A transwoman feeding their new born baby with their own milk..

[Soubriquet]

A website has said they have lost many followers with supporting this.

I just don’t understand why this is being promoted. If men in general were able to breastfeed children, why is this not being encouraged among married couples? Im sure plenty of men would be willing to step up and share breastfeeding with their partner.

It can’t be healthy for a baby to be fed this way, as surely the transwoman would be taking multiple type of hormones in order to remain transitioned?

Link

Don't believe it if you like. It's very well documented although oddly rarely discussed- probably because of reactions like yours.

We aren't going to reverse the misogyny by shaking our pom poms for them either.

It's got nothing to do with the barriers for women and breastfeeding.

It's a mens rights movement.

This isn't just liberal feminism on steroids; it's literally the mens rights movement.

Penelope, you’re still not getting it. Our revulsion concerns the cruelty towards a newborn infant. Please don’t dress up our concern as the oft used ‘transphobia’. A word that’s so overused as to be meaningless and rarely, if ever, used correctly to describe phobia.

I can't wrap my head around this at all; it just seems bonkers. I just wonder, is this what is best for this baby? Its entire life revolves around feeding right now- will this be all it needs? If not, what will the cost be to that tiny child and its capacity to thrive?

It just seems performative, along with whoever posted it all over Facebook with lots of flapping and flouncing about deleting 'terfs' and blocking people.

At the centre of this is a tiny, vulnerable child. I actually feel quite furious that this has been posted at all ffs.

@KimikosNightmare I believe it happens, but rarely, jnot at the 50% rate that the NCT are stating. That article seems to have been written with a particular agenda.

This is like the line that most toddlers masturbate. A small number do but yet some people seem to want to reposition the minority as the majority.

Why would that be I wonder?

"We aren't going to reverse the misogyny by shaking our pom poms for them either."

But just ignoring it is also an option.

I don't subscribe to the view this is a mens rights movement so we're just going to disagree there. I would agree some claims for trans acceptance in some spaces are unjustified. In this instance the TW wants to do something in her own home that impacts her, her partner and the baby - there is an overall risk assessment to be done for that and I think we can agree we don't have enough data here to conclude it is always or never dangerous, but otherwise it is a personal decision. Revulsion and disgust add nothing to the debate AND otherwise counterproductive in discussions concerning breastfeeding.

My own view is to be trans at all implies accepting a hyper-real concept of gender which is itself a symptom of misogyny. If you struggle to accept yourself in the body you have because at some point you have been told your body is unacceptable due to the diverse other experiences you have of social identity then that struggle is of course real in the same way that anorexia nervosa reflects real distress at body size. But underlying it is a fucked up world which has recently started to commodify 'acceptance' but only in a way whcih serves the ends of the patriarchy.

We serve people's distress back up to them as a product for them to consume, whether that is as gender acceptance, transition or other. But the deeper scrutiny of the structures that make us unhappy to begin with never happens - the child gets the referral, not the society that makes the unhappy child.

Critical psychology views like this aren't new, they have been around since the 70s. So yes I worry deeply about the significance of the rise in gender dysphoria, the implications of people who are in the process of transitioning having access to some but not all, formerly female only spaces. But i don't agree that to experience dysphoria is a powerplay by men to get access to female spaces (except perhaps in a tiny handful of cases, some of my research involves working in prisons, prisoners certainly try it but it is exceptional for prisoners to be granted transfers to an opposite sex prison even after diagnosis of GD and transitioning, the vast majority are held in vulnerable prisoner wings). Dysphoria is disruptive and isolating and if we want to reduce it we need to critically scrutinise why now as a society identities framed around gender and sexuality have become so politically relevant.

@WorriedWoking I never used the word transphobia though. I was quite specifically referring to disgust and revulsion in the context of this photo, not implying they were directed at transpeople generally. And my sole point about that was not that they were not OK to feel - feelings are feelings, but they are not rhetorically useful. If someone says this soup tastes revolting but I find it delicious we won't agree just by reasserting our positions.

Absolutely right.
Some drug- filled secretion of male hormone blockers and other far from nourishing things is very concerning.

I wouldn't worry too much. For one thing, women can do most things that men can do, and vice versa. (Lordy, you even hear of women, these days, who see a transwoman in a women's toilet, and don't burst into tears over it. That's how equal they've learned they are, with people who have penises!) For another thing: if this were harming this woman's baby, I'm sure the signs would have been there, the mother would have reported them to her doctor, and things would have been sorted out. I'm sure of this because, principally, transwomen don't go around wanting to harm babies. They really aren't, in general, that evil ... no matter what some utter misandrist fruitcakes here at MN might want to imply. :)

Actually sexual stimulation is one of the reasons women why do give. It's a natural reaction to oxytocin but many women don't realise that- no one ever tells them- and ignorant comments like yours won't help.

