One thing I never expected about Twitter was to meet so many incredible people I now consider real friends.
Those people you interact with so much they become part of your life, and their tweets always rise to the top of your home feed. One such tweet yesterday morning inspired a blog post that, if I’m lucky, will generate a ton of aggressive comments aimed at me for being alive. Wouldn’t be the first time!
https://twitter.com/Graphite_Monk/status/1256982336706576385
So there it is, the social dichotomy that defines Left versus Right, masculinity versus femininity, and yet, ultimately, utility versus utility. Gun control is back in the news in Canada following the tragic events in Portapique and the government reaction to ban 1500 styles of firearm, so the timeliness of this discussion weighs on me.
First, if you think that people don’t compare the two issues beyond Twitter, you would be wrong.
Connecticut Republican Doug Dubitsky noted in 2017 that both open-carry and public breastfeeding are legal in his state, in a debate over whether Connecticut should be enforcing their permit requirement relative to open-carry laws (they hadn’t until then). Technically, going topless is illegal, but public breastfeeding is not. GOP logic essentially amounted to ‘We don’t stop women from taking out a boob to feed a kid, so why force someone open-carrying a firearm, which is legal, to produce paperwork to show that it’s legal, even if paperwork is already a component of the existing law?’
Guns are a very big deal in the United States. Want to safely breastfeed your baby without unholstering your gun? There are resources for you online. Whereas countries like Canada, Australia, and the UK have made gun ownership decisions for their citizens following tragedy only to see violent gun crime stats decrease, the United States continues to let the National Rifle Association control the message.
The irony of this debate is how both open-carry proponents and public breastfeeding advocates feel there is no reason for them to be more discreet with either their firearms or their breasts, but have countless arguments why the other side should be more discreet with theirs. For some, taking their child to daycare where other parents walk in with a firearm visibly holstered to their waist is offensive. For others, eating in a restaurant when the woman in the next booth opens her top to feed her baby is ruinous to their appetite and sense of enjoyment.
Neither side is incorrect, technically, but you can probably guess what side I’m on, if you’ve been following anything I write or say.
Carrying a weapon into a grocery store might anecdotally save a life or two, that one time a good guy with a gun will actually stop a bad guy with a gun in the course of your lifetime, but breasts have only been weaponized as an ultra-Christian reaction to the notion that sex sells. Breasts existed for millennia to feed future generations of human (just saving lives since women first birthed babies), but evolved to become the primary source of female objectification within society, and the Puritan Christian reaction was to try to downplay the very existence of boobs.
Guns exist purely to kill. Breast purely to feed. Only one of these things is essential to human survival, and yet we’re forced to debate both issues as if guns, or breasts, serve more purpose to society than they actually do. Until we can accept the specific functions of both, we’re doomed to continue to debate these issues facetiously.
