A furor has erupted in recent weeks over a decision by Facebook to reject photos depicting women breastfeeding their children. The social networking site claims that these pictures have been rejected because they villate the site’s policy against photos depicting nudity, a claim that has been rejected by Stephanie Knapp Muir. Ms. Muir, and over a hundred thousand other pro-breastfeeding users who have formed a group call “Hey Facebook, Breastfeeding Is Not Obscene!”, are protesting what they claim is clear and outright discrimination. The site maintains that it is simply enforcing its community standards policy, and refuses to back down.

It’s perfectly legal for women to breastfeed in public. In fact, refusing to allow a woman to breastfeed in a public place is a violation of the law, and in Canada it is legal for a woman to walk down the street shirtless, so long as she isn’t doing so for commercial reasons. Some would argue, however, that having a legal right to do something doesn’t mean that it is always that right thing to do, and that discretion is always the best policy. Given that we don’t see women en masse walking the streets topless, I would guess that most women agree. But, is breastfeeding in public indiscrete? Is posting a picture of a child attached to your boob improper? Where does legal right, natural behaviour and discretion find a happy compromise here?
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I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while. Well, let’s be honest here, I’ve been thinking about this topic for the better part of this last decade, a fact which, in itself, I am less than proud to admit. However, as the years pass, I become more and more uncomfortably aware of my bachelorhood and my inability to break free of it. And, it seems, the longer I am a bachelor the more aware everyone else seems to be of that fact as well.

In an ever increasingly connected world, where people are meeting and communicating in ways that bring strangers together more readily than they could a decade ago, or two, it’s frustrating that I can’t seem to make that one vital connection. Looking back on the years, as we tend to this time of the year, I am surprised to find myself far from where I thought I would be when I looked to my future. And, while I’m not in the habit of taking much stock in defining the present from the past, or divining the future from what has come before it, it’s a puzzle to figure out how I got here, where I’m going, and what I need to do to be where I want to be. It’s a fitting preoccupation for a time of resolutions and review.
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Last Saturday, the Montreal Canadiens announced the firing of Jacques Martin as head coach, and the promotion of Randy Cunneyworth as his interim replacement. Martin’s release was hardly a surprise; the hockey team has struggled this year, never truly owning a playoff berth and looking as though they might not by the end of the season. Whether you agree or disagree with the philosophy, when a team struggles the coach usually takes the blame for it. Martin’s fate was sealed as the team entered the holiday stretch stumbling and inconsistent, at best.

The anglophone Cunneyworth’s appointment has been met by a massive backlash of criticism from francophone fans, community and media. The Montreal Canadiens, they say, are an institution that represents French culture, and appointing a unilingual anglophone to lead the institution is tantamount to sacrilege. Some would say this is all a symptom of the religious devotion people have to a team with an incredibly long history, and some would say that even a sports team can be a part of a people’s identity when that lengthy history overlaps the prevailing currents that shaped the heritage of those people. Others would say they are just a team, and Cunneyworth just a coach, and winning is the only standard he should be held to. Nobody, however, would deny that Quebec has a habit of deconstructing every topic down to the level of language in the focused, self-involved defence of their “distinct culture,” whether the habit itself is ridiculous or not.
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