As for why people would want to display videos of nursing, other than for instructional purposes, why not? You might have a video with you playing with your baby or feeding the baby a bottle, to show family members or just for posterity — why not nursing?

It doesn’t surprise me that Facebook has banned the videos because the founders don’t strike me as the most mature people. But YouTube is owned by Google. I thought “Don’t be evil” was their motto.

When I hear someone saying breastfeeding is lewd I just want to point that finger right back at them. Me feeding my child has nothing to do with titillation. The fact that you see it that way means something is wrong with YOU, not US.

I think the labeling of the breastfeeding images as “lewd” is not so much a symptom of paternalistic views towards women, but rather a symptom of the conservative backlash against “obscene” and “offensive” images in the media in general. (Janet Jackson comes to mind.) The aftermath of that, and a few other instances of live TV bad-word utterances resulted in broadcasters being afraid even to air things like “Saving Private Ryan” because of complaints by viewers of it being “offensive material.” I think it is more overreaction by the media, and now internet services, to this condemnation of “offensive” images, thus allowing the most prudish (who are also usually the most loud) to define what’s acceptable and what’s not. Enough people complaining that infant-on-boob images are lewd sadly enough results in lawsuits against media outlets and attempts at stricter government regulation of content.

Also, on a separate note, I disagree with the reasoning about why breast cancer gets more attention than other diseases. The breast cancer awareness campaign has been incredibly well-organized and publicized, with genius marketing strategy. Also, breast cancer is a “no-fault” disease, one that can’t yet be prevented, only detected early enough to treat, which invokes sympathy. Heart disease, however, is mostly seen as a disease of “fault.” Factors like smoking and obesity greatly contribute to the dramatic increase of heart disease. Heart disease is “preventable” (or is at least perceived as such) and therefore, not as sympathetic. Same with lung cancer, which has a much lower survival rate than breast cancer. The campaign focus needs to be different to prevent/treat those diseases, because everyone already knows smoking’s bad for you, and so is being obese. What isn’t so obvious are effective ways to live a healthy lifestyle to minimize the risk of heart disease.

Okay, less babble, more outlining. Sheesh.

I breastfed all of my kiddos, and sometimes even in public. (Once on a plane. I felt sorry for the guy sitting next to me but my breastfed-only baby didn’t take a pacifier, and it was the only way to keep her from screaming because her ears hurt.) I fed my kids when they needed to be fed, but the whole world didn’t need to know about it. And I can’t envision any reason that videos need to be uploaded to Youtube.