Communication on new building - room available for 'chest feeding'

[Sizzlysausage]

I got an email today about our new building (I work at a university). This explained space had been put aside in the new building for 'breast and chest feeding.' I find this so ridiculous I just need somewhere to vent (don't dare do so to any of my colleagues)!

For me the ongoing, much deeper insult in all this is that our own embodied identities as based on our sex and so our ability to fight sex-based oppression are erased when all terms are repurposed on the basis of the desires of transgender activists so that we can no longer properly even address the many horrible problems women and girls face in this world.

Because those names themselves have been repurposed so that the category 'women and girls' is now a mixed sex one and all the terminology we could use in the past is now contested. Even 'breast' is no longer linked to the way mammals feed their young.

For me the ongoing, much deeper insult in all this is that our own embodied identities as based on our sex and so our ability to fight sex-based oppression are erased when all terms are repurposed

Very well put. Of course some people are either oblivious to or don't give a shit about this.

Anyway, erasing and ignoring the man (for a change)... Give it 10 years when the transaliens turn up and demand all transgender people change it to "thorax feeding." 🤷‍♀️ In fact OP maybe you need to write to the uni now and warn them about this. Their signs aren't inclusive enough for future potential transaliens.

Oh good, there are two people on the thread who can finally answer the question I've been putting for years and years: how is it identifying and living as a man to go through a pregnancy, give birth and then breastfeed a baby?

Not a single man on the planet has ever had these experiences. Not a single male mammal, actually. Only female mammals can do these things. Being a female mammal means having a body organised around the production of large gametes and in the years of sexual maturity having a reproductive system capable of gestation and lactation, if everything is working normally. That's all it means. It doesn't mean feeling feminine or conforming to the stereotypes associated with being female.

So how is it possible to be 'living as a man' while using your female reproductive system to have a child? What does that phrase mean?

How can anyone who has got pregnant and birthed a baby declare themselves not a woman? And why should everyone pretzel themselves to accommodate their tantrum.

tough titty, as my mum used to say.

I would raise an objection that as women, you need a women only space for breastfeeding and that you feel that is your right. You would like safe female only space to feed your child. They are welcome to offer a separate space to chest feeders 🙄 Just like they offer single sex toilets!

Although I just fed wherever, regardless, could give too hoots who it offended. That's my right as a women. So I'd probably sit outside the chest feeding room on principle. Maybe with a sign saying I can actually feed real milk to this baby Female and proud!

O f g s, men have breasts so trans men can call them breasts.

I know someone who married a research scientist and he took some paternity leave when baby was 6 months so his wife could go back to work. He brought their baby to her at work be breast fed every 3-4 hours, even when she was lecturing and touring. She fed at work for the full year while working (research in the field of nutrition!) so this would have been very necessary.

Though I could also imagine mum not giving too fucks about where she bf.

Have to say I had some positioning issues with both of my children and would need to go somewhere quiet to feed so I could listen for clicks, which meant not the best latch.

Also my first wouldn't feed if there were too many distractions. So I needed a quiet boring place. Still like that now with his food

to go back to the original question,
presumably there are people on the campus whose first language is not English?
I think, for them especially, clarity is essential, and neologisms should be avoided, especially if they may be more likely to prefer a single sex and private space to feed their babies. So breastfeeding is the appropriate term.

Is what everyone employed there should be asking.

I would raise an objection that as women, you need a women only space for breastfeeding and that you feel that is your right. You would like safe female only space to feed your child. They are welcome to offer a separate space to chest feeders 🙄 Just like they offer single sex toilets!

To which the explanation would presumably be that the 'chest feeders' are indeed female but it'd be good to get the virtue signallers saying that out loud.

"I imagine they envisaged chest feeding was the inclusive way of referring to females identifying as TM who would find reference to their breasts triggering or offensive (though why that doesn't extend to using them to feed their children is a mystery to me..)"

Frankly I've never understood why a TiF would want to become pregnant at all, let alone carrying to term and then "chest feeding" as they prefer to call it - Surely that goes against the whole idea of wishing they weren't female?

There are plenty of children in the care system desperately in need of loving parents, desperately wanting to be adopted, why would a TiF put themselves through the (I presume) triggering, extremely debilitating gender dysphoria of pregnancy, child birth, and breast feeding if they've "always been a man" and womanhood is so abhorrent to them?
It just doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Men have breasts, men can get breast cancer. There is no need for the word chest for f to m people who have had a baby as no matter how they identify they still have breasts. Absolutely disgusting that the university are pandering to a tiny tiny minority with body dismorphia

I will never not be baffled at the mental gymnastics required to say that going through pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding as a trans man (literally the most female things you can do) in no way creates gender dysphoria, but seeing the words mother, woman, and breastfeeding is unbearable and so women and femaleness must be erased from all language surrounding maternity.

I just can't get over the chutzpah of a bloke coming on here and proclaiming what transmen want and women must do. It's ... well, it's confidence I wish I had, frankly.

Maybe he is literally "getting his tits out for the team".

I have studied and worked at universities for decades and never once seen a student or staff member have their baby with them for anything other than a short visit. I very much doubt this baby feeding room will get much use at all on a regular basis and the chances of there being a mother who is trans or non binary whose baby needs feeding is pretty slim. I mean what are they doing with the baby the rest of the time? If the baby is in the university nursery, the nursery would likely be the best place to feed it.

Indeed. It must be bra-phobia that’s triggering the dysphoria…

The word “chestfeeding” on the door of the mother and baby room = not triggering, perfectly acceptable. No problem with taking my engorged breast and leaking nipple out of my breastfeeding bra and latching my baby on, or attaching a breast pump to my nipple and watching my breast milk squirt into the bottle, in this room. No siree. All perfectly fine.

The word “breastfeeding” on the door of the mother and baby room = triggering! unacceptable! exclusionary! I can’t even walk through the door of this room, I’m so victimised by the alphabet!

So, apparently, the letters ch make a word perfectly tolerable. But the letters br and a make the same word intolerable. Bra-phobia, clearly.

@MimiGC the room is most often used for breastfeeding mums to express milk.

what’s the point in this – presumably if you don’t have any breasts you’ll be using a bottle?

If it’s workplace provision then in reality it’s likely to get more use by women expressing their breastmilk. The room will need to be lockable and have hand washing facilities.

It's not called the one stop chest clinic when you've a lump that needs investigating.

Men and women get referred as men can get breast cancer too.

Anatomically speaking your chest is an entirely different area of the body which includes ribs and lungs, heart and spine.

If they changed it to the one stop breast and chest clinic it really would indicate an entirely different set of cancers.

if they start messing around using mealy words who’s to stop someone with a lactation fetish going it to the room? Adults want one to ‘chest feed’?

come on, we’ve seen how empowered creepy (mostly) men get off my pushing boundaries (remember the NSPCC rubber man doing unmentionables in the loos and filming it - because they backed his behaviour up and let him get away with it - too scared to say ‘no’).

Your bafflement can be addressed. You are not a trans man, but you can easily discover trans men's views on this by either reading about it, or asking one of your trans men friends. To help you out:

https://academic.oup.com/lawfam/article/34/3/225/6040670

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0266613823000232

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7513446/

And, to be clear, you are not being "erased", trans men are being included in this innocuous sign. This is a straightforward moral panic.

As a non binary person I find the sign offensive. I do not refer to the fatty deposits on my upper torso and find the word 'chest' triggering. Why are my needs not met? Why am I not included?