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?

I didn’t say I find someone being trans disgusting - that’s a complete fabrication on your part.

It’s not for others to dictate what resources SS should allocate where by not reporting genuine concerns - if OP doesn’t have any genuine concerns, then she obviously wouldn’t report it anyway.

SS have a system to decide which reports to follow up on, but applying a blanket attitude of “don’t burden the system” to reporting genuinely held concerns is how situations arise where it transpires there were all these unfortunate missed opportunities.

Are there any other partners present?

it is a revolting abuse of women by someone who clearly gets a kick out of disregarding the boundaries and needs of vulnerable people

Don’t be ridiculous, not all trans women are abusive perverts, exactly how narrow minded are you

So why were you raising social services then? What is the concern that warrants that?

And in my reply I qualified since you were so keen to interrogate edge cases in the use of language.

However, even for an adoptive or step mother, the child in question still has a mother who gestated and bore them that is not their adoptive or step mother.

Thats why those qualifiers exist! I am not saying a step or adoptive mother has no right to call themselves a mother. The mother of a friend of mine when I was growing was murdered. His dad remarried and his step-mum always loved him and cared for him and gave him 3 sisters besides! But his mum was always his mum who had been murdered when he was a child. It’s not that he didn’t love his step mum, nor did he even object to her calling herself his mum- she said at his 21st birthday what at honour it had been. But it wasn’t the same.

it is an attempt to recreate through the sexual dyad of the husband-wife relationship the similar structural relationship with the child. But that these women have not gestated or bore these children means they are not “mothers” in the simple, ordinary and straightforward meaning of the word. They are step mothers, or adoptive mothers. As fierce in their love, generosity and sacrifice. But no, not exactly the same.

Unlike the placenta milk does not carry directly what we consume to the baby - much as if we drink wine while breastfeeding the baby doesn’t get wine - or even alcohol in any significant volume to negatively impact them. Having said this, I think it’s pretty obvious that a male inducing lactation is not going to produce anything that is actually nutritious or beneficial for the infant, and it is pretty weird and abusive to want to force a newborn to consume your medically induced nipple secretions.

Jesus, you are still not getting it

Pretty obviously someone putting their own needs to perform femininity (by forcing a newborn to comsume their medically induced lactation with no evidence of benefit and possible harms to that child) ahead of the needs of a newborn is a risk, and safeguarding processes need to be followed. I’d say the same if a female who had not gestates turned up at a breastfeeding group asking how she might induce lactation to bond with a neice or nephew. It’s a huge red flag that anyone would centre themselves ahead of their newborn and postpartum partner’s needs.

She didn’t say all TW were perverts.

However, it is true that some TW have AGP, and they literally get off on trying to act like women in front of women, even more so if the actual women are made to feel uncomfortable.

In appropriate use of the laughing imogi
Mnetters are requested to let them know if it’s being used for the wrong reasons.
Which it was

Of note your comments are also ridiculous.
Many definitions have been posted here and are available to see what a mother is
ie…a female. It’s really not rocket science!

i never said they were. I said anyone whose need to perform gender (or anything else) comes ahead of the newborn’s needs is abusive. Trans women do not need to breastfeed. Indeed, cannot breastfeed in any meaningful way. A trans woman breastfeeding does nothing other than meet their own need for gender affirmation. This is abusive in the context of a newborn baby and postpartum mother who both have immediate needs for nutrition and bonding that should be primary. I would expect trans people to understand this as well as cis people
and act accordingly, or else face being called out on their abusive behaviour. I can scarcely believe a trans woman would do this hence my earlier post speculating this thread is a wind up.

@Blueskies25 Maybe you could try proposing some sort of coherent argument for what you’re suggesting other than “of course they can”.

I’ll go back to my first post: I can call myself King Charles IV. Doesn’t make it true. Words mean things. Those things that they mean have a relationship with reality, or as Aristotle puts it: ‘Truth is to say that that which is, is, and that which is not, is not.” (Metaphysics, idr the paragraph)

If “mother” means “someone who calls themself a mother” then I’m your mother. And you should probably go to your room and think about what you’re saying.

Dads don’t go to breastfeeding classes.
Men in that space are completely inappropriate and luckily dads get it

Rosa Parks, my goodness. Incredible straw-manning 😅

If you're arguing that only biological women should have access to breastfeeding support groups, that's a different and much broader discussion.

Nobody has a 'right' to attend any support group, and disrupting a space where people are seeking support is selfish and unpleasant.

