Between blotch and blok

If I am at a party, and people are (with the consent of the host) smoking tobacco, and it's an enjoyable party otherwise, I do not insist that the smokers go lock themselves in the loo.

If I am at a party, and numerous people are with the consent of the host breastfeeding their babies, I very probably don't go to the next party that person throws because they obviously have a set of norms I'm not comfortable with. In much the same way that I'd politely decline invitations to attend, say, sex parties or BDSM play parties, and have already declined to carry on going to parties at which guests were wont to wander about stark naked and chat me up entirely because of my footwear (though just as a data point I'd have reacted the same way if I got stuck at a party full of men who were talking to my tits). And should I invite this person to one of my own parties, I warn them in advance that I prefer babies to be fed in private, as do my friends.

I also find it quite interesting that the example you picked is smoking, which has pretty much just been made illegal in public throughout the UK. Public nudity already is illegal.

You would appear to feel that, if you're made uncomfortable by people smoking where it is legal for them to smoke, it's their responsibility to change their behaviour, rather than yours to remove yourself from their vicinity

I don't equate smoking to breastfeeding, for starters.

As to smoking: I believe that the damage done by socialising for a few hours in a smoky atmosphere is far less than the damage done by smoking oneself, and since I'm also the lead singer of a rock band, to a great extent I've had to learn to put up with smoky atmospheres since a lot of rock fans smoke. However, I have a friend who suffers from severe asthma, and she's not capable of putting up with smoke because it makes her instantly ill.

Breastfeeding, however, is not an issue of the rate at which one does or does not absorb toxins which in large quantities have a long-term effect on the body. It's an issue of psychological and social boundaries, and the mind works rather differently to the body. As soon as one notices someone breastfeeding and feels disturbed by it, the damage is done; and I don't know about you, but I can't call up amnesia to order. Whether or not you're looking at it you still know it's going on: we have far less choice about our instantaneous emotional responses to given stimuli than we do about how long we stay in a physically inhospitable environment. Your attitude is all very well as long as you're fundamentally not actually all that bothered by breastfeeding, but it does absolutely nothing to ease the problem for people who find it strongly distasteful - and those people are, given the current state of law and public opinion in this country, in the majority. Imagine for a moment that I'm trying to persuade you that public wife-beating is fine, and that if it upsets you all you need to do is look away; do you take my point about seeing and knowing being two different things?

Putting it another way, here's something interesting about society: that universally human sense of "ugh, put it away" is, fundamentally, the foundation on which all law and social convention relating to obscenity and the private/public divide is ultimately based. Further, as I understand human nature these responses are learnt very early and do not change particularly easily or fast. So I think it's ridiculous to expect that militantly demanding that everyone stop being squicked by public breastfeeding right now will actually achieve anything other than irritating the very people you most need to reach.

There are things about the world that all of us find it hard to live with - I for example detest the sexism I constantly find in employment situations - but there is only so much we can do to genuinely create change, and beyond those limitations we just have to live with the world the way it is now. I'm leaving full time office work to live on next to no money doing something that doesn't drive me insane, for example. Count your blessings, and if you want progress look at how far society has already come: thirty years ago, there were no such things as family-friendly pubs.