Chestfeeding group at work

[Sengah]

I've just been invited to join a chest/breastfeeding support group at work. I find myself keen to join on the one hand, in order to be supportive of other mums as our workplace doesn't make it easy. But on the other hand use of the term chestfeeding is bizarre and undermines women-who-try-&-breastfeed's struggles and invisibility and bigotry. We are not yet at a stage of being out and proud and breastfeeding, as a society, and now the act/women sees to be being undermined in a different way, through language. I don't even really follow what chest feeding is or who 'chestfeeds'!

Please help me navigate this? Should I say something of my concerns in the office? Am I over reacting? I do not want people to feel hurt or excluded but breastfeeding is so hard I do think we should be making it about women until they are not ostracised for it, have the support they need etc

I would say breastfeeding a lot and if they say chestfeeding say 'you mean breastfeeding?'

If they are so fragile that the word breast was triggering and reminding them they are biologically women, why the hell would they have had a baby and be breastfeeding anyway

This^ I genuinely dont understand how a word triggers them, but the action does not

OP, I'd go with PPs suggestion and innocently ask wtf chest feeding is.

A 30-year-old transgender woman has been able to breastfeed her child, the first ever case of induced lactation in a transgender woman to be documented in academic literature.

The patient took a gradually increasing regimen of the female hormones progesterone and estradiol, stimulated her chest with a breast milk pump, and took domperidone, a nausea medication known to increase milk production.

www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/14/transgender-woman-breastfeed-health

They're not dysphoric, they're just precious.

Kyanite- it still isn’t chestfeeding though.

The milk, even if stimulated through a drug regimen, is still being made by breast tissue, under the nipple. It is the same process in every individual. Therefore it is still breastfeeding, whether by biological man or woman, whatever sex they present as.

Are we heading for some weird Victorian morality where we can't say a normal word such as breastfeeding, but have to be happy with other situations where women are shunned for being born female. I wonder if it's not part of a backslash against women in general, yet again we are at the bottom of the pile.

Yy backlash, planned for years

Bloody ridiculous. If it's about trans men and they are feeding a baby then they are breast feeding.

And if it's about trans women perhaps they should realise that men get breast cancer, not chest cancer.

Utterly laughable - if it wasn't so precious and sad.

Chestfeeding is just factually incorrect. I've breastfed 4 babies, had matisis more times than I can remember, and there's no way you could confuse mastitis with a chest infection?! Do all medical facts count for sweet FA now?

I’m getting confused with the terminology
transwoman snd transman - which is which?

It should still be "breast", this is just to avoid upsetting transwomen who haven't had implants but they still do have breasts.

For example, men can have breast cancer, it's not chest cancer - www.nhs.uk/conditions/breast-cancer-in-men/

"I'm confused - what is chestfeeding?"

Nina the transwomen are people who are transitioning from male to female, the transmen are the people transitioning from female to male. It’s easy to remember if you just think about what the person would want you to say about them - if they want to be seen as a man, they’re the transmen.

I originally thought the chestfeeding thing was about transwomen, but I’m sure now it’s not. I think it’s about trying to neutralise the role of sex in infant feeding and if anything is more of an issue for the transmen.

It's an effort to destroy any language pertaining specifically to female functions.

The case of the transwoman BF (that Kyanite mentioned above) seemed a strange one - lots of hormones/pumping/galactagogues, then baby apparently BF exclusively for 6 weeks but then they worried baby wasn’t thriving so did mixed BF and FF until baby about 6 months.

Nothing I read about that situation said that the milk had been tested to check drug and hormone levels safe for a baby to ingest. And it made me so pissed off because I know so many women who have BF their babies then been told by HCPs/GPS to stop for antibiotics and other medicines (when actually if these HCPs had properly checked, they would have realised it is often safe) - while the transwoman gets HCPs bending over backwards to make BF work, despite the cocktail of drugs.

I know someone who even wondered if it would have been safe for a boy baby to have drunk that milk because the female hormone levels could have been so high.

Anyway, sorry, am ranting because I got so mad at the unfairness of women getting such crappy support BF but this transwoman having a whole team of helpers. Grrrrrrr.

Re: your group. I really would just say breastfeeding unless someone picks you up on it. If the someone is a woman, you could challenge them in a genuinely incredulous way ‘But these are breasts! This is breast tissue!’ etc. If the someone is a transman, perhaps you could say something like ‘Ok, well, you chestfeed and I will try to remember that - but I am breastfeeding, and I am going to call it that’.

Best of luck x

InfiniteSheldon I really don't understand your post, are you willing to explain? We all irrespective of our gender have both a chest and breasts. Chests don't lactate, breasts may.

A local breastfeeding support group that I'm part of on facebook has just changed it's name so instead of it being breastfeeding support, it is human milk feeding support. The reason given for the change was that not everyone who is feeding their child breastmilk will identify with breastfeeding, ie those who are chestfeeding. Made me eyeroll somewhat since 95% of the posts are about breastfeeding. Have yet to see anyone discuss chestfeeding (before the name change) So I totally get why you are a bit

It's so cruel and selfish and pointless to do this

Macaroon I share your concerns and voiced similar on one of the BF pages I follow. Of course I was abused for doing so. Quelle surprise.
I've stopped BF now so I don't follow as many pages but LLL seemed to be starting to pander to the trans agenda last time I looked

Well I should have spellcheck that! Was so enraged I just posted without checking!

I just had a scan of all the groups I'd unfollowed and TBF it was all business as usual, even the American groups. No weird ideologies

OP, is there even anyone in the group/entire organisation who would identify as a "chestfeeder"?? My guess is no!

Pretty sure that much old-style heroic literature contains references to the hero beating his manly breast or similar.

As an aside, my phone just autocorrected 'his' to 'God'. It's a tool of the patriarchy.

I can't find any mention of "chest feeding" on La Leche League's or NCT's U.K's site.

Where does OP work?