'Chestfeeding' to be banned in NHS crackdown

OMG
the article is so promising! This is really really good news, though like pps I daren’t believe it at this point.

No! That fucked up nonsense is what got us here in the first place. Human beings can’t change sex and if you are pregnant then your a woman, if you are feeding a baby it’s from your female breasts. Men shouldn’t be attempting to get babies to ingest hormone laden secretions from their chests for validation in the first place. Women are told to be very careful what we are ingesting as it can go to the baby through the breast milk, so why is a cocktail of synthetic hormones like that allowed? They have no idea what the long term consequences will be, that’s not safe. If anyone says that’s unkind then they are putting the validation of adults before the safety of babies, end of story. Sorry, but the whole thing has to be banned and only easily understood factual language used for everyone in a health care setting, no exceptions, we need to stop mollycoddling.

Yes.

I think it's right and good that the sadly damaged and delusional young women who have been lied to and told that they will find true happiness in pretending to be men are still able to access sex-appropriate treatment so the NHS should train staff to be able to use this "sex neutral" language if they are dealing with a patient who will be upset by hearing (accurate) female terminology.

However it must not be the default that the vast majority of women have to go along with. They need simple and accurate terminology that correctly refers to their female bodies without a word salad. That doesn't stop those who need a word salad from asking for it.

I do not approve of the announcement of sex-neutral language being banned. It should not be banned, it just shouldn't be the default, and should only be used for those who need it.

NHS leaflets are produced in Urdu and Polish and Ukrainian and dozens of other languages. They can easily produce a separate version in sex-neutral terminology with a small print run so that everyone gets the information they need in a format they can access.

Yes indeed. No celebrations from me on this until I see it happening.

It surely cannot stand-it's all complete bollocks.

This is assuming the madness goes away..there's many other countries infested too.

I’ll be so glad if they do stop. Quite apart from the whole “taking away our language” and dehumanising us thing, their terminology is ugly. Chest feeding and bodyfeeding both sound grim. People with “female bodypart of choice” is clumsy. If someone can make it all go away, I would be eternally grateful!

The DT article talks of an eight week consultation, which I'm assuming will be public.

Next on the list- ‘pregnant people’ needs to go

And they don't even invite ' anyone' with a cervix , it's a rather limited age group.

Edit- it's over 25 and under 64

We like words to mean what they’re supposed to mean and object to misleading terminology imposed as the result of people thinking that normal language constitutes some form of aggression or violence.

I won't celebrate yet.

There is a big push of Tories out there in the media saying the things that appeal to their voters with no real danger of having to follow through.

Great. Who wouldn't want a lactation coach in denial about who produces breast milk? If they used the terms human milk and body feeding near me I wouldn't completely trust myself to stay civil.

I wish the government would enforce these decisions on the regulators. If Ofsted, CQC, etc had to fail schools and hospitals on their inspections because of partisan political ideologies in their literature, policies, treatment plans and curricula, I think things would change much faster.

Imagine a school having a practice Ofsted inspection where they are told "you will fail the inspection because your policies allow for social transition without clinical advice, and this isn't compliant with the Cass Report". Or a hospital is told "if the word chestfeeding appears then you will fail your inspection". That policy is going to be changed in double quick time before their inspection happens.

Quite right too.

I just hope they follow through with it!

So relieved to hear this news. It's been astounding that the NHS agreed to call women the most insulting names

We are. And this just returns things to correct ‘language’ and normal ‘speech’ as opposed to dystopian women-erasing nonsense.

Really? Because some people think (wrongly, as it happens) that 'breast' is a gendered word and excludes transmen, and possibly those very rare transwomen who take a cocktail of hormones to enable them to produce 'induced lactation'.

Chestfeeding (i.e. gender neutral term for breastfeeding) was, for a long time, solely associated with maternity in cisgender women (i.e. individuals who were assigned female gender at birth and identify as a woman). However, this has increasingly been put into question due to increasing availability and visibility of non-puerperal lactation induction in mothers of adopted children, partners in same-sex relationships and biological mothers of a surrogate pregnancy [1], and puerperal lactation in transgender and gender diverse individuals [2]. Transgender women (i.e. individuals assigned male gender at birth (AMAB) and who affirm their gender as female) and non-binary individuals who are AMAB may wish to chestfeed their infants and constitute a growing population. They may do so through non-puerperal lactation induction [3,4,5].
https://internationalbreastfeedingjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13006-024-00624-1

@RedToothBrush Thanks for explaining. That's absolutely ridiculous and insulting. I'm a breastfeeder (an extended one - daughter is 3).

Cos a bunch of activists colonised political parties and bullied the NHS into this quasi-religious ballcocks to be inclusive. As if you can be inclusive of males into breastfeeding. It's not about transmen either. No one gives a fuck about them unless they serve the interests of transwomens validation process.

Yep. I dont trust Starmer any further than I can piss. Any party that has Kate Osbourne in it, and allowed without let or hindrance to spout the kind of utter, utter bollocks that would be an embarrassment to a teenager is not to be trusted. Has Rosie seen even a sniff of an apology yet? Its almost as if neither WPATH or Cass had happened, or something.

Yeah. I breastfed my babies and in the NCT, hospital etc, that was the word that everyone used.
I've seen a couple of IBCLC use 'chest feed' in a limited context meaning that if a trans man prefers to use that word about their body then they would support that person in that way, in they same way they supported me with breastfeeding.
The Tories want to make this into a culture war.

Women’s bodies are miraculous. We menstruate, ovulate, grow children inside us, make milk, and babies suckle on us for sustenance.

The mechanics and complexities that Co-create these miracles are a fucking wondrous biological symphony.

Chest feeding is the most two dimensional example of pastiche out of all of this fucking nonsense.

It’s sad and laughable in equal measure. Pathetic in the true sense. And it’s a sad little insult to life itself.

They are also heavily mangling the word 'fact' here.