all up. i value this pandora's box. >> you could respond. >> i think there's a good discussion so let's gather u a viewpoint from the audience and then she can respond. i might have something to say, too. >> mine is very quick. first of all thank you. i haven't read the book. i may change my mind about my own expense of breast-feeding. one of the things i did not see

eye to also read in the "new york times" article was the question about the benefits of breast-feeding not for the child but for the mom. so arguments about how it reduces the risk of breast cancer and also may help you in depression, postpartum depression at all that. such as what you're your thoughts on that. >> thank you so much for this. i thought it was excellent. i have two comments for discussion. one was noting among the group this is scoffing notion that the idea of masculine breast-feeding and the kind of dovetails on utilizing breast-feeding as a way to the masculine eyes. if it is a shortsighted goal. one that is inherently --

catechesis and a focus trajectory for feminism so open that up. i think it's a great point and additionally that quick distinction, mala, in your commentary about our we utilizing breast-feeding, are we kind of conflating it as the problem as opposed to a symptom are merely as an active? i guess i'm wondering what anyone thinks outcome is that possible? can you separate the fleshy bits out from the process? so maybe it's not actually that problematic to really retake breast-feeding in the way it is picked up, like a giddy just a quote-unquote weapon to harm women with or to judge women

with if it is literally part of the body. it's kind of complicating that i guess. >> we can come back to you. >> i was sort of surprised. i was expecting mala to bite you on the science, but she didn't. she told me at lunch i couldn't -- spirit she told at lunch i couldn't. [laughter] >> i have to say i don't know if that's where the conversation is. but i'm really surprised that -- has not only do they cost, maybe i'm just trying to justify that i carry that stupid pump for a year. tell me something this valuable about doing that.

>> don't judge other women. >> my second question is really, like so why, it's debbie mitchell, it's like universal. i want to ask you also international question, but sort of, i think it's a very good argument for the u.s., but when you translate these two different world where people didn't have the money to buy the formula. i wonder if there is still a value on the public policy of just supporting breast-feeding so we don't repeat all the things you say, judy, people actually using dirty water. there is other conditions in which maybe these arguments will be different.

>> judith. no, you. you are the one. >> i also want to go to the international ocean as well, and i was thinking, courtney and i share an interest in mexico where breast-feeding is very dominant in rural areas. and where, in fact, diabetes is a very high in the same rural areas. i think about comparative research. as anybody could look at that? you mentioned several times today that one of these diseases you are preventing by having breast-feeding is to be diabetes. you mentioned, again i want to tear on face what are you dismissing office research, i thought perhaps this is a perfectly good example of why the research may be problematic. so i just throw that out.

>> do you want to respond now and then we can take another round after? >> yeah. i think, i mean, a lot of what people have said is not think i necessarily want to respond to. they are just interesting comment, good food for thought. i do want to respond to the question, that's a really, it is a puzzle, right? what's going on there? the fact is that there actually is not a consensus among doctors about the benefits of breast-feeding. and so it's presented as if they're sort of a hegemonic consensus on the benefits of

breast-feeding, but just for example, since i wrote that op-ed in the "new york times" i have received many, many e-mails from doctors, including from family practitioners in maine to former deans of medical schools who have said to me, you are exactly right, this is exactly the breast-feeding literature shows, and you a great very, very for pointing it out, and you'll be accused of being funded by formula companies. pediatricians, i mentioned this in my book, pediatricians and particular get demonized by lactation consultants. lactation consultants and breast-feeding advocates always say the pediatricians don't have the right training and they just don't understand how poor and breast feeding is. and pediatricians, on the other hand, say i am responsible for

the care of this one particular child. pediatricians are actually quite quick to say, you need to move on from breast-feeding. you need to start eating your baby formula because your baby is failing to thrive. you are not producing enough breast milk, et cetera, et cetera. for doctors who are actually taking care of patients in the real world have much more ambivalent feelings about breast-feeding that the public health advocates who are making breast-feeding policies. those public health advocates, here's where, this is what their position is. their position is, those modest benefits that you get from reducing the risk of infection are actually important on a population wide level. said dr. david myers, a director for the agency for health care research and quality says it's

