Breastfeeding mother records her experience with public harassment

A Connecticut woman shared footage of a man harassing her for breastfeeding her infant in the cafe area at a local Target.
 By 
Laura Vitto
 on 

Breastfeeding mothers can't catch a break. 

Take, for example, Jessie Maher, a Connecticut woman who shared footage on Facebook of a man harassing her for breastfeeding her infant in the cafe area at a local Target. She posted the video on June 13, and by Wednesday, the view count was up to more than 5.2 million, and the share count well past 70,000.



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"Before the video started rolling he looked at me and said (very angrily), 'can't you do that somewhere else?... That's fucking disgusting.. You are nasty,'" Maher explains in the video's caption. When she asked him to leave her alone, she says the customer got angrier.

"He responded with, (as he's walking closer and closer to me and getting louder) 'you are fucking disgusting...you are fucking disgusting...you are fucking disgusting...you whore' he said a bunch more bullshit that I can not remember ....by this point EVERYONE came to my defense!" she writes.

The clip shows a group of Target employees confronting the man, while a fellow customer stands by Maher offering words of support. 

"Don't be upset, it's OK," a customer tells Maher off camera. "This is what you should be doing, OK? Do not feel ashamed of this at all."

Maher tells the Hartford Courant that she chose to record her experience to show others the hostility that breastfeeding mothers sometimes encounter while feeding in public.

"I wanted to, as much as I could, spread awareness. I wanted to tell my friends and family what happened and that this was a real thing," she said to the Courant. "The only way we are going to eradicate this behavior is to put it out there and show this is happening."

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Laura Vitto

Laura Vitto was Mashable's Deputy Culture Editor.

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