On Drinking Your Lover’s Breast Milk
What’s the big deal?
As a father of two, I’ve had plenty of chances to taste my wife’s breast milk, usually to test its temperature after warming it up for our babies’ consumption.
Also, as the significant other of a nursing mum, I’ve even had a few opportunities — and the privilege — to taste my wife’s breast milk straight from the source. And I didn’t do that to check the temperature. It was purely sexual and exploratory and it happened the few times that we had sex during her lactation periods.
It was magical. It was yummy. And it felt totally natural.
But maybe that’s just me. I understand that some people are not comfortable with the idea of an adult tasting mother’s milk, especially straight from the breasts. Some get to the point of saying “it’s gross” — not as a taste (which they haven’t tried) but as a concept.
In regard to mixing adults and breast milk, there seem to be 2 main issues: whether the milk itself is for adults and whether lactating breasts are for sex fun.
Is it for adults?
Every controversial subject has a Friends episode about it. In The One With the Breast Milk (Season 2 Ep. 2), the subject is whether adults are supposed to drink breast milk.
Carol and Susan (Ross’ ex-wife and her wife) leave Ben (Carol’s and Ross’ son) for babysitting with Ross and the others. The following scene happens just before Ben’s meal — Carol’s breast milk from a bottle:
Phoebe tries the milk’s temperature by dripping some on her wrist.
PHOEBE: Okay.
She then licks her wrist. Chandler, Ross, and Rachael JOLT from their places.
CHANDLER: What did you just do?!?
PHOEBE: I licked my arm, what?
ROSS: It’s breastmilk!
PHOEBE: So?
RACHAEL: Phoebe, that is juice squeezed from a person.
JOEY (taking the bottle): What is the big deal?
He drips some milk on his wrists and licks it. The others jolt again.
CHANDLER: What did you just do?!?
ROSS: Okay, can people stop drinking the breast milk?
PHOEBE: You won’t even taste it?
ROSS: No…?
PHOEBE: Not even if you just pretend that it’s milk?
ROSS: Not even if Carol’s breast had a picture of a missing child on.
A little later, when Carol and Susan come back, Ross says that drinking the breast milk is “gross:”
PHOEBE: I tasted Ben’s milk and Ross freaked out.
ROSS: I did not freak out.
CAROL: Why did you freak out?
ROSS: Because it’s breast milk. It’s gross.
CAROL: My breast milk is gross?
SUSAN: This should be fun.
ROSS: No, Carol, there’s nothing wrong with it. I just don’t think breast milk is for adults.
CHANDLER: Of course, the packaging does appeal to grown-ups and kids alike.
It is telling that Phoebe and Joey are the only ones cool about it. Phoebe is the most open-minded of the group — to the point of kookiness. Her cool attitude about it makes us think: why is the idea of tasting breast milk averting to so many people? Joey, on the other hand, is the most carnal of the group, as well as the least intellectual. His casual stance makes us think: could it be just food? Is it okay if it’s also sexual? Are we thinking about things too much?
The rest of the characters are just shocked. The only argument, Rachael’s “that is juice squeezed from a person,” is too vague to address the different reasons people are not okay with adults tasting breast milk. The line’s vagueness is why Joey’s response feels natural (at least to me): “what’s the big deal?”
I am not saying that we should accustom ourselves to drinking breast milk. After all, it is somebody else’s food and we can’t go around stealing babies’ meals, can we?
At least not human babies’ meals. We do that to cows and other animals already. Which makes me wonder if this is where the whole problem lies:
Juice squeezed from a person.
Are we conditioned to drink only animal milk? Or are we simply not comfortable with the mammalian — and therefore animalistic — part of our nature? “We drink animal’s milk,” therefore, “if we drink human milk, humans are animals.”
Drinking human milk is — for some — equivalent with losing our humanity, in a way similar to eating human flesh.
Did I go too far? Perhaps too deep? Otherwise, why “gross,” Ross?
Even if “breast milk is not for adults,” adults can surely taste it, can’t they? If this idea doesn’t feel right to some, what lies behind it?
And how closely associated is breast feeding with sexual pleasure?
Are milky boobs for sex?
Happily continuing with the same milky sequence from Friends:
CAROL: Ross, you’re being silly. I’ve tried it. It’s no big deal. Come on, taste it.
ROSS: That would be no.
PHOEBE: It doesn’t taste bad.
JOEY: Yeah. It tastes kind of sweet, sort of like…
ROSS: Like what?
SUSAN: … cantaloupe juice.
