Consequences of mangling language

[Sexnotgender]

I’ve very recently had a baby and am breastfeeding. One thing both the midwife and lactation consultant mentioned are breast compressions to stimulate milk flow.

Now, in the world where people “chest feed” rather than breast feed do these become chest compressions? Because my understanding is that those are a whole different thing...

Just some sleep deprived musings.

Congratulations on your new baby!

'Chestfeeding' is a silly term. Ftm transitioners who have had their breasts removed are unable to breastfeed. Only those who have not had their breasts removed can do so.

I am not sure why we need to change the words we use to refer to breasts. A functioning breast is a breast, regardless who it belongs to.

Ftm transitioners understand that they may have a period. We aren't asked to alter the word 'period' to a more gender-neutral term.

If men can have breast cancer (not chest cancer), why does breast feeding have to change to chest feeding? It's not the chest producing the milk, it's the breasts.

Conversely, if men can breast cancer would ftm have chest cancer?

Oh and congratulations on your baby.

A functioning breast is a breast, regardless who it belongs to.

Exactly. Men can develop breast cancer. Do doctors, when giving the news to a man, refer to it as 'chest cancer'?

Breast is the appropriate word for males and females, no need to change it.

And congratulations Sexnotgender 🎉

Hope you're both doing well.

Congratulations OP ❤️ Quite right. Chest-feeding is incorrect.

Congratulations Sexnotgender, did you ask what gender identity your child was assigned along with the sex they were assigned.

Further on the mangling of language presumably the next time Jess Phillips reads out the list of murdered women she will have to read it out as a list of:

Persons with a vagina who were victims of murder by a person with a penis, and for the avoidance of doubt there are no persons with a neo vagina on this list as none of them have been murdered and equally no person with a phalloplasty has murdered anyone.

VAWG must henceforth be known as Violence against Adult Persons with a Vagina and Juvenile Persons with a Vagina.

Clear as mud, isn't it.

Congratulations! Mastitis becomes a “chest infection”. So do you need a chest X-ray? The choice of antibiotics would differ if someone got this wrong.

Also, FTM transitioners who have had their breasts removed have not had a mastectomy in the cancer sense. They still need to check for lumps in any residual breast tissue because there is still a residual risk. They shouldn’t be advised to do “chest” tissue checks FFS.

Anything that makes medical communication harder and increases the risk of medical error just so someone one person who I won’t name doesn’t feel uncomfortable should be binned immediately.

There was a legal case I was reading not so long ago. It was about voyeurism in a swimming pool changing room (iirc). The situation was a man secretly filming another man.

The law defined voyeurism in various ways, but one of the things that constituted voyeurism was the filming of a person's 'breasts' without consent. The court in this case had to decide whether a man* had 'breasts' or not.

The court ultimately decided that a man didn't have breasts (plural) but did have 'a breast'. That part of the law as drafted therefore couldn't apply to a man, since he didn't have 'breasts', although I think the voyeur was caught on another part of the law and was duly punished.

It was quite interesting. Men have 'a breast' so can therefore get cancer of the breast.

I think this case goes to show how important it is to have words that are clearly defined in law. It's not an exercise in gotcha-ism when we ask people to define the terms they use.

*Please note the court was using the traditional definition of 'man' as 'adult human male'.

Thank you for the congratulations ❤️

I didn’t ask what sex they were assigning her. Her observed sex is female though.

Congratulations, SexnotGender!

• and yes, a breast is a very different thing than a 'chest'.