La Leche League will support males (of the male sex) who wish to breastfeed.

Channeling the Simpson’s - ‘won’t someone please think of the babies?‘

This thread is a microcosm of everything that feminists warned would happen and perfectly illustrates how both women and children's rights and needs are immediately subservient to the demands of men exhibiting what we are not allowed to speak about.

I hope there are screenshots - especially of all the informed intelligent posts by women who know all about breastfeeding versus the insistent demands for males to be centred rather than the needs and rights of newborn babies ffs.

Men do not spontaneously lactate such that they can feed babies. They are not needed to do this. I see no reason for anyone to put time or resources into pandering to men who have this stupid desire.

You are correct, women breastfeed but it is also the case that males have breast tissue and that their breasts will make milk given the right conditions.
But...even if that were true, who cares?
Women's bodies are designed to feed babies, men's are not. Why can't women be allowed to have something that is just theirs??
I don't know LaLecheLeaugue at all, but the idea of a charity to help women breastfeed saying men are welcome makes me feel queasy. I didn't really want men in the room when I was learning to breastfeed,let alone sat there trying to do it with me!
Ultimately if a man wants to have a baby suckling on his nipple, there is no good reason for that. You can't use a baby to validate yourself, it's sick. The world has lost the plot, seriously.

If men can't breastfeed, why on earth would any man try and squeeze drips of liquid from his nipples in a breastfeeding context?

What's it for? What's the point?

You haven't answered the question about why Transwomen want to breastfeed Anna? Why should an organisation like LLL accommodate them within their service given its purpose? I've laid it out several times. What have your posts got to do with LLL?

None of this however, says anything about the other questions you raise. As I suggested previously, the strongest arguments are ones that do not contain information that is false.

I want to stand up for @FagashJackie's choice of language.

As numerous posters (the ones with a grasp on actual human biology rather than fantasy) have pointed out, spontaneous discharge from the nipple in male humans is a sign of disease. There have been no documented cases of human males successfully feeding a baby, and the only instances of them attempting to do so have been heavily dependent on huge amounts of artifical hormones alien to the male body.

So "pus" doesn't seem like such a bad description to me, especially when one thinks of the potential health impacts of feeding a baby on that highly artificial discharge.

Remember that LLL and its allies are the sort of supporters of breastfeeding some of whom describe formula (which undergoes huge amounts of research to get it as nutritionally adequate as possible, and which in this country is subject to very tight controls as to its composition) as "poison." Yet here they are supporting the rights of biological males to have their delusions pandered to over and above the needs of babies to have nutritionally safe food. "Pus" seems quite a mild descriptor.

And yes, I am fucking bitter - because I couldn't breast feed for physiological reasons (both on my side and my baby's), and attitudes like LLL's contributed to this failure spiralling into PND. Yet (to repeat) here are LLL throwing all that to the side in order to support delusional males, despite the detrimental impacts on babies, and the psychological warfare against women that this constitutes.

I agree Hecate, there is room enough for a variety of organisations. Why is it wrong to adhere to those statements and remain about mother to mother breastfeeding support?

Let other communities set up their own groups that suit their needs more closely. Surely we have not lost the rights of association now? I mean in the the sense that it is socially unacceptable, it is not quite illegal yet.

Groups really don’t have to try to be all things to all people. It is not achievable nor is it desirable.

LLL suited a particular group as it was, as did NCT and ABM and Breastfeeding network. Surely it is fine for all these to exist and work together when it suits them but they provide a slightly different take on breastfeeding and mothering to suit different tastes and approaches. Isn’t that great? Now are all to be homogenised and serve the “new religion” instead of the various needs of women as they become mothers? Do check out the thread on the new religion by the way!

Just like with Girlguiding I am willing to bet that there are plenty in these organisations who are trying to resist from within either because they are old school and value the old ways or simply because they see the harms inherent in some of these new ideologies.

As a PP said we need several of us to make those complaints to try and get sanity restored to an organisation.

I'm going to keep coming back to this. La Leche League has a specific purpose. It is to promote breastfeeding for the benefits it brings to baby and mother. I make no judgement in this thread about breastfeeding specifically, but the mission of this organisation (see previous posts) is specific. It also cites the following points in its philosophy:

Mothering through breastfeeding is the most natural and effective way of understanding and satisfying the needs of the baby.

Alert and active participation by the mother in childbirth is a help in getting breastfeeding off to a good start.

Mother and baby need to be together early and often to establish a satisfying breastfeeding relationship and reliable milk production.

In the early years, the baby has an intense need to be with his mother which is as basic as his need for food.

Ideally the breastfeeding relationship will continue until the baby outgrows the need.

These are not compliant with extending LLL's scope to supporting transwomen to breastfeed. How would that benefit the baby in this context. As Michelle points out, some organisations need to be exclusive to fulfil their purpose.

What about concerns about why a transwoman would want to breastfeed a baby?

Its a bit like that other acronym we can't use. We know. And we know everyone knows. But its all gone too far now so we have to pretend we don't know or admit feminists were right. Cant have that can we...

And despite many attempts in this thread to dig up studies showing rare cases where men has secreted a liquid from their nipples, what I said still stands

For all of human history mothers have breastfeed babies

There has never been a credible medical study of a single biological male successfully breastfeeding a baby

So on one side we have something billions of women have done and some need support with so that’s where organisations like LLL have traditionally helped. On the other side we have the fiction that built up, by men who want to and women lying ‘to be kind’, that it’s possible for biological males to bf even though there’s no medical proof that even one has ever successfully done it. And that’s resulting in organisations like LLL allowing men into groups that women unknowingly have provided intimate information including photos in the assurance that the group was female only.

