Too Weird - Even For Me

As you all know very well, I BELIEVE in breastfeeding. I know it is the biological norm for mothers and children - yes, children up to the age of about 6 or until they lose their milk teeth (deciduous teeth). I know it is important for proper development of children's brains, immune systems, jaws, and faces as well as their emotional well-being. I know it is important for mothers' health too because of the protections it provides from cancer and because our bodies prepare us for breastfeeding during gestation as we add fat - like a bear for those lean times ahead when we be nursing and not able to get up and make ourselves a meal.
I am glad Owen feeds his babies and critters just like I nurse him. He very sweetly lifts up his shirt and cuddles the little ones to him. Earlier this week, he had a possum in a silk scarf baby carrier and needed help getting his shirt done up right so he could nurse in the carrier; I could sympathize as nursing in a carrier was the last major hurdle for breastfeeding and babywearing that I encountered ;o). He has time later on to worry about the biological reality that as a male, he will (probably) not nurse his children. For now, I am pleased that he knows what nurturing and feeding a little one looks like.
So, where am I going?
I learned about a new breastfeeding doll recently and am just horrified. It is a battery-operated gadget (so, it is already not something that will find a place in our house) that comes with a baby that makes "a sucking motion and sound" when it is put to a special flower on a halter top. Apparently this is supposed to promote breastfeeding, but it is just beyond my wits to figure out how providing substitute flower nipples as a place for comfort and nourishment is going to give children the idea that BREASTfeeding is normal, acceptable, or even that it exists. I can understand the realities of making a mechanical doll that will nurse at appropriate times. How else might you cue the doll to nurse? Well, could it be done with a light sensor or a temperature sensor of some kind? Surely it could. Maybe the real issue is that children might BF in public - oh the horrors!
I just have some fundamental issues with this THING.

• I don't really like battery-operated toys that decrease the need for imagniative imput.
• I am really weireded out by the flower-nipple on the halter top.
• I think that BREASTfeeding comes from a breast. Breasts are not dirty or unsightly or (necessarily) sexual. They are baby feeders. If you want to promote BREASTfeeding, then masking the beast and giving a poor subsititute for a nipple is not the way to do it.
  
• Real babies nurse from the breast or are fed from bottles. No baby eats from a flower.
• Making yet another gadget to "promote" breastfeeding adds to the notion that we need gadgets. Really all you need to nurse a baby is a baby and a breast (or 2). You can use special clothes to be discrete, pumps to get milk out when you are not with baby, creams for nipples, teas to increase supply, pillows for propping baby, and the like - but they are not necessary (in most situations). Just as kids don't need battery operated toys to play, women don't need lots of expensive crap to breastfeed.