Source: Jessie Maher/Facebook
Despite the launch of many successful
breastfeeding campaigns, many women still face
backlash and receive dirty looks when they do so.
Jessie Maher experienced this first-hand when she was at a Target in Connecticut breastfeeding her baby. A man began by giving her dirty looks and proceeded to verbally harass her. Maher was able to record most of the incident and posted it to Facebook where it has since been viewed over seven million times and shared nearly 80,000 times with thousands of people showing support for the mom.
“Before the video started rolling he looked at me and said (very angrily), ‘can’t you do that somewhere else?… That’s f***ing disgusting..You are nasty,'” she writes in her post.
Maher responded with a few words of her own, “I am feeding my baby, and I have the right to do it here…walk the f**k away..leave me the f**k alone.” However, her confidence didn’t deter the man who continued to assault her.
“He responded with, (as he’s walking closer and closer to me and getting louder) ‘you are f***ing disgusting…you are f***ing disgusting…you are f***ing disgusting…you whore,'” she writes. By this time, shoppers and employees come to the Maher’s defense.
One woman goes to Maher’s side and tells her, “Don’t be upset, it’s OK. This is what you should be doing. Do not feel ashamed of this at all.”
Maher told the
Hartford Courant she wanted to record the incident to spread awareness.
“I wanted to, as much as I could, spread awareness. I wanted to tell my friends and family what happened and that this was a real thing. The only way we are going to eradicate this behavior is to put it out there and show this is happening,” she said.