six women breast-feed exclusively for six months they will avert want your infection that one of those children otherwise would have gotten. as far as dr. david mayors is concerned, that's great. that is a very powerful intervention. but he, when he read the op-ed in the "new york times," reporter called him, ma the reporter said what you think about this? and he said this just makes my job a whole lot harder. because i didn't quote those numbers for mothers to be hearing. i was talking to doctors who understand what that means as a public health initiative only public health intervention. and his position was, what he said then was, even if the benefits are modest, why wouldn't we try to achieve them? so he is acknowledging that benefits are modest and sang why wouldn't we try to achieve them? he said this and it's out in the

public sphere now because i read it in an article. and what he's doing when using even if the benefits are modest, why would we try to achieve them, he is admitting that benefits are modest anti-stopping any attention at all to the high costs that are being paid by trying to achieve them. the very, very high costs that mothers are imposing on themselves and that we as a society are imposing on mothers in order to achieve these very, very modest benefits in reducing your infections. chances are you're not going to reduce and their infection after all child would've had figure reducing someone else's to eliminating some else's ear infection which is what i said i'm really sorry about that year of pumping. i could talk about the international angle. okay.

the last chapter of my book is about the international dimension of this story which, of course, is partly the nestlé story. we are partly in the 1970s in poor countries around the world, and in those countries breast-feeding advocacy is still an important public health project. in those, and many of those countries, formula feeding is not actually a safe alternative, where as in the united states formula feeding is a safe alternative, a very safe alternative. in a lot of poor a lot of poor countries form the feeding is not a safe alternative. but in the 1970s, in the early 1980s breast-feeding advocates were sort of, took up this, took up this idea, took up this project and international public health organizations like the w.h.o. and unicef team convinced that breast-feeding was the

solution to many problems in developing countries. so they invested a lot of money in breast-feeding advocacy and support programs, a very large proportion of their funding was reinvested into breast-feeding advocacy and support. they hired a lot of breast-feeding advocates and lactation consultants and very important positions in the w.h.o. that was in the early 1980s. i passed the code of marketing, there was a declaration from lots of things going on. it was like the heyday of international breast-feeding advocacy. in 1985 it was published the first evidence of that breast-feeding, that hiv could be transmitted to breast-feeding and through breast milk. in 1985 when they publish that information the united states, canada, new zealand, australia and all of western europe

immediately change their infant guidelines. the w.h.o. did not. they continue to recommend that all mothers should breast-feed regardless of whether they were hiv-positive or not. in 1992, dawn published a very important matter analysis that revealed not only that breast-feeding was a transmitter of hiv by contact how large a transmitter of hiv it was. so as a result of that, people learned that up to 40% of babies who are infected with hiv are infected through breast-feeding. so 40% of the babies who were infected with hiv were infected with breast-feeding. from 1985 when the information was first revealed that, when

the information was first revealed that hiv could be transmitted through breast milk, and to making 98, the w.h.o. continued to recommend that all mothers breast-feed, regardless of their hiv status. at the 1998, as a result of tremendous pressure and push back from health ministers in poor countries, the w.h.o. finally changed its infant feeding guideline, recommended that mothers who are hiv-positive should feed their babies formula, and initiated huge programs in poor countries are facing people in to teach people how to use formula safely. they sent in formula, they sent in a lot of formula that was already mixed, that was already liquid formula and they started giving away formula to mothers who are hiv-positive.

that was in 1998. then there's a whole back story that has to do aids the nihilists which i will spare you right now. ever come to 2010. so in 1998 this is an enormous setback for the breast-feeding advocates who have been fighting against this very transition in infant feeding guidelines for 13 years they have been fighting against this. it finally happens. it's a big setback and then they fight for the next 12 years to get the guidelines changed again. because they are worried, and they say this out loud, they fear that hiv is a threat to breast-feeding advocacy. a threat of hiv as a threat to breast-feeding advocacy. i'm sorry, i just had to say that again. so in 2010 the w.h.o. issued new

infant feeding guidelines. listen carefully to what these infant feeding guidelines are. in countries where formula is safe and affordable, women were hiv-positive should be advised to feed their babies formula. when mothers have access to antiretrovirals and the babies have access to antiretrovirals, women should be advised to proceed, it has antiretrovirals reduces the likelihood that you will pass hiv to your babies. the reason i said listen to this closely and you will realize that this leaves an enormous hole right in the middle where women who did not live in countries where formula feeding isn't safe alternative and affordable alternative, and women who do not have access to antiretrovirals, bright, experts estimate in africa, and africa

as a whole, 37, only 30% of 37% of pregnant women who are hiv-positive have access to a arby's. 63% of hiv-positive pregnant women in africa the estimate have access to a or b. which of those women be advised to do with the w.h.o. now recommends since 2010 that if a mother is hiv positive, even if she has no access to antiretrovirals, she should be advised to breast-feed her baby. so there's a huge competition to the old story that we are familiar with about the valley of breast-feeding in poor countries.

