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

“It will be very important for the many transgender women who want to breastfeed but do not feel they have the opportunity to do so.”

The author had a baby with a woman...

Why dick around (no pun intended) with something as fundamental as this?

There's a woman who has given birth whose body is ready to bf. The baby knows her heartbeat voice etc etc. Why not leave it to her?

If she doesn't want to... Well that's fine as formula is available and safe to people like the author.

If it comes to it and this is a theme.

Didn’t one of the big USA tech execs who is a transwoman breastfeed their infant (May have been an adopted baby)?

I read this a while ago, there is another article I'm searching for but in the meantime...

From the New Scientist (new science you say, yeah, you could call it that...), read to the end...

However, the woman’s breastmilk has not been assessed yet, so we don’t know if it has the same mix of components as in milk from new gestational mothers. This means the practice cannot yet be recommended, says Madeline Deutsch at the University of California, San Francisco. She says she can see the potential benefits of breastfeeding, but that the long-term impact of this milk on the baby – including on subtle measures like IQ – is unknown.
Deutsch herself is a transgender woman with a six-month-old baby who is currently being breastfed by Deutsch’s wife, who was the gestational mother. “I am very sad not to be able to breastfeed her and at the same time I did not consider doing this for the above reasons,” she says.
Nevertheless, Safer thinks there is likely to be demand for treatments like this. “This is very special,” he says. “It will be very important for the many transgender women who want to breastfeed but do not feel they have the opportunity to do so.”

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2161151-transgender-woman-is-first-to-be-able-to-breastfeed-her-baby/#ixzz6f2Pil0Ik

Well exactly thingy.

The approach will be. Some women do xyz while BF so why can't I (a male) just do this.

It's fundamentally just. Well shitty. And comes from a really complex place but that is coming from.. well all the stuff I just wrote really :)

Oh and where does the disgust come from?

Over the years there have been 'what a fucking freak' stories about women Bf older children. And yeah "woman fed her cat' shocker.
I remember on the Wright stuff years ago s woman let them have some milk for reasons I am not sure about because I didn't see the previous episode.
So Wright said 'we've left it out of the fridge (overnight) so it's like what the baby would have! (Or something similar).
And him and this other chap drank some and were URRGH IT'S REVOLTING!

I was...

Why are you doing this?
Are you surprised that milk left out in a hot environment overnight doesn't taste great?
A woman sent you some of her own milk, it's not a sensitive thing to do is it? Your milk tastes revolting! Poor baby...

I mean just why?

Is it another aspect of this sort of. Simultaneous fascination with and revulsion by, women's reproductive functions?

Sorry I'm going on. So many thoughts :)

Thanks for your reply, I'd never really thought about the 'rules' around BF and the impact it has on women now. FWIW I literally did smoke and drink whilst BF my oldest children, things were so different back then.

The real question/ conversation is why.

Women BF infants because that is what our bodies do, as mammals. Produce milk. Before formula it was life or death, same as for other mammals.

The formula story is an excellent example of essentially. Men thinking they could do it better. Assuming it wasn't very complicated. Just milk only women how hard can it be. Oh and let's monetise it! And. Oh yeah. Cause the death of loads of babies around the world....

But yeah! They know best. Even as more and more evidence comes out about how amazing breast milk is, how complicated and reactive to mother baby etc etc... It's just women doing baby stuff I mean how hard can it be.

And similar with artificial wombs, the idea that with surrogacy using a donated egg the baby is nothing to do with the woman who grows and births it...

And on and on. These are all on the same theme. Which is one that is the root of all our problems tbh.

The issue that men have that they need women in order to procreate.

Everything stems from that. And it all ties together when you look across the piece. The need to control, dominate, take etc.

WTAF?! I cannot.

In short. When I was BF the girls I would have been more likely to successfully BF an orphan baby lamb, monkey or pig. Than my male partner would have been able to feed our human daughters

I saw an article once where a woman breastfeed her sick cat. It had a full set of teeth!

'Out of interest, what would be the legal position if this advice led to a child being harmed, Iassume they must be hold some responsibility?'

Dodgy route to go down as it would harm women loads. The 'rules' for women when bf are strict and largely based on fuck all science.

And of course women do drink, smoke, take drugs while bf. I mean not literally while they are doing it YKWIM.

So the upshot would be the same as how in USA laws which were (sold as) being about recognising that crimes against pregnant women have an extra layer of bad if the foetus is affected. Have been used to harass/ arrest/ imprison pregnant women.

Seems like a bad idea.

Actually I'm not convinced I could. Those animals are all quite big. And I'm no farming expert...

Take that as a nice bit of hyperbole or whatever.