Nonsense, Who are you decide what another does or does not find humorous, also it’s an emoji not an imogi 😂

Move with the times or you will be left behind, a trans woman can refer to themselves as a mother, it doesn’t really matter whether you agree with it or not

Absolutely and a trans women with a male biology in the same space as women seeking support in breastfeeding is inappropriate.
This is the same as in changing rooms or nhs wards. If women are in a state of undress then only women should be there. ( not inc male doctors in a professional capacity for example )

There's another paper 'studying' a man deliberately inducing milk production specifically to feed a baby. But the paper's trash - milk wasn't tested; the paper claims exclusive 'chestfeeding' for several weeks, but the claimed quantity produced was far too small to do that; and the researcher never actually met or assessed the baby and didn't observe feeding (so it's possible it was a fabrication).

Was this the one where the guy said something like, please don't judge me, but yes, feeding the baby was better than anything a partner could do to you?

Which was an astonishing admission, given all the bollocks about wanting to help his wife out, etc.

There are lots of potential reasons I might think it’s worth just letting them know, but whether I felt the need to call SS would be based on my subjective perception of the situation as I would be the one making the call, so I’m certainly not saying that everyone must report everything in every circumstance regardless of their own personal views.

My reasons for concern would be:

1. that I’ve only personally ever seen research around whether a transwoman can lactate, but I haven’t seen any examining whether male breastfeeding is in the best interests of the child, not whether the fluid coming out of the male’s nipples is nutritionally equivalent to breastmilk from a woman.

2. that I’ve not seen any research on whether the cross-sex hormones or lactation-inducing hormones (the latter presumably being in higher doses than that prescribed to women) are transmitted in the milk and/or whether these might affect the baby’s healthy endocrine or other development.

3. this would depend on the circumstances and I’m only going off of the fact that OP suggested she felt deeply uncomfortable, but if I felt the transwoman was aware that other women were uncomfortable breastfeeding with him around and/or not giving them the privacy they would expect in that situation, that could raise concerns about a lack of appropriate boundaries.

4. given the lack of research and medical evidence to support the argument that this is best for baby, I would be concerned about the motivation of a male to prioritise his desire to breastfeed over his baby’s health and wellbeing.

Those would be the kinds of reasons I might decide to let SS know, because I genuinely don’t have sufficient information as to whether this is in the baby’s best interests or a selfish vanity project for the father myself. So I wouldn’t want to be the one to decide whether SS should look into it - I’d want to put the responsibility of whether it’s totally fine or not onto them, as that’s their job.

Not my decision MNHQs

Anyone can call themselves whatever they like. Just as @Hiddenmnetter commented. I think she decided she’d call herself your mother and suggested bed.

We can call ourselves whatever we like….it doesn’t mean it’s real !

Indeed. And many of them do.

A quick trip to Reddit will see dozens of men talking about their lactation fetish, calling themselves mothers and asking for advice on how to squeeze out 'more than just a drop'.

it's not exactly secret!

Yes, it is extremely unpleasant of this man to disrupt this women's breastfeeding support group.

There are a lot of drugs that won't be given to breastfeeding mothers.

Mothers of babies with milk allergy frequently have to avoid all dairy themselves. Breastfeeding mothers being treated for amphetamine or heroin addiction are instructed to pump and discard milk for 24 hours after any relapse, because the drugs pass via the breastmilk in sufficient quantity to have measurable effects on the baby. Legal sedatives have also been shown to cause drowsiness in babies, and antibiotics can cause colic and digestive disturbance.

The amount passed through breastmilk is small (usually under 1% of the dose taken) but not necessarily clinically insignificant.

Drugs with weaker protein binding pass through in higher amounts. Ones with long half lives can build up over several feeds. Young babies may not have a well-enough developed liver or kidneys to process them effectively. And the baby is small. So 1% of the adult dose is a lot more than 1% of the dose for their size.

The dose of domperidone needed to induce milk production in a man is higher than the dose needed to trigger or enhance it in a woman who's recently given birth, so the amount in the milk will be correspondingly higher. And even in women it's not recommended as a first-line treatment. Only after other things have been tried and failed.

So people who genuinely find something humorous could be cautioned by MNHQ and how do you suppose they police that?

I think she decided she’d call herself your mother and suggested bed.

More silly nonsensical comments I see 😂

So the drug is not recommended for mothers then.
That’s actual Mothers.

and yet Transwomen with obviously have no actual chance of producing milk ( because they are not women ) naturally are choosing through choice and no other reason to take it and inflict it on their babies!

Assuming this person is the baby's biological father he cannot also at the same time be it's mother. Ffs the world has actually gone mad.