>> does anybody have a question on this particular topic? >> behind the pole on a different topic. topic. >> i want to address some of the previous topics, that needed a pause to draw a response. but i just wanted to briefly touch upon your questions. the extent to which the quality depends on sort of a reallocation of domestic responsibilities, particularly on me and taking care of children. i know people, and i know people who from uphold the idea of equality and equal sharing and, therefore, it is also, therefore they do some pumping and then make a point of having a bottle and then the other parent, the non-lactating parent, will also become whether it's in the middle of the night to give a break or during the day, so forth. courtney and i have shared a

good laugh together because we never do this. i have been a committed feminist virtually my entire life but i've never done that. it just seemed very contrived to me. the ec's thing was to just stick your breast in the baby's mouth and it will shut up, right? we didn't do that but i know a lot of people who do. and i think the broader point for me anyway is that i think having three children, and this bottle experience of birth, breast-feeding was a real challenge to me as sort of an equal rights feminist and equality families. it really threw me for a loop and caused me to reconsider or reconstruct my notion of feminism. i will say i am much more sort of biological basis, rather, i think at the time i started reading maloy, about what is a

woman. she teaches us i think in that text that it's okay to embrace biology and bottling us -- bodily miss, so the body doesn't have to determine your lot in life but what you do with the body of the body also doesn't need to be denied either. it doesn't need to be denied because it could jeopardize sort of equal participation or equal treatment now, so i've been trying to construct and think of a feminism that sort of incorporates the unique nature of the reproductive functions of the woman's body, including lactation and, therefore, i'm really interested in kind of reconstructing the public sphere about what i think are universal values of lactation, potential universal values. i'm saying this to incorporate, i don't think, and maybe

trans-exclusionary. i don't think it is trans-phobic con fmap the same thing in your view. but to reconstruct the public sphere, but i think should be universally revered and practice values sort of biology, dependency, chaos, attachment, that i feel like it has been kind of the public sphere has been alienated in sort of bled dry of those types of practices. >> you are being too literal. in no way -- >> i know, i know. >> i bring a pleasure because i know a lot of women who -- >> that's what i mean. it's ambivalent. >> to me men taking very primary care doesn't require breast-feeding or not at all. that's not the point. the point is really that these

questions never -- never included discussion about what -- summary. what egalitarian reorganization, not only of space advocates to do what where and everything but also of the light trajectory. why not take the year off and proceed come and demand also can take paternal leave. people in different stages in life might really need to withdraw from the daily grind. the discussion of pleasure is so far away from, or displeasure, so far away from the analytical question. and yet i think they should be folded in. i don't want to see choice because we know where that leads us. i choose to breast-feed and i choose not to breast-feed, just that horrible, every woman on her own.

no big social change but just a personal choice. i don't even want to use the word choice but one would like there to be a range of possible behaviors and support for them. one good thing about the league, there are renters, the rhetoric was a renters. i'm sure that's a funny part of your book. one great thing was they said no one is helping women. >> i was a member. >> i used to think, even though their pronatalist and was like, i thought the thing about the league that was moving was, they said let's help women. i think that's a feminist thing. >> yes. >> part of what i hear in courtney's work, the coldness of the manipulation, the lack of

embedded, embedded stuff that you want. i don't think it's breast-feeding i don't think she's blaming breast-feeding for all these terrible things that's happening. >> todd. [inaudible] >> hold it. >> three to one basically in support of your position. most of the that support was cog from people who have felt put upon by the activists. so that spoke to the huge silent majority who needed to be able to discuss this. are you hoping for specific

policy change to support these people? they obviously need it. >> well, no. i'm hoping for a policy change that is maternity leave. but that's not necessarily supporting the women who are feeling put upon. a policy change like maternity leave would allow women who want to breast-feed to do it in, to actually breast-feed, not to have to pump breast milk so that someone else can feed their baby breast milk from a bottle. so that's the policy change that i am interested in. i also would like to turn one to change its policies. i'd like to see the enhanced the package -- wic change its policy. and for the coercive mechanism that specifically geared toward inducing for people to choose