I was going to say a baby orang utan. Not sure why I didn't. They are closest to us I think. So feel free to swap that in :)

Everything in LLL emails is on their website, i.e. it is possible for a transwoman to breastfeed. Out of interest, what would be the legal position if this advice led to a child being harmed, Iassume they must be hold some responsibility?

Still a feminist this bit

'There has never been a credible medically verified instance of a biological male successfully breastfeeding a baby in the history of the universe'

Just made me remember all the 'isn't it cute' stories about mammals BF babies of other mammal species. The animal doing the BF was always female though, unless I've totally got things very mixed up somewhere... (I haven't).

In short. When I was BF the girls I would have been more likely to successfully BF an orphan baby lamb, monkey or pig. Than my male partner would have been able to feed our human daughters.

Sorry for the weird optics.

We as a species drink cow, goat, sheep milk. Probably more. We make delicious cheeses out of it. Milk is fab stuff. Whatever the species, it's coming from females. And the exploitation around it is another question.

But still.

Milk is milk. Female mammals make it to feed their young. It's one of the definitions of what makes a mammal. Is that all up for a change now then or what.

I agree but your lot were saying "gender is a social construct"

gender is a social construct. Sex is a biological reality. Sex and gender are different things. women saying 'my biology is not my destiny, just because I can have a baby doesn't mean I can't have a career' is in no way the same as saying 'my biology does not exist'.

A woman choosing to go back to work and so FF'ing her baby is in no way the same as a male bodied person taking drugs to induce some kind of fluid that they then feed the baby.

Only the terminally hard of thinking would not be able to understand these distinctions.

TootSweets too fucking right.

Why are we even having to have these fucking conversations.

Well in this case because the fucking la leche league in the UK is putting out media to say they welcome TW who want to BF.

And then when a woman contacts then and says. Huh?

They say yes trans men need support.

And she says yeah. But you were taking about trans women.

They say. Erm. Dunno. Literally no idea. Didn't think about/ read what we wrote/ were told to write. Can't say that though. Um. Fuckity bye!

Most women on here do NOT want to be wasting their sodding time on this shite.

But a major BF charity says it. And posters on here via various means defend it.

1. Trans women when it comes to BF are exactly the same as women
2. You said women and men were equal! You brought in on yourselves
3. Men in general inducing lactation is not uncommon so the LLL are on the right track

So. Yeah. I don't want to talk about it. But we can't not, can we?

Only lactating biological women are able to breastfeed babies

With a side note of

There has never been a credible medically verified instance of a biological male successfully breastfeeding a baby in the history of the universe. If you are male and trying to do this you will not succeed so please for the babies sake either hand the baby back to its mother or use formula

I don't have much to add apart from god this is all so moronic.

There is so much in the world we could be turning our attention towards to make a real difference. But no, here we are, having to defend the concept that breast feeding babies isn't something done by men, and that charity who is supposed to support mothers and babies breastfeeding should be focussed on that not on men who want to breast feed babies.

Utterly utterly moronic.

It's fascinating isn't it that women's feeding choices are scrutinised, critiqued, fought about, with FF Vs BF causing such s lot of angst, with laws having to be passed so women can bf in public without being told off. Dietary choices, no booze, no caffeine, no water, no air, blah blah blah...

Then a male rocks up and says yeah I want to bf and everyone says yay awesome take these off label hormones, totally you should do it instead of your female partner who gave birth, here's the skin to skin, come along to the groups!

I mean FFS.

There’s a market for selling breast milk to chaps for their own, um. Reasons isn't there

Euwww. I’m not sure I’d ever thought of that before but yes, I expect there is. Euwww.

Thank you Gaspode. That is the study I was referring jj to.

And I remembered that there was this rebuttal. lascapigliata8.wordpress.com/2018/03/26/analysis-of-study-of-induced-lactation-in-trans-identified-man/

As the Dr says, the testosterone readings were not monitored apart from two very different readings throughout and maybe there was a problem with the blockers they were on.

Who knows? Either way, it seems the child’s needs were secondary here.

Yeah I wouldn't suggest anyone googles for obvious reasons.

I haven't but dread to think.

There's a market for selling breast milk to chaps for their own, um. Reasons isn't there.

Grumpy could you provide evidence for your assertions?

^*
Trans women can use a protocol similar to adoptive and other non-gestational mothers and stimulate their milk supply: it is called the Newman-Goldfarb protocol.*^

There are at least two cases known. The one in the academic article is apparently different from the one in The Stranger article. This is the academic article: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779241/ It raises all the same questions as The Stranger article, and more, as I find it hard to grasp why a peer-reviewed article doesn't say anything at all about the nutritional content of the milk and the possible effect on the baby's health of ingesting a lot of different drugs from the milk.