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AIBU?

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Original poster

AIBU to want to throw up every time I come across the word "chestfeeding"?

88 replies

surrealpotato · 22/01/2026 16:38

Whenever I look for breastfeeding advice online, inevitably half the websites in the results, especially the top few, will use the term "chest feeding", sometimes avoiding he phrase "breastfeeding mother", or even the word "mother" completely. I find this language so dehumanising and gaslighting, but it seems that even some of the more otherwise respectable organisations, like La Leche League, are now adopting this language. I know I'm not being unreasonable. But AIBU?

OP posts:
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WhatNoRaisins · 22/01/2026 16:59

When I first heard it I thought it was to do with tube feeding babies milk and I consider myself literate and reasonably educated. Let's keep language simple.

upstairsdownstairscardboardbox · 22/01/2026 16:57

And yet when a man gets breast cancer, it is just that. No chest cancer for men, so why chest feeding for trans men. Utter nonsense.

WhatNoRaisins · 22/01/2026 16:57

When I first heard it I thought it was to do with tube feeding babies milk and I consider myself literate and reasonably educated. Let's keep language simple.

jbm16 · 22/01/2026 16:55

I'm not sure it's dehumanising and gaslighting, but pretty pointless language, both women and men have breasts, and unless you can produce milk are hardly going to breastfeed.

JohnTheRevelator · 22/01/2026 16:52

YANBU. The term makes me shrivel up inside a bit whenever I see it used.

Original poster
surrealpotato · 22/01/2026 16:52

BillieWiper · 22/01/2026 16:51

Yeah it's pathetic. Both men and women have breasts and that is the part of the person's anatomy that the child is feeding from. The chest is the thorax, heart, ribs, the lungs, the area of the body on which the breasts are located. If they're so scared to say 'breast' I suppose they could say 'nipple'?!

Someone needs to buy an anatomy and physiology text book.

This is true, but it's also true that only women/mothers can breastfeed.

OP posts:
BillieWiper · 22/01/2026 16:51

Yeah it's pathetic. Both men and women have breasts and that is the part of the person's anatomy that the child is feeding from. The chest is the thorax, heart, ribs, the lungs, the area of the body on which the breasts are located. If they're so scared to say 'breast' I suppose they could say 'nipple'?!

Someone needs to buy an anatomy and physiology text book.

Oopsylazy · 22/01/2026 16:51

It makes us feel sick as it throws up images of a man feeding a baby from his chest which is obviously unnatural and gross. It’s an atavistic reaction.

But there does seem to be a lot of worrying language/behaviour around the whole trans ideology thing in general.

Idontspeakgermansorry · 22/01/2026 16:48

Yes, I hate it too. Why do we erase 99.9% of mothers, just to be 'inclusive' of a few non-binary or trans man 'birthing parents'?

peacefulpeach · 22/01/2026 16:48

La leche league are long gone. They took up with the gender woo wank (..) brigade a while back. 🤮

YANBU

Planner2026 · 22/01/2026 16:43

YANBU I find it so rude to call a mother anything other than a mother. Orwellian.

donkey86 · 22/01/2026 16:41

Yes it’s awful. I’ve also seen references to ‘human milk’ instead of breastmilk. Yuck!

ditalini · 22/01/2026 16:41

Yanbu. It shows no understanding of anatomy for a start.

Women have chests and we don't use them for feeding babies. Men and non-binary people of both sexes have breasts so there's no need to affirm anyone's gender by making up terms.