Breastfeeding is now chestfeeding, Brighton’s trans-friendly midwives are told

There is a lot of vocabulary about pregnancy and childbirth that is only related to natal women. They got concerned about beast, but not cervix, contractions, uterus, placenta...?

And as PPs point out ‘chestfeeding’ is not ‘friendly’ or ‘inclusive’ to women.

Agree with PPs that even if wanting to be ‘inclusive’ in, biological men AND women have breasts, so ‘breastfeeding’ works fine.

I don't understand why any woman would want to be a man. I even more don't understand why such a person then decides to get pregnant.

I don’t understand how anyone who has rejected womanhood, can go through pregnancy and birth but find words - which they will encounter everyday - upsetting.

I agree with PPs- this isn’t about TM. If it was, having specific literature tailored to them with women’s words left for the majority would be sufficient. But it’s not. The purpose is to untether womanhood from female biology and procreation.

And we know who benefits - not women.

I still can’t get past a world that thinks sexist stereotypes should be adhered to in order to “live as a woman” but finds it just fine to “live as a man” by getting pregnant

Calling it 'chestfeeding' isn't inclusive - it's incorrect biology and an undermining of women.

This is what is so damaging. I don’t think any woman finds the process of pregnancy and breast feeding easy and I think it usually involves a loss of self. It’s pretty much built into the process, whether it’s legal loss of control, physical changes, or being told not to drink coffee or the reality of child birth.

Now women are being asked to accept that their body parts and the physical processes they go through are disturbing and disgusting.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised because all this has happened before.

It is so, so wrong.

Breast tissue is what makes milk. You can't breastfeed without breast tissue or mammary glands. So it's breastfeeding or possibly mammary feeding if you're really pushing it. It's not chest feeding, your chest is more than just the breast area.

What I'm confused about is that it says the midwives specialising in this can offer the person (well, woman if we are following biology which you hope healthcare professionals would), appointments at home if it's easier for them, extra support at scans etc, why isn't this available for all? If you identify as a man you can get more care and support during your pregnancy, fucking madness.

I hate the DM, but a lot of the comments are calling it out for being ridiculous.

I just don't get how we've become a society where we'd rather alienate the 99.9999% of service users than risk offending the 0.0001% that have some issue with the existing language. If you're that tiny a minority why should you get priority? Of course you want to be inclusive and not offend any individuals that are in that minority, but going so hard the other way is not inclusive to the vast majority of your service users. Nuts.

Why only breastfeeding? I assume it’s been changed because breasts are seen as female only things.
Do they also change uterus (baby pouch, perhaps?), vagina and cervix? Those are far more female-specific. I never hear about those terms being changed but am genuinely confused by someone wanting the word breastfeeding to change, but not vagina.
Maybe those terms also have “neutral” alternatives that I’m not aware of?

I don't think any longer it is to avoid offending people. I think the real reason is to piss women off and negate lived experience. I am trying to not let it get to me, but that would be mean completely looking the other way while this complete affrontery carries on regardless. It is bullying and abuse.

Is it April the first already? This is so ridiculous it is beyond stupid. To avoid the risk of offending a very small number of people someone has decided that mothers and/ or women don’t count at all?

Don't men swim breast stroke?

This is absurd. Chests are the interior. Breasts are the external tissue. Both women and men have breast tissue; that is a gender neutral term already - we don't call Men's breast cancer 'chest cancer' because that's a different part of the body. Calling it 'chestfeeding' isn't inclusive - it's incorrect biology and an undermining of women.

This is beyond absurd. I can imagine it now... A heavily-pregnant woman arrives screaming in the delivery room and a nurse with a clipboard timidly asks: "So, in this moment would you say you feel more like a man or a woman? Or perhaps a two-spirit person? ..."

I am hoping someone reads this who may be intending to chest feed and considers the impact of their actions on the child they are bringing into the world. Selfish does not even begin to cover it.

Wonderful. Another way to alienate women from their bodies. It’s very much about dehumanising mother’s, pregnancy and birth, which is the start of a terrifying route indeed.

Freddie McConnell would be all for this.

Womb this is not about or coming from transmen. This is primarily about separating the concept of woman from biology, and not for the benefit of anyone born female.

So sick of this.

WTF?! The world has gone mad! How did all this erasure of women start?