La Leche League FB page

[HopeClearwater]

The ‘LLLGB Because Breastfeeding Matters‘ Facebook page is making a big thing of Transgender Awareness Week and attempting to indicate it is right-on and super-woke with mention of ‘chest-feeding’. Plenty of women are on there approving its ‘inclusiveness’ and even suggesting we use the term ‘body feeding’

So much crap being spouted on there I’m ready to explode ...

I seriously don't get the word chestfeeding.

You don't feed from a chest Calling a breast a chest is just silly,

Chests don't feed anyone, you require breasts for that. Still meanings of words are not the strong point of this ideology. I'm thoroughly sick and tired of it and I swear if anyone starts this crap on me offline they will sorely regret it.

From wiki:

The breast is one of two prominences located on the upper ventral region of the torso of primates. In females, it serves as the mammary gland, which produces and secretes milk to feed infants. Both females and males develop breasts from the same embryological tissues.

So there's that. And men can (and do) get breast cancer. They call it that. Didn't men have breastplates on their armour?

I'm obviously no expert on men or armour so could somebody cleverer than me explain why trans men (and only trans men apparently) object to the word..

..breast?

Very sorry, meant to put quotes around the wiki thing. It's just the first paragraph.

Do any of these organisations have statistics to show what proportion of the people they support are trans and what proportion are women who call their breasts breasts and feed their babies via breastfeeding? I'd hazard a guess it's minuscule.

Regarding the former audience that is

"Chest-feeding"? I can't think of anything except that creature bursting out of John Hurt's chest in Alien.

@HecatesCats

Do any of these organisations have statistics to show what proportion of the people they support are trans and what proportion are women who call their breasts breasts and feed their babies via breastfeeding? I'd hazard a guess it's minuscule.

This exactly.

Where is the evidence of the need. How many trans identifying people have sought help from LLL. This is particularly sad as LLL always used to value the special and irreplaceable mother baby relationship and the unique and special role of the father.

LLL used to protect women of all cultures and life experiences by not allowing men into meetings unless they were special father’s meetings.

I had thought that LLL was quite radical in using terms like mothering and basically openly saying that there is no substitute for the mother.

I would really like to know how many trans identifying people give birth in the UK each year and how many want to breastfeed. I don’t know how wholesale change of language in birth and breastfeeding organisations and NHS maternity services can be justified without evidence of need.

One of the points of LLL also, if I recall correctly is “not mixing causes”. For example don’t talk about cloth nappies, home education, vegetarian/vegan diets. The idea being to be approachable and accessible by everyone and here they are expressing controversial political opinions on their website!!! How many mothers will be put off seeking help?

Their cover photo still states "mother to mother support for breast-feeding". I'm surprised they haven't taken that down yet. Not inclusive enough 🤔

Sheesh! There are so many women on that LLL FB thread whose brains appear to have dropped out. So welcoming to an ideology that is actually erasing the rights of women. They are so pleased to be 'accepting' of an ideology that is not in their own interests. Women who post to defend the word "woman" are called "angry" and told they need to educate themselves.

It looks like the LLL and most of it's FB members are fully captured.

4 Posts down:
www.facebook.com/breastfeedinglllgb

.

I now ignore organisations who do this, I won’t donate or fundraise. They have taken their eyes off the ball (ie what they are there to do) and are wasting time, energy and money or the gymnastics involved to be ‘inclusive’.

To be fair, they have said 'breastfeed or chestfeed'. I agree that 'chestfeeding' (or 'bodyfeeding' as suggested on the FB thread!) is a bit of a silly term, but at least they haven't just erased the term 'breastfeeding' just yet.

Why have they deleted so many comments though?

chestfeed isn’t a thing.

@thinkingaboutLangCleg

"Chest-feeding"? I can't think of anything except that creature bursting out of John Hurt's chest in Alien.

Oh god I hadn’t thought of that

I wonder how many transmen have got pregnant, continued the pregnancy, given birth, and chosen to breastfeed their baby, using all their female organs they clearly aren't dysphoric about, but would be genuinely psychologically harmed by the use of the term "breastfeeding".

I predict something close to zero.

Do they realise that changing the name of a thing doesn't actually change the thing?

Their page name and more recent posts still have the word breastfeeding in them. As long as they don’t start referring to chestfeeding etc and avoiding using the term mother when addressing the collective then recognising that some people don’t want terms like breastfeeding and mother, is ok

There were far more GC comments the first night. What a surprise...they've all been deleted.

How long until "the womanly art of breastfeeding" gets recalled for ritual burning? As others have pointed out, both men and women have breasts. They look different and have different purposes, but even if a biological man managed to lactate via some horrible medical interventions he would still in fact be breastfeeding. Its so unbelievably stupid. The levels of ignorance around basic medical science are so overwhelmingly obvious in TRA groups, but I'd expect LLL to know a bit better!

An ex-colleague was BIG into La Leche. She did fundraising and volunteered and the majority of her friends seemed to come from the group. They were all super, super conservative. There is no way any of them would be remotely interested in promoting 'chest-feeding'.

Here’s how to complain for anyone who follows that page www.laleche.org.uk/comments-compliments-complaints/

Worth pointing out how them going down that path will go

I get that there are some people who despite getting pregnant, giving birth and breastfeeding a baby have decided that the words woman, breast, female, whether doesn’t refer to them/upsets them/makes them feel unsafe etc.

This should be treated sensitively by relevant associations, professionals etc - but it doesn’t mean that the rest of the world have to pussy foot around and pretend they don’t use words ‘just in case’ someone gets upset (with perfectly good words that have been used for centuries). You don’t get to dictate what most of the population say/think because you have decided that it’s not for you. Besides, giving birth would be way more ‘triggering’ than being called ‘Miss’ surely?

It’s like ‘winterval’ (shhhhhh don’t offend the Muslims) where 99.99% of the non Christian people I know think it’s an absolute nonsense and out a tree up anyway.

Hang on a minute.

I thought the nice inclusive thing to do was to refer to people by their organs so transmen didn't feel sad.

So vagina-person, uterus-haver, people with a cervix, etc.

So why is 'breastfeeding' bad and triggering, but vulva-owner is requested?

It's starting to seem like what's "acceptable" and "inclusive" is anything that women don't like, and vice versa.

I have had a chest infection.
I have had a breast infection.
They were very, very different sorts of pain!
In different places.

The chest is the cavity in the thorax in which the heart and lungs reside.

‘Body feeding’ sounds like cannibalism.

LaLaLeche League have fallen far from their ‘Woman;y Art of Breastfeeding’ years.

Words have specific meanings, imagine!? Who could have anticipated confusion or resistance arising from fucking with the way almost all the people talk about themselves?