Chestfeeding/breastfeeding infographic

[MilkSpill]

This has pushed me over the edge today. I'm not sure where it originated but it was shared by The Milk Meg on FB.

The chest feeding stuff really bothers me. It's not just women being erased, now it's babies too. Breastfeeding is not a performance to validate parental gender dysphoria. It's a human right of infants and women, which is systemically denied or used as a weapon against us. I'm not sure if I'm angrier at the TRA pushing this rubbish, or the women's advocates who are embracing it.

I wonder is the Association of Breastfeeding Mothers is looking to rebrand as the Assosciation of Chestfeeding Parents? Because that’s surely their next step?

grandma that does sound pretty hardline! But also totally incompatible with the poster.

when they pulled my daughter free of my wife's body

This is so repellant. Pulled her out like the woman was just a passive container? The baby was ‘free’?

How can you so hate the physicality you claim to want?

Batteries I was going to say exactly the same thing. That body grew and nurtured that baby, and yet the writer refers to it like it's a nasty thing, good riddance to the wife body. Also, article writer is "mom" whereas the woman who carried the baby is "wife." Ugh.

How can you so hate the physicality you claim to want?

Jealousy.

Pure and simple.

We have what they want and they know that there is no way that they will ever be able to have it regardless of how much surgery they undergo and however much they practice coquettish behaviours.

It’s an abuser mentality ‘if I can’t have you I will destroy you’

This blog post investigates the feminist praxis of breastfeeding in the infographic.

fullcreamweb.blog/2018/06/28/when-breastfeeding-is-for-everyone-except-the-baby/

I am utterly disgusted by this. When I think about the lengths we go to as pregnant women to avoid harmful drugs/foods while others pander to erm, other people (is that all I'm allowed to say now?) so they can fake feed their baby with a load drugs/hormones, the world just seems more and more insane.

I wonder if the solo mum exclusively pumping is doing it to donate her milk for dads to use?

This is so repellant. Pulled her out like the woman was just a passive container? The baby was ‘free’?

So telling. Every day they tell us who they are. We must listen.

I am increasingly beginning to think that all this has a sinister aim. It seems that 'erase and replace' is the goal. Get rid of what woman means in biology, chastise women for speaking about biology, make sure you yell at them for feeling unsafe in spaces that are now for all sexed bodies and when the uncomfortable women melt away back home, slot in the right type of woman.

I know that makes me sound tinfoil Hatty but I have been sitting on this thought for ages and I had to get it out.

I've been quite conflicted about the issue or trans rights infringing on women's rights because I have several trans friends who I love and respect.

But I feel this is quite unsettling and it's hard to read so many people stating that terms such as breasts, vagina, uterus are offensive when for me they are a symbol of my womanhood and have given me the things I love most, my children and my ability to feed them.

Seems to me It's actually doing the opposite of it's stated aim (inclusivity) because it's excluding both babies and tha vast majority of breastfeeding mums (you know the ones who breastfeed the baby that came from their body direct from their breasts).

@ISaySteadyOn

I know it DOES sound tinfoil hattey but it's not. Why erase female biological terminology if you don't intent to erase females?

Diluting the sexes seems 'right on.' Isn't that what feminists have been trying to do for years - break down the barriers of acceptable male/female behaviour - make everything 'unisex?'

Except when you realise erasing female sex terms means erasing the female experience...Erasing women....

Exactly.

@cholka maybe gender neutral language would improve the way women are treated within the healthcare system?

No, because the HCPs will still see a female in front of them and treat her accordingly.

I think it’s another wing of the alt right ideology. It’s a backlash against the drain in power away from those who have traditionally been on top (white men.)

The alt right attacks on largely racial lines, the MRA movements (of which the small vocal subgroup of trans right activists who have hijacked a reasonable demand for tolerance from the trans community) are one) attack on sex lines. But it’s all part of the same worldview imo. It all comes back to telling minorities and women to get back in their boxes.