@KimikosNightmare

What did I say that's ignornant?? Ahem?? Move pls.

This is what I remember too. And the later mastitis and rock hard exploding breasts.

It was not ‘pleasurable’ at all. In fact, the pleasure came from emptying breasts so they didn’t hurt anymore.

The claim that 50% of women find breastfeeding erotic is clearly utter horseshit probably made up by a bloke.

Agree @Helleofabore I felt the same way.

There is a vulnerable, tiny child at the middle of this who needs nutrition and nurturing that centres his or her needs. Still no one has said what is in these male breast secretions being forced on the baby due to their newborn suck reflex.

As Lottie Lewis said on Twitter:
If a man says he's sexually aroused by doing something with a baby, why is there suspicion and belittling of people calling this child abuse? How did we get here, where men are so emboldened by the veil of 'trans rights' they can openly admit to abuse and be called progressive?

If you put all your verbiage to one side Penelope, what point are you actually trying to make? I’m none the wiser despite reading your endless screeds 🤷🏻‍♀️Do you want to discuss soup or cruelty to newborn babies?

If I remember correctly, I think the transitioned male specialist who worked with another transitioned male also pointed out that the male was on testosterone suppression and how unreliable those drugs are. That specialist was concerned about the other drugs, but also the testosterone being delivered through the substance that was lactated.

There was a reason the specialist did not use the procedure to feed their own infant when they had the chance. They were very clear about why.

BF for 18 months and literally nothing erotic about it. Christ. First two weeks were hell until post tongue tie op. After that I was just overjoyed that my baby could latch without triggering horrendous pain. It felt fine but in no way pleasurable. I was happy that I was able to provide for my baby and hopefully help both our health.

‘the transitioned male specialist who worked with another transitioned male to secrete ‘

Definitely.
In a maternity ward I was on, a creepy man was visiting his wife, but he was full on ogling, almost with drool coming out of his mouth at a young mother in the bed opposite.
It was horrible to witness.
Men do tend to see BF ing as sexual, but the mothers themselves don’t.

I.e. it is not 'unnatural' or biologically inappropriate for TW to participate in breastfeeding provided both parents agree to it, they take medical advice and the baby thrives. Its just one of many things parents can choose to do.

It is both UNNATURAL and BIOLOGICALLY INAPPROPRIATE and no nonsense you are spouting will make me believe otherwise.
And no, no normal bloke wants to suckle their baby. They just don't. It isn't a thing, so if your DH wanted to do it I'd be seriously worried 🤮

The poor baby will most likely be encouraged to change it’s gender too, when old enough.

I thought meerkats aunts could feed the babies when left in the babysitting role.

I breastfed both mine for over a year, but I certainly wasn't motivated to continue because of any physical rush of dopamine. It was bloody tough. Firstly, I have a weird condition where my areola expands to cover most of the breast, then no matter how much time I spend trying to soften my nipples weeks beforehand, they become rock hard and are HUGE.

I get bleeding cracked nipples and I always end up crying from the pain and wearing pads pretty much from the first week. I dread the baby initially latching because it hurts so much. It's a mental wall to get over each time in the first few weeks.

It takes a good couple months before my nipples callous enough to stop hurting and cracking, then because my areolas are so dark I get two tone nipples

Of course after not feeding for hours there's a sense of relief when I finally feed because my breasts are swollen, but there's nothing remotely sexually or even tittilating about it for me anyway, and judging by the numbers of women reporting similar hurdles and giving up, I'd say that was pretty common.

My motivation for going through all that?

Not bonding. I co-slept, that was enough.
Not convenience.

No, it was me wanting to do what I saw as best for my children in their earliest stages of life. Now....had I been ill and on a cocktail of heavy impact drugs...I might have weighed up if it was better for my baby (regardless of my emotions) to be bottle-fed.

This here, is pure self-indulgence and nothing to do with the child's well-being at all. Such considerations have not come into their minds. This person imagines simulating an 'womanly' experience to be equal to that which women actually experience, well no, it clearly doesn't in any way.

Oh god I'd forgotten about the rock hard days. God, I mean it was convenient not to have to do bottles but there was nothing erotic. Or even pleasurable about it most of the time. When my babies were older and it was less stressful, it was relaxing and bonding. I read all of Harry Potter while I was breastfeeding. Pinned to the bed, tea going cold at my side, starving and desperately needing a week.