(Jamaica Gleaner) Opposition Senator Dr Andre Haughton has been hammered by social media users over his Senate blunder this morning as he rose to pay tribute to breast cancer victims and survivors in observance of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

“I am a breast man, when asked, ‘which part of the female you prefer’ – breast, otherwise, the breast,” he said in the Upper House.

Haughton was speaking after Senator Dr Saphire Longmore, a breast cancer survivor who has had a double mastectomy.

He said he sympathised with her and proceeded to tell a story of his aunt who died from breast cancer before his controversial comment.

IN HAUGHTON’S OWN WORDS:

“Many of you might think it’s uncharacteristic for a male to speak about breast cancer. Saphire, I share your pain and I sympathise with you on what you have been through. I had an aunt who died from breast cancer, my father’s sister, Aunty Mar. Maureen Haughton was diagnosed with breast cancer somewhere around 2013.  She did one operation and we thought she was safe and two years later it came back but she wasn’t lucky, she died. As a child growing up I always love breast, my mother always say I’m a breast man, even when I was one year and two months I was still drinking breast milk. I am a breast man, when asked, ‘which part of the female you prefer’ – breast, otherwise, the breast.”

Now give hope and save lives, that’s the theme of this breast cancer awareness month and I commend the efforts that have already been made by the Ministry of Health, by the government and other organisations but there is more work to be done,” Haughton said.

Public commentators react:

What he did is reduce a public health issue to a woman’s body part when the point of breast cancer intervention is to save the entire person. In one line, he reduced women to non-person to the sum of their parts.  He also managed to trivialise a very serious issue that affects thousands of women yearly… trivialising it, making comedy out of it because he must have been trying to illicit some sort of comedic response. That’s just distasteful. 
– Adwoa Onuora, Lecturer, Institute for Gender & Development, UWI  Mona Campus 

“Whether or not he loves breast for me is inconsequential to the matter of breast cancer. He is trivialising women who suffer from breast cancer and my mother had breast cancer and those two sentiments do no coexist. Men have always had to be careful when making statements like that to be careful that they are not sexualising women. He is also stating his position as a straight man but in truth that has nothing to do with his sexuality, it has do with something of life and death that women face. I think it was just ill-timed and not appropriate. It wasn’t suited for that occasion and he is not honouring his aunt that way. If he truly understood her suffering he wouldn’t frame the conversation like that.”
– Nadeen Spence, gender activist

”He ruined a presentation which otherwise showed thoughtfulness.”
– Broadcaster, Fae Ellington