What Nature Tolerates

Artist Brian Coldrick’s series Behind You is an ongoing look at the very common fear that someone is lurking just out of your field of vision—perhaps prepping to do something not very nice. 

A few weeks ago, we exhibited at Emerald City Comicon. Typically when we attend conventions, we try to create some spectacle that captures people’s attention and sells games. Like the time we brought a marching band to PAX Australia.

At ECCC, we set up a “Pay What You Want” booth and encouraged people to give us any amount of money in exchange for our games. We put games on a table, set up some signs, stood off to the side, and waited to see what would happen.

We brought 2000 games. Before the convention began, we took bets on what would happen:

Tom thought we’d sell out in a few hours.

Alex thought we’d run out on the of the second day of the con.

Trin thought that we would not run out of games because we are no longer cool or relevant.

Jenn got a fever and didn’t know what was happening.

We were all wrong. 

The doors opened, and attendees swarmed the booth. Within five minutes attendees realized they could just take games and walk away. A small group grabbed armfuls of free games and left, but most people paid something. Within an hour, the booth looked like this:

We ran out of games in 51 minutes.and made $8042.48, or 18.7% of the games’ retail value. In other words, we lost $685.44 per minute.

Attendees put lots of other stuff in the payment box too.

Some things you put in our box:

Five Canadian Dollars ($3.72 USD)

Ten Euros ($10.66 USD)

Eighty Philippine Pesos ($1.59 USD)

One Chinese Yuan ($0.14 USD)

One Cubone Pokemon Card, XY Breakthrough (Avg price - $0.68 USD)

One Magic: The Gathering Eternal Masters booster pack wrapper (No Value)

One handwritten “Any Pizza Free” and “Twisted Flicks + KPC” Coupon from a Papa Murphy’s in Kirkland, WA (Estimated Value $25.00 USD)

One $1 Bill folded into a bowtie ($1.00 USD)

One “FeelTheBurn.org” $1 bill. ($1.00 USD)

Two halves of a $1 bill ($1.00 USD )

Once we sold out, we had to figure out what to do with our booth space. 

On Saturday, we gave our space to artists who weren’t able to get a table at the con. People showed up to exhibit cosplay horns, board games, recycled journals, and comic art.

On the last day of the con, we set up a station for mailing letters to representatives.

We provided pens, paper, postage, envelopes, writing tips, and the address of every US Senator. 

Over 200 letters were written by con attendees, including the most bad ass Imperator Furiosa cosplayer we’ve ever seen.

getting a blowjob is a sexual thing and it also does not ‘feed’ anyone whereas breastfeeding is literally not even a sexual thing a baby is having food that they need to live like it’s nowhere near on the same level as getting a blowjob omg

if you are uncomfortable seeing a woman breastfeeding then that is your problem because you have oversexualised breasts so much that you can’t even stand seeing them being used for their actual purpose and also you’re an idiot

1.) Breasts as sexual fetishes is a (largely Western) cultural construction. Yes, it’s a fetish – anything you are sexually attracted to that is not the genitals of an adult is a fetish, or paraphilia. My professors have met non-Westerners who think our men are “like babies” because they are attracted to breasts.

Breasts ≠ genitals. Scientifically, they are considered secondary sexual characteristics – same category as facial hair. They can be sexual in a sexual context, just as necks and feet can be. But their primary purpose is reproductive.

2.) Breastmilk is not a “bodily fluid.” It is FOOD.

It is not categorized by the CDC as a biohazard, and so no you don’t need to freak out if your coworker wants to store her milk right next to your Lunchables.

MOREOVER,

Breastmilk is not just protein and vitamins. It is a living, dynamic substance that BUILDS HUMANS.

It has hundreds of ingredients (<— actually that list needs to be updated because they’ve discovered more already). There is a lab at the University of Washington St. Louis, where they have written all of the ingredients of human milk on the wall – They have run out of room on that wall. Among those ingredients:

The exact ratio of protein-sugars-fats that human infants need (cow’s milk doesn’t even come close)

Antibodies to pathogens in the baby’s environment (synthesized by the mother within hours of coming into contact with a given pathogen) and other immune factors

Stem cells. FUCKING STEM CELLS. (They used glow-in-the-dark mice to find out what they do!)

Hormones (support growth and regulate behavior)

peptides

Self-digesting fats (what the whaaat)

Growth factors

water, vitamins, minerals, carbs, etc.

prolly other awesome shit we don’t even know about yet because we’ve barely scratched the surface of this research!

These ingredients change hour-to-hour according to the baby’s needs. It will even add more water on hot/dry days. Fuck, breastmilk kills cancer in a petri dish. Breastmilk. is. not. a. bodily. fluid. It. is. liquid. gold. 3.) When you tell a woman to go to the bathroom to breastfeed, you are perpetuating the notion that it is dirty and shameful and needs to be hidden away. This idea is the biggest barrier to achieving breastfeeding goals in the United States. Because women feel ashamed, they often stay isolated at home when they should be spending time out and about with friends and family and having, like, a life. This isolation can contribute to postpartum depression. From the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding: Women may find themselves excluded from social interactions when they are breastfeeding because others are reluctant to be in the same room while they breastfeed. For many women, the feeling of embarrassment restricts their activities and is cited as a reason for choosing to feed supplementary formula or to give up breastfeeding altogether. And since we have this culture of shame and privacy surrounding breastfeeding, young girls and women don’t see it enough to learn what is normal/not and how to do it, so they often give up when they run into problems because they don’t realize there’s an easy fix. Moreover, an infant needs to be integrated into society in order to develop properly. He/she needs to see faces and hear voices. Isolating them – or throwing a blanket over their head – takes this important component of their development away. It also often annoys them because they are understimulated. 4.) YOU NEED TO SEE IT. That’s right, YOU. Even if you are a dude. Maybe you aren’t a parent, but you probably have loved ones who are. Or you might become one yourself someday. And if you are American chances are you have no idea how breastfeeding actually works, because you never fucking see it. It’s messy and complicated, and hard. It used to be a part of everyday life, because there weren’t any alternatives – So we learned how to do it by being around it all the time, NBD. The whole sexualization/modesty thing surrounding breasts wasn’t a thing until like the mid-20th century. Check out this 1871 drawing of a woman breastfeeding IN FUCKING CHURCH:

MARS