Lactation support conference in Ireland - the quiet part out loud

We're in this mess because people have been allowed to bully their way into influencing institutions using the cloak of the "sacred caste" with no criticism or challenge allowed - let alone the idea of exercising critical thinking or due diligence.

I agree with everything you’re saying @MrsOvertonsWindow But also there’s very careful marketing and PR by these groups to obscure or hide the full nature of what is happening. So that, at my university, fellow faculty just would / do not believe me when I reference the wider implications of self ID and male access to single sex spaces.

There’s no awareness of any employment tribunal’s or cases of sexual assault or men taking women’s awards or blocking research or the many many threats and if I mention them, those cases are ‘extreme’ and so extremely unlikely to happen. Neither is there any interest in looking at the evidence more deeply.

It’s all see no evil. So no evil exists. And definitely no critical thinking.

This is crackpot.

Why would we need to include men in a process they can't actually do?

Why would we want to consider men's sexual gratification when we're trying to care for tiny babies?

This is not what equality and inclusion means. This is utterly insane.

This is not inclusion. Women who identify as queer also deserve competent breast feeding advice, not this pillock.

Yes. And doesn't that add to the frustration so many of us feel? When something so evidently wrong like this happens but it's dismissed as "an exception" or just ignored.

The presentation and marketing of all this has been so clever with the framing of all challenge as bigotry - even challenges involving safeguarding children.

It does show how often transactivism makes organisations beclown themselves. Imagine them having to defend that statement in a court after the unthinkable happens?

When something so evidently wrong like this happens but it's dismissed as "an exception" or just ignored.

And, just how many abused babies are unacceptable to those enabling this man?
Is one enough, or is that just "an exception?"

The ACLI have a policy about 'diversity' and we all know that 'diversity' means 'gender/trans kind of stuff' so they were no doubt digging around for somebody who ticked the gender/trans boxes, and found this 'pillock' as a PP so aptly named him.

It wasn't an accident, though it may have been accidental that nobody saw his reference to 'sexual gratification', I'll give them that... but typically, both the HSE [kind-of NHS in Ireland, not the same but has that overall health function] and the ACLI resort to defending the indefensible, rather than accepting that there is absolutely no place in a breastfeeding-related conference for a man promoting 'chestfeeding' by males, for the benefit of the man and with harm to the baby.

As I said before, it's interesting and typical that they go to such extreme lengths to tick the 'diversity' box re genderID/trans/whatever, but can't be arsed to give any details whatsoever of disability access/facilities at the conference venue.

yeah. I'm having a puzzled morning, and here's another head scratcher.

if someone's answer to 'why breastfeed?' is anything other than 'to feed an infant', why does that not ring alarm bells?

I remember the moves to stress the complete lack of a sexual component to breast feeding to make it more acceptable in public way back when. why is a breast feeding advocacy group giving any air time to a man who plays up to a sexual component, thereby undermining women's ability to breast feed in public?

the whole thing is mad

And they've misunderstood "diversity" too because the right way to make their conference "diverse" would have been to include, for example, a woman with experience in a country where extended breastfeeding is common; another woman who is an advocate for extended mixed feeding; perhaps a representative from a breast pump company and so on. A range of views and expertise while still centering the welfare of mums and babies.

Instead, so often these days, diversity is very lazy tickboxing on sexuality, skin colour etc. We are all so much more complicated than these attributes.

I completely agree with you, Arabella, but this is typical of the national 'beclowning' that takes place when a country introduces the legal fiction that by self-IDing as a woman, a man is a woman and is therefore entitled to everything associated with women - whether that's sports or toilets or breastfeeding.

And to say 'women's sports, toilets, yes obviously - but OK maybe not actual breastfeeding...' is to ...
sorry I was going to use an analogy based on dams breaking but with the flood horror happening in Nepal, that would be tasteless..

let's just say that if they allow for one exception to TWAW-because-they-say-so, it weakens the whole legal and social structure around gender recognition/self-ID.

I don't believe that the general public in Ireland has ever completely bought into genderwoo 100% anyway - it sounded OK in the wake of the Marriage Equality referendum, and, following the Denton's plan* to the letter, the trans movement swept in to capitalise on the big majority in favour of marriage equality to bring trans equality in on the rainbow-striped coat-tails...

But when the reality of it is made clear: your sons and daughters using the same toilets at their school; an obvious man who claims to be a woman, working in a creche and being inappropriate with the children, and now a man speaking at a breastfeeding conference who says men have a right to 'chestfeed' and get a sexual buzz out of it..

The likes of the ACLI and the HSE are beclowning themselves because to deviate even slightly from 'TWAW because they say so, and are legally recognised as women' is a danger to the whole edifice.

Which as we all know is built on sand.

*The Denton's Document
Analysis of the Dentons Document: A How to Manual - Women Speak Tasmania
full PDF of Document
https://gendercriticalwoman.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/iglyo_v3-1.pdf

I certainly remember the mild exasperation voiced by every woman I knew in the seventies and eighties who was breast-feeding, when it was suggested that they did it because it gave them sexual gratification. The general feeling seemed to be first "that's nonsense" followed shortly afterwards by "hang on, that's pretty offensive nonsense, isn't it. Do men have to have EVERYTHING being about sex for heaven's sake?".

So, if he had his way, men would be getting sexually aroused by breastfeeding babies, and presumably doing it in public, cafés, the lot.

I can't find the words for how repulsive this is

Reem Alsalem was on the Hard Shoulder programme on Newstalk (an Irish radio station) earlier to talk about this and other issues. I haven't listened to it yet.

https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/highlights-from-the-hard-shoulder/un-special-rapporteur-reem-alsalem-on-alci-controversy

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0dIqne3O3W6HWNaYoLN22r

Well, yes. Quite

This is great, thank you. It is a widely-listened to programme and will have reached a lot of people who might never have heard about it otherwise.
The interviewer, Ciara Kelly, is a doctor, she's also quite a 'contrarian' so I wondered what position she would take - she was neutral except to put it to Reem that the conference said JE was there for 'diversity and inclusion' , she gave Reem full scope to speak without interruption.

BTW the interview starts at 1.10 in.

Later in the programme they said that that interview got the most reaction from listeners, particularly the parts about male "lactation" and surrogacy.

I listened, Reem was given time to speak and was clearly anti males pretendbreast feeding. She wouldn't even call it breastfeeding.

What she said about surrogacy had me nodding furiously and brought to mind this:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/surrogate-who-ignored-parents-wish-37573562

Whether to abort a foetus that will be born with a serious heart condition should a private decision by the mother, not a matter that is subject to contract law and litigation.

I can't help but notice that the usual community disruptors are swerving this thread.

I think it’s even worse than that, because as I understand it, the justification for men doing it is that breastfeeding women also get a sexual thrill from it. Which, if it were true, would mean that any woman BF-ing in public would be doing a “When Harry met Sally” thing every time!

I think women need to be very clear that that isn’t happening, or the next step will be that women will be expected to hide away to feed babies again in case they have unexpected orgasms in public!!

Why are they being let get away with this!