breast-feeding. i'd like to see that illuminated. what i'm really hoping for more fundamentally i think, at i think what a lot of those women were saying, that they are not necessarily experiencing that shaming that's coming from on top, from policy. it's coming from everywhere. it's social. if we change the conversation and we sort of start to look at what we are actually doing, and also i think if you look at it as something that's actually bigger than the mommy wars, i think this has long been dismissed by identifying it as an issue that is just about mommy wars. and so even call it that is very dismissive. it's just sort of what these mothers do because they are so jealous and angry with one another. if you look at it as something that goes far beyond the mommy

wars that has all of these larger implications and that is, that's insidious in these many ways, it would change the conversation. a lot of, the way i read or heard a lot of the comments that i have received is it's a conversation that needs to change and there were hoping your book will do some of that work in changing the conversation. >> anymore comments? i think we are over. >> i really enjoyed the talk. i think it's very eye opening and very educational about the history. >> i can hardly hear you. >> okay. >> thank you. >> i enjoyed your doctor i thought it was interesting. i agree with point you're making i don't think i would say anything with which you would disagree if i were to say, we

know why things hashed out this way, whether you breast-feed with you bottle feed or fund it or whatever it's going to be majorly commercialized. the reason why it cashes out and we should describe is because patriarchy. the point is regard us of what women to come reports of the choices they make their criticized for it. the owner managed in doing, et cetera. but the punchline of your book is not capitalism or patriarchy. it's lactivism the other one it understand why because it's 2015 and we don't want to read books anymore and say guess what, it's called capitalism. but there's kind of a problem with that. let me draw an analogy for you. we all know now -- we know those people know medical evidence.

we know what they're doing is socially irresponsible. if any of you are on the internet country of note is the last couple of years it's like a pastime on twitter, facebook, especially among the left to just, like these idiots and socially irresponsible morons. i had a friend point out to me that like there's a problem with that. the problem with that is the reason why people are attracted to that position which in my memory gets to like around the '90s, may be earlier than that, it just had to do with his fear of autism. to read what people are attracted to it is because the moment that you get pregnant you were introduced to the medical system a and the social system d social services delivery system. that is incredibly condescending, contradictory,

judgmental and invalidates all of the choices that you make and forces upon you all kinds of unnecessary forms of intervention and monitoring, so on and so forth. you could understand why people -- [inaudible] why some others, for example, turn to the anti-vaccine position. they were trying to use their own judgment and its their judgment that is the best for their child. so when we very easily and snidely denigrated that position, we get that -- >> there some background to it. >> -- that's sort of the problem with having as your target or punchline lactivism rather than patriarchy or capitalism or

whatever. like that's the reason. >> part of this is a product the people trying to make better for more autonomous, and it's fun kind of -- [inaudible] you can just throw people in the deep end. i just want to raise that. i like the fact you catalog all those empirical evidence in one book, really point out how problematic lactivism is. >> shall i respond? i think this is it. why don't you respond and then we will close and have wine.

[laughter] >> when the league initially started it was explicitly understood by those women who started the league as a pushback against the medicalization of childbirth and of infant feeding. they were responding against doctors who were telling them that they had to formula feed their babies, that they had to formula feed a particular amount in every feeding, that they had to feed on a four hour schedule. so it was very regimented. childbirth, pregnancy and baby feeding were all extremely regimented and they were regimented. there were things regimented by male doctors. and so it was absolutely a pushback against that medicalization of the female body, and things that ought

properly be the purview and responsible of women and mothers. so that is that history to it. and a lot of people are firmly embedded in that history, right? that history has not disappeared. that's one of the reasons why so many people are committed to breast-feeding. but the point i'm trying to make in my book is about we have swung in the other direction on the pendulum, right? and soda with those perfectly -- and so there was is perfectly reasonable instincts that was pro-women and pro-nature and anti-medicalization, and then, and no breast-feeding advocates are relying on medical science and on doctors to push their agenda. and so it swung too far in the other direction. and i think you are making the

same point mala is making when you say the problem is capitalism, the problem is the patriarchy. that's a mala these same. .. [inaudible conversations]

>> c-span, created by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. >> host: and ajit pai is the senior republican on the federal communications commission, and he is our guest this week on "the communicators." commissioner, thanks for being here. >> guest: thanks for having me. >> host: it's an election year. >> guest: yes. >> host: can we expect an activist commission, an active docket in an election year? >> guest: i don't set the agenda, so you would have to ask fcc leadership, but i'm going to be pursuing as best i can a bipartisan initiative to deliver on what i consider to be the