A man has fiercely condemned on social media after he revealed how he’d confronted a mortified mother about her breastfeeding in public.
The Reddit user, 27, explained that he was having lunch at a cafe when the woman, in her 20s, entered with her baby.
He said the place was so busy that there were only two seats available, one of which was under an air conditioning unit, the other of which was opposite his small table.
After a little while, the infant began crying, so the mum “[took] out a breast out and [started] breastfeeding,” he wrote.
“Obviously I’m just avoiding all eye contact but it got so uncomfortable that I ended up asking if she might be able to see if she can sit at the other table,” he continued.
“I’m just trying to sit here, drink this cup of coffee, finish reading my portfolio and leave.”
He went on: “The woman looked sorry and really just said she couldn’t and the baby was already eating (feeding?, [I don’t know]) so I just downed the coffee, and started to leave.
“A few people looked at me like I was a douche and it’s been bothering me. I know it’s a natural thing for baby’s and moms and that there’s nothing I can do. I wasn’t going to try and force her away so I left.”
However, he stressed: “I just didn’t know what to say when a random woman is breastfeeding 3 feet away.”
Ending his post, he asked whether he had gone “too far” in asking the woman to switch tables, admitting he felt as though he had been a bit of an “a**hole”.
Fellow Redditors agreed with this latter assessment, with the post racking up hundreds of comments and more than 1,400 upvotes in a matter of hours.
“This woman probably got two hours of sleep last night, has a crushingly awful mix of hormones in her body, she tried to escape and do ONE adult thing for herself, only to have to feed her crying baby and then you give her a hard time?” one critic raged.
“I get that not everyone grows up comfortable around bodies and nudity but bro. Breastfeeding is 0% sexual. And if it really bothered you, you should’ve moved to the less desirable spot.”
They added: “Please do better next time – she deserves empathy, which was decidedly not what you gave her.”
Another seconded their condemnation, saying: “Seriously women get berated in public no matter how they decide to feed their child, LEAVE HER BE. She wasn’t shoving her boob into your face, she was literally feeding and sustaining another life that deserves and has ALL right to eat however makes them comfortable. Women aren’t public property so please, lay off of us.”
And a third pointed out: “I guarantee if she were bottle-feeding her baby, someone would criticize her for not breastfeeding.”
Meanwhile, others asked the man why, if he felt uncomfortable, he hadn’t simply moved himself.
“Why couldn’t YOU move to the other table if YOU were uncomfortable as opposed to asking the lady with something attached to her boob to just get up and move?” one wrote.
Another agreed, saying: “1000% this. If you’re uncomfortable, you move. You don’t get to ask someone else to move. That’s not how anything works.”