"chest feeding" men should not be put above women and babies by La Leche League. Reasonable?

[GenerativeAIBot]

How many women will self exclude based on this outcome? How many children will suffer because of it? Anything more than zero is unacceptable

This is the direct and foreseeable outcome of ever allowing the word woman to be mutable. This is the ultimate outcome of all these progressive policies, generally well meaning, with terrible outcomes

https://archive.ph/NsquC

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/breastfeeding-charity-chief-quits-over-transgender-policy-zhvhl8nps

Identity politics should be dead and we need to bury it.

Why does some trans people committing crimes makes all trans people dangerous? People commit crimes all the time, to go after the whole demographic with vitriol is discrimination.

I don't care for the moral high ground but I certainly haven't been throwing around derogatory terms like everyone else here.

Yes you have. On this very page 🫠

Who is saying all trans people are dangerous? We are saying women have the right to retain SEX based spaces and sports away from men, regardless of how they identify. Statistically men commit 98% of the sexual and violence crimes that occur. I know lovely men whom I’m confident wouldn’t harm anyone, they don’t get to go in there either, no matter what their inner feelings are as their presence may make women feel uncomfortable.

Who is saying anything about transmen (females)? If they want to go into men’s spaces and sports that’s up to them, that’s up to men to take up if they have a problem with it. So it isn’t a trans problem. It’s a male problem.

Im not sure why the above is so difficult to understand.

@BalletCat Seriously, why would LLL have a policy about supporting trans women to breastfeed if there weren't any trans women trying to breastfeed? Why court controversy for no reason?

If they have a policy on this it's because trans women are trying to artificially induce lactation in order to "breastfeed" babies and so they need their network to understand how to respond when they encounter a trans woman trying to join one of their groups.

It's appalling that the world's biggest and most well respected breastfeeding organisation has said, "Trans women! Yes! You are welcome! By all means do take a cocktail of drugs to artificially induce lactation and have a baby suck on your nipples to drink the resulting potentially unsafe excretions of dubious nutritional value! We will support you in that! If your presence is off-putting to actual women looking for support to breastfeed their babies naturally, we will tell those bigots to piss off!"

What they should have said is, "We are a mother and baby centered organisation meaning that the safety and welfare of mothers and babies is our top priority. We do not condone or support biological males attempting to breastfeed because it has not been proven to be safe for the baby. We would recommend that the new babies of trans people are breastfed by their biologically female birthing parent if possible, but if this is not possible, formula is available. We are of course supportive of birthing parents who identify as trans men or non binary who wish to breastfeed their babies. These people are welcome at all our groups."

Here is what LLLGB says…

laleche.org.uk/statement-from-lllgb-council-of-directors-14-11-24/

That's encouraging. I read that as "the Americans might have gone stark raving bonkers but we can see the way the wind is blowing".

Men breastfeeding babies has nothing to do with the wellbeing of a baby. It’s appalling.

Exactly. Reassuring that the UK branch has not entirely blown it.

“Why does some trans people committing crimes makes all trans people dangerous? People commit crimes all the time, to go after the whole demographic with vitriol is discrimination.”

Who is going ‘after the whole
demographic’? What do you refer to here?

Besides which, for safeguarding decisions to be robust, the decision should to be based on the risk profile of committing a crime that you want to prevent from happening. So, for instance, single sex spaces were always segregated by sex due to the risk profile of male people committing crimes against female people. There is no evidence at all that a male person at any stage of transition has a lower risk profile, or propensity to commit sex offences, than the rest of the UK population. Certainly, there is absolutely no evidence that that group commit sex offences at the same rate or lower than female people. Is that what you mean?

“I don't care for the moral high ground but I certainly haven't been throwing around derogatory terms like everyone else here.”

Which derogatory terms have been thrown around, please? What are you referring to?

I think it was a clever move to use the charitable objects as a reason for not including men. I'm wondering how many times the phrase ultra vires has been said in their meetings lately.
(ultra vires = acting beyond one's legal power or authority)

Tbh I often fantasised about my DH being able to BF so I'd get a break lol. (i knooow, this is not what this is about)

@TheKeatingFive I have been thinking about your question, how did we get here?
I think the hubris + misogyny of individual surgeons and physicians, and of the profession as a whole, has alot to do with it.
All the way back to Lili Elbe, the surgeon who in 1931 removed the uterus from a deceased woman's body and inserted it into Elbe's pelvic cavity (Elbe died of sepsis a few days later).
I recently read on a FWR thread of a transwoman whose wife was pregnant and it was the trans woman's endocrinologist who first suggested they try chemically inducing galactorrhoea in him and get his new baby to ingest it.
Maybe "god complex" is a better term than hubris.

I had another thought, it's connected with the way that "woke" morality (for want of a better term) praises adherents for ignoring their discomfort with things.
For example, if your workmate is from a minoritised community and you think their lunch smells really weird, you give them a dazzling smile and say, Oh that smells wonderful.
Or, if a gay couple are snogging in the seat infront of you and it turns your stomach, you tap one of them on the shoulder and say, It's so good to see you expressing your love proudly.
I think alot of proponents of the morality / worldview I'm describing come from sheltered, wealthy backgrounds and in their early lives they imbibed an "ick" reaction to difference. Then they went to uni and learned all the right ways to think but the "ick" feelings didn't go away. So you come across alot of people talking about how to overcome discomfort.
They haven't learned how to distinguish between morally relevant and morally irrelevant differences. Their knee-jerk reaction is to suppress the feelings that are telling them that, "Something is really wrong here."