JOEY: Exactly!
ROSS: You’ve tasted it. You’ve, you’ve tasted it?
SUSAN: Ah-huh…
ROSS: Oh, you’ve tasted it.
SUSAN: You can keep saying it, but it won’t stop being true.
Leaving aside the subtext of Ross antagonising Susan, this beat of the episode subtly touches on the controversy of erotic lactation.
Erotic lactation is controversial because we find conflicting the two main roles breasts have in our culture: as organs of mothering and sexual pleasure.
Things would be much simpler and clearer for everyone if we could accept both roles. If we stopped believing that one role annuls or desecrates the other.
In her 2015 article Many women feel sexually aroused while breastfeeding. So what? Taryn Hillin decriminalises the pleasure that many nursing mums have felt while breast feeding their babies. “Decriminalises” is actually not a metaphor. Women in North America have got themselves in trouble for admitting feeling aroused while breast feeding. For example:
[…] a mother in Syracuse, New York, in 1992, had her two-year-old child taken away from her after admitting that she became aroused on nursing, the authorities claiming that she sexually abused the child.
Hillin states:
There’s no reason to think that just because a child is born the sexual component of breasts disappears.
Some people don’t feel comfortable tasting their lover’s breast milk, let alone a stranger’s. The same people, though, have no problem sucking on a random stranger’s milk-less boobs, during a one-night stand. It’s the milk that signifies crossing the line. And it’s not its actual substance, but what it symbolises.
Yael Wolfe hits the nail on the head in her excellent essay on erotic lactation Does Breast Milk Turn You On? Be warned, the quote is a little long, but it’s pure gold:
Our culture treats motherhood as an exalted role. It’s sacred. I have friends who stopped having sex with their husbands for months after having a baby because they felt it was wrong — that their bodies were now for their babies, not for pleasure. I know women who stopped indulging in breast play during sex after having children because they felt dirty receiving sexual pleasure in that area after using that part of their bodies to feed a child. (Once again, thanks patriarchy!)
Now these are the beliefs and practices that are fucked up — not the act of letting your partner drink your breast milk. By that, I mean no shame — if it truly doesn’t turn you on, that’s fine. But hanging on to puritanical and patriarchal values that prize the virtuousness of motherhood over even our own normal and healthy sexuality is so harmful — to our sex lives, to our partnerships, to ourselves, and even to those children who drank from our saintly bosom.
So that’s what the big deal is. Who would have thought?
It all comes down — again — to men controlling women.
Patriarchy considers motherhood as an exalted role. That’s why many of us can’t think of our mother having sex. It’s the Mother vs. the Whore. It’s the Virgin Mary. All that jazz.
Lovers taste several of each other’s liquids — saliva, sweat, vaginal juices, and sperm, to name a few of the most common. Isn’t milk one more liquid coming out of the human body? Even more, isn’t it one meant to be consumed? Still, today, sperm is more accepted as a beverage than breast milk.
Odd.
Epilogue
Puritanical and patriarchal values aside, some mothers don’t want to share it and some people don’t want to drink it. We are not here to judge. As with everything else in sex, consent is an essential element. We can’t just leap onto someone’s nipple like Jim Carrey in the troublesome Me, Myself, and Irene.
Also, we must always consider the soreness breastfeeding often causes to one’s nipples. Many women hate the feeling of anything touching — let alone sucking — her nipples. If that’s the case, that means no nipple play and no breast milk, pal. Sorry.
In any case, breast milk is a valuable resource. Enjoy it, but remember to save some for the baby.
And always ask nicely. Being a nursing mum’s lover does not make you entitled to drinking her breast milk. If she lets you, you must always remember it’s a privilege.
Ah, what the hell. Here’s another scene. This one is from Workin’ Moms:
Kate and Forrest, her younger lover, are having sex on his bed. She has her nursing bra on. Forrest reaches for her breasts.
KATE: Oh, just beat it for a minute, for a sec!
FORREST: Come on, just a taste, please?
KATE: Come on, no! Can’t you just be normal?!
FORREST: You know it’s not just for babies? Like bodybuilders chug it, five bucks an ounce.
KATE: There’s no way that’s true.
FORREST: Oh no, I’ve been looking it up online and I think I know a way to make it hot for you.
KATE: No.
FORREST: Give me five seconds, okay? If you hate it, I’ll never ask again.
KATE: You have one second. (She undoes one cup from her bra and offers her breast.) Okay! Easy! Ooh! Ooh! Oh! Aaah!
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