I had been refraining from taking on Shmuley Boteach’s column Moms, Don’t Forget to Feed Your Marriages out of some weird sense of professional politeness. As in, I wouldn’t want him to critique my blog, so I shouldn’t critique his column on Beliefnet. This is actually my own absurd sense of self that believes that he reads my blog. Let’s chortle at me briefly.

That done, I’m now willing to offer a critique because one began on feministing, and now it feels like fair game for me as well.

One of the things that us humans seem drawn to is making large generalizations about how women are and how men are. Often we then look for research to back up our generalizations. It’s the scientific method in reverse. So women are holy, men are sinners. Women are nurturers, men are hunters. Women are good at english, men are good at math.

The bottom line is that the only thing that 10,000 years of “civilization” has demonstrated is that human beings are flexible with gender roles, with what work they choose to do, and with sexuality. We can be and do many different things. Generalizations don’t do any good. They certainly don’t help make sense of the world. Yet, again, and again, we’re drawn to them, like flies to a fly trap. We just can’t stop making them because they seem to make the world make sense, albeit temporarily. And then we can’t stop applying them to others, albeit permanently.

That, I fear, is my problem with Rabbi Boteach’s column. He has assumptions about how women should be and how men should be, drawn from his own preconceptions, his own understanding of Torah, his own observations of his marriage, and now he’s flinging them at others:

In the end, there are two effects of breast-feeding that we often refuse to acknowledge. One is the de-eroticization of a woman’s body, as her husband witnesses one of the most attractive parts of her body serving a utilitarian rather than romantic purpose. This is not to say that breast-feeding isn’t sexy. Indeed, the maternal dimension is a central part of womanliness. But public breast-feeding is profoundly de-eroticizing, and I believe that wives should cover up, even when they nurse their babies in their husband’s presence.

I believe this same problem comes up when men witness childbirth up close. There are certain poses in which a husband should not see his wife. By all means, be there for the entire labor, as I have been for the births of each of my eight children. But I strongly agree with the advice of the ancient rabbis that husbands should not be staring at the actual delivery. That is just too erotic a part of a wife’s anatomy for it to become a mere birth canal.

I’m sorry if the biological functions of women’s bodies are too much for Rabbi Boteach, but just because he can’t handle it, doesn’t mean that 51% of the world should operate differently. He seems to think that the first step to kill your marriage is to watch a child being born. The second step is to see your wife breast feed. People in relationships can work this sort of thing out. They talk about what they’re comfortable with, and what makes them squeamish. That’s what human beings do. They communicate.

More on Pandagon with Boobie! Mine! and Broadsheet with Breast-feeding: Bad for Marriages.