Despite living in the twenty-first century, there are still people, mostly men, who maintain outmoded and bizarre attitudes about marriage and women’s rights over their own bodies. A netizen recently posted screenshots of an unsettling conversation in which a husband accused his wife of incest because she was breastfeeding their child. The absurdity of the situation provoked widespread outrage and criticism for the husband’s arrogant and primitive beliefs.
Screenshots of a text interaction between the husband and wife were initially uploaded on Reddit, but have subsequently spread to X (previously known as Twitter), sparking an understandable uproar. The messaging exchange begins with the husband texting his wife, “Have you been breastfeeding? You know how I f***ing feel about that,” she said, adding that her decision to breastfeed her newborn kid was “disrespectful” to him.
When the wife, who is still recovering from childbirth in the hospital, offers to compromise by breastfeeding their son away from her husband’s sight, he just says he’s “done”.Despite his wife’s advice on the nutritional benefits of breastfeeding, he responds, “The benefit to where I’ll never be able to look at you the same way again.”
He then says, “I believe you’re a lousy wife.
I believe you don’t respect me. I believe you took my joy away. I think a lot of things. I enjoy your boobs. I no longer enjoy your boobs now that they’ve been in the mouth of another man. It is perhaps necessary to stress that the spouse is referring to his newborn kid, not a fully grown man. When the wife points this out to her husband, he responds with, “He’s masculine. And your son. That makes it incestuous in my opinion.”
After screenshots of the unusual exchange were posted on Reddit, several users turned to the comments area to express their views. As one individual cynically put it, “Her boobs aren’t for his pleasure anymore; now that they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, another man’s mouth has been on them.” We all know that formula is identical to breastfeeding. How dare she deny her husband’s enjoyment of her body?”
Someone else said, “My God. What have I just read? A b*****d father is envious of his newborn child for being breastfed and blames the mother. What has the world come to? How bad of a human being do you have to be to think like that? Do they actually think of women as sex toys? “They are sexualizing and villifying [sic] their own partner through breastfeeding.”
The woman who submitted the tale on Reddit (who is not the wife accused of incest by her own husband) provided light on the situation, telling Bored Panda, “I believe that our society still sexualizes breastfeeding, and this man just had an overly sexualized view of it.” The woman also shared her own experiences, adding, “When I returned to work after my child was born, my employer refused to adjust my nursing schedule.
They suggested supplementing baby formula, and I believe the spouse went it too far.” The netizen shared additional information from the wife’s personal page, revealing that the husband reportedly saw washing their sons after the age of two as incestuous. “He seems to have an overly sexualized view of things, perhaps even interpreting the Oedipus complex too seriously,” she stated.
The internet is full of stories about entitlement, but choosing one’s strange and possessive interests over a wife’s body in front of a newborn is especially extreme. It simply emphasizes the constant effort to demolish old attitudes and encourage respect for women’s autonomy and the right to do whatever they want with their bodies.