Breastfeeding in uniform is AWESOME!

This picture has caused quite a stir among the military community, and seems to be especially divisive among female soldiers and vets. I've mostly stopped reading comments on the various articles about this, because they just make me mad, but the gist is, a lot of people in this world don't think female soldiers should get to be quite human.  Some say no female soldier should have babies.  Some say female soldiers shouldn't be allowed to breastfeed.  It pretty bad.  Of course, there is also a significant portion of society who says this is great, and the people who think it's wrong need a reality check.  Obviously, that's where I stand. 

Unfortunately, I hear a lot of comments from female vets, saying things like, "Well, they can breastfeed if they want to, I guess, but they should do it in a private location, not just anywhere." or "It's just very disrespectful of the uniform.  Haven't we fought hard enough for respect? This undermines us." 

These comments make me want to hit things.  I cannot believe female vets would actually speak against our own kind like this, when they're just doing something that is totally their right to do, and is something that women in the military have been fighting to be able to do for so long.  Do you have any idea how many women don't get breaks to pump, or get deployed when their babies are just weeks old, so they cannot breastfeed?  This is a huge issue in the military.  If the breastfeeding rate at 12 months is 15% for society at large, for female soldiers, I wouldn't put it anywhere above maybe 3%, and those 3% would be nearly all officers (in other words, people with enough influence to insist on certain provisions for themselves) in non-deploying jobs such as working in hospitals stateside, or administrative jobs.  Needless to say, that's not the majority of the military.  Being a mom in the military is daunting.  Breastfeeding in the military is like climbing Mt. Everest.  Knowing this, female vets, more than any other group, should give our strongest support to women who dare to challenge the norms, and challenge the Good Old Boy Network that we all know way too well, to step out of their comfort zone, and join the 21st century.

For those who think I'm full of crap, I've got to ask you a few questions.

1) Have you ever smoked in uniform? (I have.)
2) Have you ever drank in uniform? (I have.)
3) Have you ever stood around talking trash with your buddies or otherwise acting like kind of an idiot, while in uniform? (I have.)

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you don't have a leg to stand on when insisting on propriety of activities for respect of the uniform.

It's about time female soldiers were seen as full fledged human beings.  I think the thing that surprised me the most about being in the Army was that I simply could not do what a normal girl my age could do, and I couldn't do what my male counterparts could do either.  My motives for every move I made were questioned, and I was always suspect, just for living my life.  I seemed to miss the line that said, "You aren't a person anymore.  You cannot be like other females, but you cannot have the rights that male troops have either." in my enlistment contract.  It is hard to be a female soldier.  Your coworkers don't respect you, their wives hate your guts, and society isn't quite sure exactly what you're trying to prove.  Let's not contribute to this by dragging our own down with insistence that they adhere to some arbitrary standard of propriety that doesn't even exist within regulations.  Let's instead shut these good old boys up about this stuff.  It's in everybody's best interest for that to happen, because if female troops win this battle, it will set one hell of a precedent.