Women are being forced to breastfeed standing on packed trains. What has the world come to?

If proof of the contempt with which women are routinely treated in this country is needed, Wide Awoke advises you to ask any mother about her experiences of travelling with small children.

My randomly plucked horror story goes like this: boarding a train from Edinburgh to London with my toddler, I found that both of the wheelchair spaces – the only place where you have the option of keeping your baby in their buggy – were taken. By three able-bodied adults. There was another woman with a baby in a buggy and I politely asked them to move for us. They refused. We then politely asked the train guard to assist us. He said there was nothing he could do. Everyone else in the carriage put in their headphones and shut their eyes. We folded our buggies and stood holding our babies until seats became available. The atmosphere was at Bodyguard levels of intensity. The other mother started sobbing and I ended up comforting her in the vestibule as we lurched against the walls of the tilting train, our babies thumping on our hips and hopelessness in our hearts.

This was not a one-off. Take the blogger Kate Hitchens who shared on Instagram her experience of having to breastfeed her baby while standing on a packed train. For half an hour. No one offered her a seat. Or, rather, one woman did, but another commuter took it, put in her headphones and closed her eyes, which tends to be body language for, “I refuse to be a member of society but still want to appear like I might give a s***.”

“What has the world come to that a mother has to stand up on a moving train breastfeeding a wriggling and writhing six-month-old 20lb baby?” wrote Hitchens, who was then subjected to a second wave of misogyny, in which she was informed that: a) equality means we all have to stand up on trains now, b) she should have just asked for a seat and c) breastfeeding in public is disgusting anyway.

These supposedly minor inconveniences are major in their significance. Like all microaggressions, they express something bigger: structural inequality, sexism, the way women – particularly in those first fragile and turbulent years of motherhood – are seen as less valuable members of society. Less deserving of kindness. Less seen at all. It’s enraging and humiliating, but mostly it is just really upsetting. And this is not some niche issue only affecting mothers. We should all care about how people in need of help and understanding are treated and not only because we all have the potential to be carers and need care. It’s about the milk of human kindness. - The Guardian, UK