Petitioning Parliament to ban males from attempting to breastfeed infants

[zibzibara]

I am considering starting a petition on the https://petition.parliament.uk to ask the government to make a criminal offence for any male attempting to breastfeed an infant from his own nipples.

I've never started a petition before and am wondering if anyone has any tips on how to write this so it doesn't get rejected and encourages people to sign? Would love to hear any advice anyone here can offer!

I'm also concerned about my personal info being revealed on the petition website, does anyone know if there's a way of withholding identity when the petition gets published?

It sounds like you want research to be done just to prove that the milk isn't safe. What if research proved that it's safe? Would you accept the findings? And if the milk was safe and had nutrient levels comparable to female breast milk would it still be child abuse or no?

NSPCC reply on the matter

I don’t dispute the existence of fetishes or the concern. I just think any petition that cites this as a reason for a ban and to categorise “chest feeding” as child abuse will be a nonstarter. It’s not only not going to get signatures, it will be protested as transphobic. There are logical arguments that could be deployed against it including the fact that many women enjoy having their nipples sucked while having sex. Some breastfeeding women even have a fetish of feeding their partners while having sex and they still nurse their infants without viewing the second activity as sexual. There would be objection to the idea that a sexual fetish in the bedroom is in any way linked mentally or emotionally to breastfeeding, a nonsexual bodily function. This would then lead to the observation, if women with fetishes can, then why can’t TW with this same fetish?

I’ve broken down the problem into it’s component parts.
The absolute fastest way to get this to be stopped is to have a moratorium until it is proven not only safe but equivalent to female breast milk (not equivalent to formula- better).
The U.K. has a legal precedent of all new food stuffs called the precautionary principle in that you cannot produce any food for any human until it is proven to be safe. This would cite that as rationale.
The clinical trials would not even involve lactating males feeding infants. Their man milk would be pumped and analysed.

Now, I know a bit about human biology and to require the man chest milk be equivalent to mothers breast milk is an impossible standard. Even if they get milk with same water, protein,carb and fat content and it’s not poison, it will be impossible to replicate the antigens and immunity boosting live cells within breast milk. It can never be equivalent.

So aim achieved…stopped instantly and cannot be started until an impossible standard is met.

All in a way based on legal precedent for food safety and without coming across as transphobic by making the it’s always a fetish argument.

Yes,let's not dress it up as anything other than the perversion it is.

The NSPCC are captured by gender ideology, but you already knew that. Remember their defending their employee posting selfies wanking in fetish gear in the work toilets, and attacking people who criticised that as phobic? I'm sure you do.

Why on earth would it need to be BETTER than formula? If the alternative would be formula? If it was safe and had the right nutrients why would you need to still ban it?

Male cannot breast feed, biologically impossible, we need to stop giving into these perverts and idiots!

Fucking hell that's made me angry.

He wasn't even trying to feed that child. It was all a fetish. That's it.

I don't know why I would have expected anything more from those useless idiots at NSPCC anyway. Haven't they been involved in some incidents involving a) a senior person pleasuring himself in loos and filming it and b.) another male individual talking in support of so called Minor Attracted People ?

The NSPCC makes it quite clear that they are relying on the NHS guidance to inform their position.

While the NHS is still promoting male breastfeeding on their website and elsewhere, then it is irrelevant whether other organisations such as the NSPCC are captured or not.

Even if, for the sake of argument, the NSPCC suspected it was potentially dangerous, they would struggle to prove that while the NHS website is saying it's not only not abusive, but actually encouraged.

This is very similar to the situation that developed with everyone (schools, therapists, etc) relying on the NHS GIDS website for how to deal with children who say they feel like they're the opposite sex.

While the NHS is condoning it, no-one else can make a plausible argument to defy the NHS position, because outside of gender identity ideology, the NHS is known to have a pretty standard policy of relying on evidence-based practice. So as with GIDS, everyone else just assumes that the NHS's advice on trans issues is also based on the same scientific standards. Until they realise it's not, like they did with the GIDS website.

The NSPCC makes it quite clear that they are relying on the NHS guidance to inform their position.

While the NHS is still promoting male breastfeeding on their website and elsewhere, then it is irrelevant whether other organisations such as the NSPCC are captured or not.

Even if, for the sake of argument, the NSPCC suspected it was potentially dangerous, they would struggle to prove that while the NHS website is saying it's not only not abusive, but actually encouraged.

I don't really agree with this. The NSPCC can and does take positions on a variety of things such as online safety where the current rules are (to all intents and purposes) endorsed by the government, as well as in areas such as the Bell JR, where they were only too happy to express a view before the evidence was heard, let alone the judgement being known.

They're choosing to ignore child abuse. That's their position on this.

So getting to scientific proof as to whether man chest milk is equivalent to formula or mothers breast milk to even try and lift the moratorium on it would take DECADES. And there are so many ways to starve such research of funding, to debate that proof is not conclusive and ‘more research is needed’ and so on. There can also be muddying the waters by injecting bad science into the mix- creating skepticism of all research results.

Look at climate change and as to whether it even exists. They’re at 70yrs of trying to convince people it exists. And that’s an issue that is planet ending.

The man chest milk debate could rage on for over a century if we play our cards right, and by the time it’s decided generations of engrained social practice would be male parents use formula.

So my route envisions, an immediate stop to it and then keep kicking that can down the road.

I do agree that the fact they're captured is going to prevent their recognising the potential child abuse angle here, since they simply see "a woman feeding her baby".

However, even if they weren't blinded by that, I doubt they would question whether the NHS is correct to promote male breastfeeding, as they, like everyone else, rely on the NHS to provide evidence-based health advice and to do the necessary due diligence on the advice they provide to patients and the public.

