Banned from breastfeeding group for objecting to males breastfeeding

[snickerdoodle1990]

Hi everyone,

I gave birth a few months ago and had some breastfeeding difficulties, so joined a local breastfeeding support group in my city. It’s basically a place to go for support with feeding, plus meet other mums/have a cuppa and biscuit etc. They also have a FB group. It’s become a nice, friendly place to go once every couple of weeks.

Recently, a trans-woman (male) has joined the group asking for support because their wife has not long had a baby and the trans-woman is wishing to breastfeed too, apparently through use of hormones and domperidone (?) to stimulate supply (I did not realise this was possible at all)

I really really object to this person being present in a group of women who are seeking breastfeeding support, trying to come together in their breastfeeding experience and also revealing themselves intimately

I told the group leader my concerns and she basically told me to shove it - said that the group is a safe space for everyone and they support all who wish to breastfeed and that I shouldn’t come back because I am a bigot

I am horrified as are the other women, where do we all stand and what would you do?

From a quick internet search, which lines up with what I remember from attending years ago, "Le Leche meetings welcome anyone who is pregnant, nursing, hand expressing, exclusively pumping, combination feeding, providing their own milk or donor mile for a child, or trying to do so. Children, support people, and pregnant and expectant parents are also welcome."

So the transwoman and her wife/mother of their child would definitely be welcome. Le Leche goes by their own guidelines of course, not by who the OP wants there.

It's all bloody fetish and absolutely bonkers! Sorry you are having to deal with this issue, I'm angry on your behalf!

I want to be clear that I'm not defending what this trans person did, or suggesting that it should be 'the norm' or a legal right.

And I don't have anywhere near enough knowledge on a man/trans woman's ability to lactate and how safe that is/isn't to have a useful opinion.

What I believe is that if such a group wants to be inclusive, people who don't share that sentiment should simply leave and find a group more aligned with their views, which I suspect won't be too difficult based on this thread alone. Groups should be clear and upfront about this, of course.

Genuinely trans people are one of the last groups that need bullying out of the few places that are open to accommodating them at the moment. Whether you 'agree' with them or not, many (most?) are more vulnerable than the majority of us.

I am not 'pro trans', but from what I know about the issue and my (admittedly very limited) first hand experience with trans people, I think its far too nuanced a debate to simply say that certain things are 'wrong' or 'right'.

I believe the OP confirmed that there was a baby.

Anti-trans people often suggest that there should be a 'third space' (ie, male/female gender specific toilets/sports, plus a trans/open option)...isn't that essentially what this is? An inclusive group that people who don't want to share with trans people don't have to attend?

How is a man encouraging a baby to suck his nipple not child abuse?

You can buy anything if you have enough money. The world has indeed gone mad. That poor baby.

I can call myself a pink unicorn. Doesn't make me one.

The OP recognises the gender of the Transwoman. But to have someone there of the male sex, where everyone is feeling vulnerable, isn't right.

Men frequently attend with their partners.

I think this trans woman is acting in their best interests, not the best interests of the child. I don’t think the secretions produced under those conditions are the best option for the child. The hormone and chemical levels must be through the roof.
When you are at breastfeeding clinics seeing women go through pain and misery (against their own best interests) to try do their best for the child, it’s a slap in the face. I wouldn’t be happy under those circumstances, and OP I would ask for a single sex group, or your money back.

Trans women can't produce milk in the same way women do. They can lactate but that's not the same thing - they are in effect producing pus. This should be banned for the baby's sake more than anything.

Poor fucking wife

No, the male person trying to breastfeed their child is properly referred to as he. He is the male pronoun. We are talking about the baby's father. The mother is trying to establish breastfeeding. The father's role in this is to do all the other things around the house, change nappies, cook, make drinks and so on. This is what a decent man would do, not try to make this all about him, and not putting his newborn child to his nipple for the child to suck out drug-filled 'milk' that could disrupt the mother's supply.

I really wouldn't have been happy with that, nor would I have wanted partners on the post-natal ward outside visiting hours. My babies were born in the early 1990s when things were very different. I was fortunate that I didn't need any support to establish breastfeeding beyond what my excellent NHS midwives provided on the post-natal ward and in the community, but if I had I would have taken it for granted that it would all have been women-only.

If this is true, the world has gone truly mental. The sad part is that it's women who happily accept, support, condone, accommodate and entertain this nonsense. So, it won't get better, it'll only get worse.

What has magically happened to the father's male body to transform it to female? That is what a woman is - an adult human female. An adult human male is a man. A man cannot become a woman, and putting trans in front of it doesn't change that. Polls show that many people assume trans woman/transwoman = trans-identified female rather than the opposite. This very recently invented term was designed to be confusing and it's worked.

In what way are they more vulnerable? In this particular scenario, in what way is a man more vulnerable than a group of new mums and newborns? There is zero need for a transwoman to be there, even if they did require support for this faux breastfeeding, the support they'd require for this would be different to that at this group.

The world has gone mad!

Don't be ridiculous. We are talking here about the law that applies to the whole of the United Kingdom. In spite of the legal challenge brought by Freddie McConnell, a woman who gives birth to a child can't be registered as that child's father even though she has a Gender Recognition Certificate entitling her to an amended birth certificate stating that she is a man. The poster above has quoted the Gender Recognition Act.

Words have meanings. We can't communicate unless we all use the agreed meanings of words and don't unilaterally change the meanings to what we would like them to be. A man cannot be a mother because a male parent is a father.

I would be concerned on the long term effects on forcing a poor baby to drink hormone induced breast milk to please this man.

Surely, the long term side effects of this barbaric act, such as when the child hits puberty haven't been investigated enough.

I would not be attending again.

What a circus! Breastfeeding is not a joke!

Please can we watch our language about domperidone on this thread? I agree there are lots of issues around it being given to men, but lots of women are also prescribed it off label for low supply reasons. I don't think we need to make women who struggle to breastfeed feel worse than many of us already do, by using hyperbolic language about drugs passing through breastmilk etc when it's actually very hard to get it prescribed, and usually heavily involves the infant feeding teams and GPs for example.

But all aren't welcome. Women who don't want a man there aren't welcome clearly.

You're behind the times. Here in the UK the Supreme Court has just confirmed what all sane people knew all along, that woman = adult human female, and therefore man = adult human male. Related words - mother, father, brother, sister, daughter, son, girl, boy and so on - are all quite obviously referring to either males or females. Mothers are always female.

I agree! With my first, you were given a private room if you had a c-section so XH stayed too.

With my second, I was at a different hospital for an emergency c section and was put on a ward filled with partners staying overnight.

The amount of yapping and arguing between them kept waking ds up. The curtains didn’t close properly and I would have much preferred not having men around while I had a catheter hanging out of me or when I had to hobble to the toilet worse for wear.

The person trying to feed the baby has a penis. They are not a she and should not be in a space that is meant to be safe for breastfeeding mums who do not want to expose their breasts in front of someone with a penis.