I’d read that article before but re-reading it grossed me out all over again. And yes, the language is very telling. “Pulled from my wife’s body” is one, but this jumped out at me too:

When I told people about my plan to breastfeed, the most common reaction from both laypeople and medical professionals was "Wait, you can do that?" But had I not mammary glands? If you filled me with prolactin, would I not leak?

That last line is so fetishistic. The word “leak” is so lascivious in this context. Shudder.

Lactation is part of a woman’s fertility cycle. Breastfeeding is a learned skill for the mother-baby dyad and mums need support and unbiased info on how to reach their breastfeeding goals not this absolute nonsense of mangling language and shitty info graphics. Chestfeeding my arse.

On a more controversial note, anyone who believes in evolved sex differences will expect that some of the nurturing behaviours in women are hardwired (e.g. the oxytocin receptors mentioned in the video I think above). IF you believe that (on balance, I do), then men may physically leak when pumped with prolactin (note the mirror: if you cut me, do I not bleed) but will they have the same behavioural responses when they breastfeed as a woman? For example, when co-sleeping studies are done, with mothers of course, they find the women's sleeping position and behaviour protects her from rolling on the infant. Would a man have the same set of protective behaviours? Another example: infants are notoriously difficult to latch, especially when they're a little older. It can be infuriating and painful. Would a man be as loving and tolerant? I don't have the answers, it just doesn't seem clear to me that an average man would cope as well as the average woman because it seems to me like these basic survival behaviours are deep in the female sex.

It reminds me of an episode of the Waltons where Mary-Lou sleeps through her baby's cries - that's when Olivia just knows there's something amiss going on.

But it also assumes that men with induced lactation (with extremely questionable viability) plus all the faffing with nursing supplementers and pumping are just as easy and valid choices as a mum breastfeeding her own baby from birth. It is suboptimal for the baby and mum doesn’t get the benefits so apart from validating a man’s fetish there is no point. In a country with one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world that just makes me want to bang my head against a wall. Repeatedly.

I have no difficulty with the idea of a man caring for a baby with tolerance, patience and tenderness, though toxic masculine socialisation will do everything possible to reduce that possibility.

But biologically, women lactate to feed the babies they gestate. It is not a simple process but it is a simple fact.

In my antenatal group was a single mother who pumped all her milk - she was a lavish lactator but her baby struggled to latch. I was in awe but she was very practical about it. However, I'm not the only woman who would take 20 minutes to cover the bottom of a bottle when using a breast pump. The idea that it's some fluffy 'just as easy' option is laughable.

For example, when co-sleeping studies are done, with mothers of course, they find the women's sleeping position and behaviour protects her from rolling on the infant. Would a man have the same set of protective behaviours?

Anecdotal only, but I co-slept with my infants from birth and managed not to roll on top of them.

My very uninformed view is that differentiating by sex might be harder for evolution than just having the same biology / behaviour in both sexes, perhaps expressed differently, i.e. sex differentiation only happens when there's strong selection pressure for it. So if a behaviour is useful for women and useless, but not disadvantageous, for men, I'd still expect to see it in both sexes, under the right conditions. But I didn't even manage GCSE biology, let alone the modern advanced stuff.

Not sure about that Ata if the differences are hormone driven you wouldn’t expect to see the same behaviour in men, by which I mean an individual who experienced male-hormone-driven puberty.

And, to be quite honest, bollocks to anyone who says ‘oh just give men female hormones’ there is NO FUCKING WAY science understands female hormones well enough. Look at the medical attitude towards every other thing that involves female hormones - hand wringing, shoulder shrugging, I don’t know why your periods are so horrific, probably ‘hormones’ but I can’t do any tests because, umm, not really sure what id look for... etc etc.

Yet we apparently understand these hormones well enough to dose men and babies up with them, oh it’ll be fine, there won’t be any negative impacts on the superior entities that are bepenised and their —chattels— children.