women will never be free until our bodies are no longer associated with childbirth and childrearing.
we need to get rid of this idea that women are somehow “made” to produce children, as though our bodies exist primarily to fulfill a reproductive function. the assumption that motherhood is the natural endpoint of womanhood has shaped everything from how women are treated socially to how our bodies are perceived.
this is especially obvious with breasts. we have somehow accepted that breasts are inherently connected to motherhood, that their “purpose” is to feed infants, and that this is supposed to tell us something about what women are for. even the way we talk about breasts reinforces this idea. they are reduced to reproductive anatomy, with very little room for simply existing as part of a human body.
we should be questioning why lactation is treated as something that belongs exclusively to pregnancy and motherhood in the first place. why should producing milk automatically signify that someone has given birth? why should one biological process be culturally tied so tightly to another?
the radical thing would be to deliberately sever that association.
if we actually want to dismantle the idea that breasts exist for babies, then we should normalize lactation completely independently of childbirth. take lactation pills. produce milk around the clock. make lactating something that has nothing whatsoever to do with pregnancy or childrearing.