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)!

It is not “moral panic” to object to a sign legitimatising something that does not exist. There is no such thing a chest feeding. No human has ever fed from another human’s chest. Things that aren’t true shouldn’t be on non-joke signs.

Except that's not what's happening here. You might have missed it, but "breast" is front and center in the email. If it said "chest feeding" alone, you;'d have a point.

The amount of moral panic surrounding an innocuous email which includes trans men is quite eye-opening.

No, the sign doesn't erase women of itself.

It's the whole bloody redefining of women's words which is deliberately attempting to erase the fact of what women really are and hence impairs women's fundamental rights.

Women are adult human females. Transmen are 'masculine' adult human females.

Chest-feeding is meaningless and inaccurate. The room is for people who feed with their breasts. They can call their breasts boobs, t**s, boobies - whatever they want but the room is simply for women who breastfeed.

What if someone’s triggered by the word ‘feeding’? Let’s change that too. How about something less connected to EDs? Ooh, I know ‘breathing’ - that’s a nice, neutral word. Let’s call it the Chest Breathing room 🙄

I also think it’s hugely patronising to trans men. They negotiate a world full of nursing bras, breast milk, nipple creams, etc etc, and cope. This faux inclusivity only serves to patronise, divide and alienate.

As a non binary trans person I do object to a cis Dad coming on here and lecturing me about how I feel.

A man dismissing women's legitimate objections as 'moral panic' is indicative of a man who doesn't give a shit about women's rights. It signals complete and utter disrespect.

This faux inclusivity only serves to patronise, divide and alienate.

Absolutely. You could nail that over the door of nearly all this rubbish.

Extraordinary isn't it? Oh to have the confidence of a thoroughly average male.

@DadJoke

men dismissing women’s concerns as “moral panic” is peak misogyny

you’re not a woman, you’ve never experienced breastfeeding or pregnancy. Stay in your lane and stop telling us how we should feel

I just object full stop - but it's a very handy metaphor for how men think they have the right to barge in regardless

I am not dismissing "women's" concerns, but what I consider the overreaction of gender critical people on this post in the context of your attacks on including trans men, and I am using the term because it was used in the qualitative research paper I linked to earlier. It seems that no one here is willing to defend trans men's very modest needs for accommodation, but if you'd rather be in an echo chamber, so be it.

Why does everyone assume dadjoke is a man? I'm a woman and I could have a username with "dad" in it if I wanted.

Study participants used a range of terminology to discuss feeding their babies from their chests. Six used the term breastfeeding, four spoke of nursing, three preferred to say chestfeeding, two used both breastfeeding and nursing, two said it did not matter, one used feeding and nursing, and one used feeding and mammal feeding

from the paper linked upthread. Note breastfeeding and nursing came before chestfeeding for the transmen respondants.

Personally I found the paper interesting. My loathing of my chest/breasts saw me diagnosed with body dysmorphia. I used to bind/starve myself. The advice from my last psychiatrist was to stand naked in front of a mirror twice a day and tell myself how beautiful I am. He was patting my thigh at the time. Spoiler alert, it didn't work. Still hate my breasts.

Some of the themes in the paper were thought provoking. Feeling they had to lie to get surgery (re wanting children), breast tissue growing during pregnancy/immediately afterwards depending on the type of surgery carried out (a possibility they hadnt been informed of), wanting to go back on hormones whilst still feeding etc.

Of the nine participants who had surgery before pregnancy:

four participants said they had not considered pregnancy or lactation at the time of surgery.

And

Participants did not discuss future infant feeding choices with their surgeons in consultations prior to surgery, and no surgeon brought up the topic.

In any of the 9 cases which seems somewhat problematic. I can understand the participants failing to mention it but you'd think the medical professionals should have.

Providers need to be aware that the act of breastfeeding or chestfeeding is not necessarily perceived as feminine by their transmasculine clients.

Obviously can't speak for anyone else but I didn't feel feminine when breastfeeding. Female perhaps but definitely not feminine. In fact several conclusions they draw would apply beyond transmasculine people, I.e random breast grabbing by "helpful" hcps trying to latch babies.

I could breast feed. Should I have tried another random part of my chest other than breast to see if that worked? I find this language insulting to women and highly exclusionary. Only female bodied people can breast feed. I feel for people who have such rigid ideas about identity that they can't accept that but I think we help best by saying that being a woman is OK and your body does not define you rather than pretending that men can breast feed.

WHO CARES. Get a hobby.

Rewriting language like this has profound impacts. It's wrong to call it modest.

Men have breast, look at all the bits in the Bible and other old style books where it says stuff like “He beat his breast in sorrow”. Men get breast cancer, in their breast tissue.

This was never about inclusivity, it’s about controlling the language women use to discuss women’s issues, and about accepting the dominance of the male gaze in which breasts are solely sexual.

Does ‘chestfeeding’ make anyone else picture a zombie chomping on a victim?

Who does it exclude? How?

It's blindingly obvious if you interact with DadJoke that he is a man. A man who loves coming on Mumsnet and lecturing women.

You can't tell from the way someone communicates online whether they're a man or a woman. Not without using outdated, sexist stereotypes!

You’re missing the point.

The activity is breastfeeding, it isn’t chest feeding.

Words to describe anything which is unique to women, and which are irrelevant to Ychromosome-small-motile-gamete-producer-sex-class humans, are being removed / replaced in civic society at the behest of misogynist rights campaigners whom you are advocating on behalf of.

The excuse being deployed in this case for that misogynistic assault on language related to women - ie the claim that a post-partum woman who is physically and psychologically capable of breastfeeding her infant is simultaneously traumatised by the word which describes that act - is arrant nonsense. If an individual can’t cope with hearing or seeing the word breastfeeding, they certainly can’t cope with the reality of what’s involved in breastfeeding an infant.

Oh, and a lazy and inaccurate “moral panic” cliche thrown in for good measure. What a surprise.

This is bound up in a movement which is welcoming males into female spaces which excludes some women. A body is not an identity and we should stop pretending it is.

Whydon't we just call it a breast feeding room and then accusations of moral panic can be aimed at those people who want to muddy that language.

😂😂

Maaate.

I thought that was pretty funny too.