Thanks Wayne for stating in a different, and far more eloquent way, what I was saying!
You've re-articulated my case in a nice way, which gets the point across so succinctly: I think that in the quest for BF, we may be barking up the wrong proverbial tree, so to speak. Somehow, somewhere in our recent history in the west, we've managed to create this demon out of sex, sexuality, sexual desire and sexual characteristics. Looking at the possible sociological causes of this is quite interesting, and also has some roots in the development of the English language and its various incarnations across the globe.
Just to give everyone a quick rundown on my background: I have a degree in Theology, majoring in New Testament Biblical studies and Systematic Theology, both of which gave me invaluable (I believe) insight into the way Christianity has affected western society. As part of my final year Systematic Theology course I did a short dissertation on Human Sexuality: the result of me doing the research for this dissertation changed my life forever, and also crystalised the previous 4 years' courses in psychology, sociology etc.
Suffice to say that your average western (predominantly white - but lets not go into that here) person on the street has no clue as to how their perceptions of life, their morals, values, beliefs and thought-systems have been warped so utterly by Christianity and its associated ideologies and philosophies, that they have completely lost touch with their humanness. The sad thing is that no form of Christianity I know of, insititutionalised or otherwise, now or in the last 1800 years, has realised just how badly they have misinterpreted what they're supposed to be standing for: once again a separate debate that we don't want to go into here now.
That by way of background . . .
What this boils down to is that the route, I believe, to achieving real breast freedom, is realising that breast freedom is just one of many many freedoms we have sacrificed to Christianity over the last 1800 years. Breast freedom is inextricably linked with cognative freedom: the ability to think "outside the box". But to be able to think "outside the box", as Wayne is doing, you first have to understand where the box is around you, and just what it is boxing in. This process, unfortunately, is something that takes many years and many uncomfortable discoveries which force a decision from you as an individual: either follow your thoughts/ideas/etc outside the box, beyond your comfort zone, and find out what is outside the box or bounce off the box walls and stay in the comfort zone.
What are our comfort zones in regard to this discussion? In my opinion they are manifold; inter alia:
1. Nationality and all the associated trappings;
2. Self perception and understanding;
3. Progress (moral, technological, financial, spiritual, civil, etc).
Nationality clouds our perception of the world: being a non-American I can say that most Americans (and I mean specifically residents of the USA here), while being confident go-getters, are either astoundingly unaware of their Americaness and don't understand how it colours their perception of the rest of the planet beyond their national borders, or astonishingly aware of how their Americaness clouds their perceptions. Very much a "black or white" scenario - very little grey area.
As far as self perception goes, very few modern westeners appreciate how their lives are shaped and molded by marketing departments. It is because of marketing departments that it is the "norm" in the USA and large swathes of the English-speaking world to wear a bra: that which this forum so vehemently opposes. But in the very same breath we need to also understand that simple things like men being clean-shaven, women shaving their legs and armpits, having plastic surgery, eating junk food made from animal carcas leftovers etc etc all fall into the same category.
How many of you BF advocates would mount as vehement a protest against the "norm" that says that we women should shave our legs, armpits and bikini lines (just to pick up on another particularly interesting effect of good marketing)?
Progress is also a bit of a myth: despite our belief that the human race as a whole has made astonishing progress in becoming more civilised, more moral, more spritual and so on and so forth, we've actually made little progress if we are honest with ourselves. We've built up massive belief structures around ourselves which create and sustain the perception of humankins as an "advancing" species: once you get outside the box, its actually quite plain that we are little more advanced than we were several hundred years ago. A good read on this is "Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals" by John Gray.
Anyhow, this is probably getting a little long-winded . . ., so I'll wrap it up: I really believe Breast Freedom is a small, but significant battle in a far greater "war". Like any struggle, if it struggles in isolation of the bigger picture, it will lose not only the battle but the war too. Breaking out of the cognitive strictures we've been raised on is an important step in winning both the battle and the war: once you've done this, the freedom of thought will allow us all to understand that it doesn't really matter that we're primarily sexual beings, and that our perceived "spirituality" is derived from our existence as physical sexual beings, as it won't fly in the face of beliefs ingrained in us by society!
Probably asking for spam here, but if you two or anyone else wants to contact me via e-mail, I'd be very interested in chatting in depth about some of these issues which may not all be on-topic in this forum!
I've setup a (controversial - just for consistency:-)) hotmail account just for this purpose: annauld69@hotmail.com