Did you know that newborn mammals need their mother’s milk for nourishment?

Did you also know that humans are mammals?

Yes, indeed, which is why human females have breasts.

Recently, a woman travelling on a United Airlines flight from Houston to Vancouver on March 8 was stunned to encounter a flight attendant who may not have realized the aforementioned facts.

The woman’s story goes like this. She’s sitting there in the seat, breast-feeding her five-month-old son, when the flight attendant asks if she and her husband (who’s sitting beside her) are together.

The husband says yes, and the flight attendant throws the man a blanket and tells him to “help her out.”

If you think that’s awkward because breast-feeding is a one-woman job, you’re right. But the flight attendant actually meant for the man to hide his child under the blanket.

It makes sense that some people would prefer the privacy a blanket offers. People have individual preferences.

Some people are much more comfortable with public nudity than others. This is never going to change because of natural diversity.

It also makes sense that some babies are fussy with blankets and in the cramped quarters of economy class, that kind of coverage is not always feasible.

There must be something in the air, because the day after the Vancouver mother’s complaint went viral, in Winnipeg, a mother made headlines with her complaint against a mall.

She was asked by a security guard to move her breast-feeding session from the quiet corner she’d found to feed her fussy eight-month-old to a family washroom on another floor because it was “offensive.”

Both companies apologized to the women who complained, which is a hopeful indication these stupid views don’t go straight to the top of the policy-making food chain.

Women are conditioned from the get-go in our society to be paranoid about our bodies lest we attract unwanted attention, because we obviously attract it by wearing a low-cut this, by showing off too much of that, by walking in public, by sitting on buses, by smiling at strangers, by feeding our infants, blah, blah, blah.

Enough with the shame around this type of activity. It’s not indecent. It’s not intended to satisfy the perverse, prurient proclivities of on-lookers, nor is it intended to validate the “concerns” of some pearl-clutching gawker.

Sure, mothers vary on the level of privacy they prefer when breast-feeding.

The point is, this flight attendant and that mall security guard don’t get to make the call about where it is appropriate for a mother and child to breast-feed, nor do they have any right to try to change her activity.

Just like I don’t get to tell people to go home and change when I see them wearing pyjama pants in public places, which I find offensive.

Breast-feeding is not some abomination against the natural order of our extremely decent public life.

If it makes you uncomfortable, look away.

No need to be a boob about it.