The KLM breastfeeding debacle is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to airlines treating women as second class citizens
By: Samantha Rea
Tags: Feminism, Airlines, Misogyny, Multiculturalism, Breastfeeding

The KLM breastfeeding debacle is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to airlines treating women as second class citizens Samantha Rea Jul 22, 2019·5 min read

The social media shredding of Dutch airline KLM is like the plotline of a heart-warming film in which adversaries unite in the pursuit of a common goal. The bit in Annie where the squabbling orphans race to rescue their former roommate from Miss Hannigan and Rooster. Or Cameron Diaz joining forces with Kate Upton and the shrieky one to screw over the guy who’s shagging all of them.

In this case, Twitter users (not usually known for playing nicely together) collaborated to brickbat KLM over their breastfeeding policy. “Breastfeeding is permitted at KLM flights” began someone on their social media team, magnanimously granting mothers the opportunity to keep their babies alive. Permitted, as if they might just as easily choose not to allow it. This would leave breastfeeding mothers unable to fly, restricting the movement of women in a manner reminiscent of Victorian times, when a lack of access to public toilets meant women were confined to the home — or at least, kept “on a leash as long as their bladder capacity.”

“However,” KLM’s tweet continued, “to ensure that all our passengers of all backgrounds feel comfortable on board, we may request a mother to cover herself while breastfeeding, should other passengers be offended by this.”

KLM’s stance makes it clear that when it comes to their priorities, the right to take offence on an arbitrary whim trumps the universal need of babies to be fed without struggling to breathe under an airline-issue synthetic blanket.

It’s a strange position to take, and I wasn’t the only one to think so. “People who complain about breastfeeding offend me. I demand you put a blanket over them so I don’t have to look at them” said one guy. “Carry a supply of clown masks with no eye holes for anyone offended by breastfeeding” said another (quite ingeniously, I felt). “KLM are insinuating and normalising offence related to breastfeeding” wrote a midwife. While someone else stated: “Not your choice to “permit” a mother to breastfeed.”

The furore was initially sparked after a woman named Shelby Angel posted on Facebook that a KLM flight attendant had approached her with a blanket, telling her, “if you want to continue doing the breastfeeding, you need to cover yourself.” According to Shelby, she declined to bury the breast-latched baby under some old polyester, and was warned by the flight attendant that, “if anyone complained, it would be my issue to deal with.”

In Shelby’s Facebook post, she writes that when she breastfeeds, “I do my best to be discreet but sometimes some skin shows.” She sounds almost apologetic, as if she feels the need to convince people that she’s not just a hussy using her baby as a ruse to get her tits out.

This highlights the way in which breastfeeding is viewed with suspicion, as if the women doing it are temptresses, leaking a bit of milk out of their mammaries as a means to an end — the real goal being to brandish their breasts in an effort to seduce innocent men.

Shelby’s assurance that she breastfeeds discreetly indicates her awareness of this perception and she clearly feels that unless she specifically states that she fed her baby as inconspicuously as possible, it’ll be fair game to assume that she was pretty much putting on a cam show for everyone in the vicinity (and possibly trying to drum up business for some sex work on the side).

When Shelby made a post-flight complaint to KLM, she was told, “that I needed to be respectful of people of other cultures and that this flight attendant’s response was in line with company policy.”

One might imagine that the “cultural differences” KLM refers to are to do with male and female socialisation, in the sense that (brainwashed by porn) men see tits and think it’s time to knock one out, like some sort of Pavlovian response that leaves them itching to ejaculate. Of course, men don’t want the humiliation of a hard-on in public, so women must adjust their baby-feeding behaviour to ensure they don’t trigger anything embarrassing.

But actually, a decent number of objections to KLM’s policy came from men, and KLM’s references to the comfort of “passengers of all backgrounds” and “passengers with a variety of backgrounds” combined with their warning to Shelby to be “respectful of people of other cultures” suggests that KLM are pandering not to men in general, but specifically to men from cultural backwaters, whose attitudes towards women are worrying at best.

Unfortunately, KLM’s stigmatisation of breast-feeding is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to airlines treating female passengers as an inconvenience. In October last year, Ryanair cabin crew moved a 77 year old woman who was suffering from arthritis, to accommodate a racist (and aggressive) man who didn’t want her sitting in the same row as him because she was black. By asking the woman to move (rather than the man) Ryanair staff effectively condoned and colluded in his racism, as well as making it clear who they prioritised as a customer.

This is just one of a string of misogynistic incidents in which women on planes have had the onus put on them to move, to accommodate a man’s prejudice and bigotry. In 2015, El Al airline asked an 81 year old woman to move when a man didn’t want to sit next to her for “religious reasons.” In 2016, United Airlines changed a woman’s pre-booked seat at the request of two male passengers who claimed their “cultural beliefs” meant they couldn’t sit next her. In 2017, female passengers on an EasyJet flight apparently “offered” to move seats when it became clear that the onus was on them to do this or the flight wouldn’t be taking off. In 2018, Austrian Airlines asked women to get up and move seats when men refused to sit next to them.

While the Ryanair incident can easily be condemned as racist, the cultural hypersensitivity of this era means that discrimination against women is championed if it’s dressed up as being due to “cultural differences” or “religious reasons.”

But the kind of culture that KLM and other airlines are showing deference to when it asks women to change seats or conceal themselves while breastfeeding, is the kind of culture that sends women off to sleep in sheds when they’re menstruating. With no water or electricity, there have been reports of women and children dying, but this is incidental in a culture that stigmatises menstruation to the extent that women are denounced as impure and a contamination risk when they’re on their periods.

KLM’s stance on breastfeeding supports and contributes to this culture, by reinforcing and validating the view that female bodily functions are unsavoury and shameful. The actions of the other airlines, in asking female passengers to move, is an extension of this attitude. It amounts to a censorship not just of women’s bodily functions — but of women. As we strive to be respectful of other cultures, we need to pause to consider whether this takes our own society backwards, and leads to treating women as second class citizens.

Samantha Rea is a freelance journalist. She can be found tweeting here.