Their knee-jerk reaction is to suppress the feelings that are telling them that, "Something is really wrong here."

It goes beyond that because these people are overriding basic safeguarding and common sense.

I read about a well respected Dr who wrote a paper on how men's excretions were more nutritious than breast milk. Now established organisations are inviting men into their groups so they can suckle babies.

We also have instances of men being invited into women's rape crisis centres, women's homeless shelters and hospital wards. All these vulnerable people are owed a duty of care and safeguarding.

This is very interesting, thank you

I have just been reading the other thread, and it seems that there are still people out there who believe that if a male person says they are a woman, they are living 'like a woman'. This is especially for @BalletCat :

No male can ever experience life as a woman. They can only ever experience life as a male person who believes they are a woman.

Even when they 'act' like a woman, they are acting as they believe a 'woman' should act. Which is fucking misogynistic!

Even if they are treated 'as a woman' by some people, they are being treated as a 'male who presents as a woman and believes they are a woman'. Because their every reaction is based on that. Not on them being female in any way.

Even when they have extreme body modifications, it is to be their own concept of what a female looks like to them. It is not what a female is. How can it be?

The only way a person can experience life as a woman, is to have a female body, formed around the production of large gametes, even if it doesn't produce those and to navigate their life based on the decisions they and society makes that revolve around them having that body.

A male can conceptualise what it might be like to be a female, but that is all it ever is - their concept of being female.

They may do it because they don't feel they fit into how they conceptualise how a male person interacts with the world (ie. their own stereotypes around being male) or they do it because they want to be seen as a female (using their own stereotypes of how a female navigates life). It really doesn't matter though. Their motivation is irrelevant to the outcome. And I consider the outcome can only be described as misogyny.

Which is that they will always be just a male who believes they are something they are objectively not.

How can the material reality be any different? This is why someone's gender is only based on someone's philosophical belief. And philosophical beliefs are fine for people to hold, but not one person in the UK has to comply with another's philosophical belief.

The logic cannot be any different than that I am afraid.

I was thinking through the posts from Balletcat last night and what struck me was the intense hypocrisy of their posts.

The genuinely seem to believe that people should moderate their language to suit them, when they certainly feel free to use what ever language they want.

They also seem to dangerously uninformed on the topics that they launch into to censure others. I am sure that balletcat gets a lovely feeling from it, but it really does show the tactics that I mentioned well, whether they intentionally copied them or not, or just repeated tactics they felt others had used well that they had seen.

It's incredible to behold alright.

It seems to me that it comes from a strong belief that their 'tribe' have the moral high ground and are right in all things. Which is an extraordinary belief really, but one that seems quite prevalent.

Therefore, without giving it very much thought at all, they feel completely empowered to wade into this debate and call us all bigots m for disagreeing with them or not playing along.

Dunning Kruger effect amplified by a strong sense of moral superiority?

Indeed Keating.

The ability to moralise on language while not being able to understand what the impact is when women are silenced because they are not using language acceptable to those who dismiss the issue in any way is one we see all too often, isn't it? It is like the discussion about being 'untoward about paedophiles'.

Seriously though. It is an interesting distractive technique that reveals a lot about the person. It is like we keep pointing out.

The escalation:

'It is not happening, you are all just bigots'

'Oh, that example! That was just the one. It is not happening'

'What do you mean there are all these others! It is not happening that much. Why are you frothing so hard about it. Who cares that a child/children/women are being harmed, it is just not that many'.

'Of course it is happening but stop pointing out this behaviour that portrays this group in such poor light!' BIGOTS!

Those who take any of these approaches never answer a direct question about how many children or female people they feel is acceptable before they themselves stop censuring those who are discussing it? Well there was that one who declared they wouldn't care unless it was about 30 women/children harmed. And that male poster with a transgender identity who declared that unless over 100 women and girls were harmed each year they would not consider that there was any issue at all with male people with transgender identities accessing single sex spaces.

Apart from those two, any person asked to quantify their belief that this is not happening or their censuring just disappear.

BalletCat

Bloody hell. They aren't my terms! They are widely known terms that are part of our language!

It's a widely rejected term.

Coming back to ‘these aren’t my terms’ and the point about them being in the dictionary.

The word infidel is in the dictionary too. Do you allow someone to categorise you as an infidel if you don’t believe in their religion? It too is widely used.

There are lots of terms just like this.

BalletCat · Yesterday 18:48

Why does some trans people committing crimes makes all trans people dangerous?

Nobody is saying that all transw are dangerous, however, they retain male pattern offending, no matter what they wear, or whether they take oestrogen. In UK prisons, trans identifying - TW - represent 3 times the background number of other male prisoners, when it comes to crimes of sex and violence against women and children.

Does that not bother you?

Using the word cis is a bit like, as an analogy, the words haram and halal.

For example it's in the dictionary. I know what it means. Many people believe in it. But I personally don't, for example I eat pork.

I'd be eyebrow-raising if official things like the NHS or the civil service gave out information that eating pork is haram, or I got sanctioned at work for saying that I eat pork sometimes. Or if I was pressured to wear a lanyard or name badge with the word halal written on it or something.

Nb this is an analogy. I've no problem with people's beliefs as long as they don't control my behaviour or speech.

Have a look at this and see if you still honestly believe that they're the most marginalised group in the UK:

https://transcrimeuk.com/

It would seem that TW are far and away more likely to be perpetrators, rather than victims.

I honestly don't think it does bother people like @BalletCat .

Women being collateral damage just doesn't seem to be a concern for the TRAs. 🤷‍♀️