What Lactating Would Be Like If Men Could Do It
Imagine a world where breastfeeding duties fell on men. Think about all the public support they would get, the freedom and flexibility they’d have, the millions of people not shaming them. It’s enough to make you want to scream, right? Well, Babble featured a post today about a couple of high school kids who really did imagine such a world, and it’s actually pretty hilarious.
High school English teacher Beth Stafford recently had her honors students read Gloria Steinem’s essay If Men Could Menstruate. To coincide with the lesson, she gave them a fun assignment to partner up and write satirical essays describing other role-reversing ‘what if’ scenarios. Four of her students decided to tackle lactation and knocked their assignment out of the park. According to their essay, here’s what the world might look like if men could lactate and women could not:
1. “Lactating would become a competition between men of all ages and races.”
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2. “Men would compete to see how much breast milk they could hold and for how long.”
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3. “Boys would brag about how far they could fire their breast milk during school, and breast milk would become a weapon in video games.”
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4. “Men would boast about how many babies they could breastfeed at once, and breastfeeding in public would be encouraged.”
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5. “Men would create slang such as ‘he’s a two-pump-man’ and ‘he’s a pumping machine.'”
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6. “Men would bring their babies to the workplace and it wouldn’t be a distraction.”
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7. “Overall, if men could lactate, they would be praised for nurturing their children, even if it’s distracting to the public eye.”
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(Photo: Getty)