I accept that if the NHS didn't promote male breastfeeding then the NSPCC may well still say "health organisations say it's fine" (as others might continue to say that), so it might not change NSPCC's position.

But I think it's a travesty that the reason the NSPCC or anyone else can simply shrug and say "it's fine, nothing to see here" with such conviction and without challenge is because the NHS, as the leading authority on public health, is also saying it's fine. So all other organisations can comfortably defer to the NHS's authority instead of having to actually consider their own position.

Right so...this is nothing to do with safety and composition of the milk, that concern would just be used in a petition in order to make it look respectable. And you're open about that.
Whoever makes such a petition should hope that what you just said doesn't get screenshotted on twitter!

What if research proved that it's safe? Would you accept the findings?

You completely missed the point of the comment; my point was that trans oriented research tends to have goalposts on wheels.

So one would have to ensure that any research into this issue is conducted by ethical researchers who don’t violate basic research principles in the way that trans oriented researchers tend to - like deciding what question they were asking based on what answers they got. The hypothetical finding I made up was intended as an exaggerated simplistic example of how unethical researchers might do such a thing.

As to your question - “safe” is too low a bar, obviously. That was another of the points of the exaggerated hypothetical, that you missed.

“Beneficial to the infant” is the standard. But research answering that question could not be carried out ethically. So as a pp suggested, the research should investigate whether male nipple secretions have the same composition as real breast milk. With the precise meaning of “the same composition as real breast milk” agreed in advance before they start any analysis.

It’s the fastest route to achieve and maintain the stated aim of the OP.

For the record I don’t think this fetish is limited to males so to me that’s a nonissue. I don’t agree a sexual fetish for nipple play equals being a child sex abuser either. I think it’s a bit more complex than that.

I genuinely wouldn’t want anything fed to an infant without proof it is safe & beneficial, and most people can get behind that aim.

Id be dead by the time this came up for debate anyway, so it would be up to later generations what to do. They can lift moratorium or kick the can down the road.

But the choice is done for my generation and anyone having babies the next few decades or so- a moratorium will be in place de facto banning it until or if it ever gets proven to be safe and beneficial.

“Beneficial to the infant” is the standard. But research answering that question could not be carried out ethically. So as a pp suggested, the research should investigate whether male nipple secretions have the same composition as real breast milk. With the precise meaning of “the same composition as real breast milk” agreed in advance before they start any analysis.

Exactly. Man chest milk would be pumped and then analysed to compare to mothers breast milk. You can’t ethically feed an infant and then track how healthy or poorly it becomes. You can give adults hormones and then pump body fluids from them if they consent and volunteer to participate in a clinical trial. I don’t think there would be many TW volunteers willing to suffer the side effects and risks of lactation induction just for science though. So the research will have tons of barriers to even get off to a start (mwah hah hah) which would be too bad, so sad because it’s not ethical to feed infants something is isn’t even proven to be safe much less beneficial.

Update- source
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230705141205/twitter.com/SurrogConcern/status/1676241607400497152" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20230705141205/twitter.com/SurrogConcern/status/1676241607400497152

https://twitter.com/SurrogConcern/status/1676241607400497152

Or maybe you just dislike them because they pulled out of a MN live chat?

NSPCC are very well established and respected.

@flaffydaffy You must be very young or astonishingly wedded to gender ideology if you honestly think that making sure that babies aren’t harmed is some kind of justification for transphobia.

In any other context the threshold for what newborn babies and breastfeeding mothers are ingesting is extremely high indeed, to the point where women are discouraged from taking medication that’s got fifty years of safety evidence, “just in case”. But you think that objecting to completely unevidenced drug induced unnatural lactation which relies on high levels of artificial hormones and off-label antiemetics or antipsychotics, with no evidence at all whether they are passed to the baby, is merely a front for “transphobia”?

You really need to take a bit of a look at your mindset, and examine how far you are clinging to the tenets of an extreme ideology against common sense, reason and logic. It is not either normal or healthy to subscribe to an extreme set of ideas to the point where you blithely dismiss potential serious harms to newborns because this doesn’t fit with your ideology. Or to accuse others of “transphobia” for asking for the evidence base of normal medical science to be applied here. You come across as someone so blinded to the normal considerations of life that you’re lacking any kind of rationality or perspective here.

Oh, which sounds more likely as a reason to distrust NSPCC?

— pulled out of an MN live chat
— defended graphic public wank photos of one of their employees in rubber fetish wear with his cock out for all to see, indulging in sexual kink while at work at a child protection charity

Which of those could be more objectionable? Hmm, hard to decide!

Get a f*-ing grip, you’re so deep in justifying men’s sexual perversions that your brains have fallen out.

Men trying to breastfeed is ridiculous.

Trying to make it a criminal offence, thinking you can police this is actually even more ridiculous.

Why do you keep putting the word transphobia in quote marks as if I said it?

The safety and quality of what babies are ingesting is really important yes. Is that the motive for wanting to ban trans women breastfeeding though? There is some reason you and other previous posters want it banned other than that. There seems to be a lot of desire to never get it proven that it's fit for consumption.

Why is the attitude not "how interesting that trans women might be capable of lactating safe an nutritious milk. Someone should study this and find out and I wish them luck"? It seems more like if they showed it was safe and nutritious then you still wouldn't be okay with it.

I didn't know they had, so no that isn't my objection. My objection is their being in thrall to an ideology which removes or lessens safeguarding for children, whilst being a children's safeguarding charity. I wouldn't term that feeling 'dislike', more horror and disgust that they are so credulous that they will throw away safeguarding of children, their actual purpose, to prop up adult fetishes and worse.

And plenty of organisations have been well established and respected, and chucked that all away in service of the TQ+ - Stonewall being an obvious example.

But again, I think you already know that.

Or yeah, this

I’ll sign.