Have I missed anything?

Or why is money in research to work our a way of trying to do this?

What about concerns about why a transwoman would want to breastfeed a baby?

The areas of concern that people have raised in relation to hormone levels in milk from a male person and motivations for breastfeeding for transwomen are the concerns that have a basis I think. Arguments based on misinformation are unhelpful.

Wasn't there concern about soya formua and lots of soya products on boys at one point? Something to do with it mimicking oestrogen or something?So how come there's concern over that but not any testosterone or oestrogen present in males attempting to breastfeeding?

I thought lll was to promote breast feeding

However this is a completely different thing to men trying to make milk with synthetic hormones for a fetish. or even for entirely suitable purposes. It is all about that drug cocktail and what gets passed on to infants. And what the infant miss out on in those first few weeks when a mother’s hormones regulate the composition of the milk.

Just catching up; there's been a very recent study on bm in longer term bf mothers to assess suitability for milk donation.

The outcome was that there was very little difference and they recommended that milk could be donated certainly up to 2 years pp.

However this is a completely different thing to men trying to make milk with synthetic hormones for a fetish.

S00LA, are the reasons for adoption similar over there? If a baby is removed from her mother at birth for child protection reasons, I can see it might be comforting and helpful if the adoptive mother attempts to breastfeed

No. In private adoptions in the US, the pregnant woman chooses to make an adoption plan. She contracts with the prospective adopters in a private arrangement ( or her own or through a private agency ) similar to surrogacy. The mother chooses the new parents , usually they are at the hospital during the birth and sometimes even in the delivery room.

Like surrogacy, people pay A LOT of money for this and of course a big cut is taken by the agency. Adopters do it because they want a newborn ( like most non adopters ) and the wait time is less. Birth mums do it because they can’t raise the baby right now, they get to choose the new parents ( usually rich and educated couples ) and they are more likely to get an open adoption.

In the Uk it’s very rare that new babies are placed voluntarily for adoption. As you say, it’s cor child protection reasons.

Babies are only removed at birth after a court order and it’s usually because the mother has had several other children taken away from her because of abuse and neglect. Sometimes other babies / children will have died.

Most of these women have addictions and mental health problems / learning difficulties and are affected by domestic violence. So called complex needs.

The babies will go into foster care and are often not adopted for 9-12 months because of legal issues. Some agencies place these babies with couples who wish to adopt, but this is very risky for the couple as the baby could be taken away at any time. Often an extended family member comes forward to take the baby. Imagine what that’s like if you have bonded ( and baby with you ) because you thought you were going to adopt ?

So it’s all very tricky. These babies can’t be BF because they are fostered and also because they could be removed by social services at any time with just a few hours notice.

I get your point that Bf could be comforting for a newborn baby that has been taken from its mother. But the trauma is the same for the baby regardless of the reasons for the adoption.

If birth mum is on drugs then baby is often born addicted and will have to go to PICU to detox. And / or the babies are often premature / low birth weight / other health issues, so they can be in hospital for a while.

Even tobacco smoking can lead to underweight premature babies. Mums are often heavy drinkers too.

These babies come into the world with so many challenges. It’s heartbreaking.

When I think about these mums and babies , their needs and the likely course of their lives .....it’s a millions miles away from privileged men saying they get off on pretending to BF because it’s sexy and makes them feel female.

Bet if we were to all contact the CC regarding this issue they also would be told to go back to their original mission or explain their need to change it.

I believe the advice is to contact the charity directly to see if you/they can resolve the complaint first and then escalate to the Charity Commission, so next week, between work, childcare and life in general, and doing the fucking hate crime consultation or public standards consultation, I will follow the OP's lead and contact these fools at LLL with the points made through this thread.

I would also encourage others to do so. If LLL and other breastfeeding charities fail to meet their very basic mission statement and centre breastfeeding mothers then we have to ditch them and start again, like with the rape crisis centres the women built, like with the doulas and the period product companies.

We will just have to start again and have our fury at this madness fuel us.

The abstract from Composition of breast fluid of a man with galactorrhea and hyperprolactinaemia

J K Kulski et al. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1981 Mar.

“It has been previously reported that men with and without known disease can produce milk, but no studies to date have demonstrated that their secretion contains milk constituents produced specifically by the breast. The present study shows the presence of lactose, alpha-lactalbumin, and lactoferrin in the breast secretion of a 27-yr-old male who had galactorrhea associated with hyperprolactinaemia. The concentrations of lactose, proteins, and electrolytes in the breast secretion of this man are within the range of colostrum and milk obtained from normal lactating women.”

That is interesting. And yet, as you say the samples have never been tested for chemical composition and the effects on an infant. To me, that is key to the argument In my opinion.

....and the motivation for attaching an infant to your nipple while publicly relishing in the delight of it being 10x more electrifying than your partner.

I work for a charity, I dealt with the Charity Commission recently, they blocked us for changing one word in our charity statement because it would deviate from our initial reason for being a charity. Bet if we were to all contact the CC regarding this issue they also would be told to go back to their original mission or explain their need to change it.

The trans activists are excellent in creating Catch-22 situations in all sorts of ways and name-calling is one of them. But similar stuff happens with men who have never transitioned, too. Male feminists are adored even when they know a lot less about feminist theory and even when they have done less for the movement. It's important to be aware of this tendency and to fight it.