Remember the breastfeeding fathers
From last month at the Huffington Post blog – The Troubling Erasure of Trans Parents Who Breastfeed.
When we think about breastfeeding, the image that comes to mind — the one pushed on us by society, medical professionals and the media alike — is that of a mother nursing her newborn baby. Brochures, websites and PSAs promote the picture of a woman lovingly looking at her child as the baby suckles at her breast. The language accompanying this imagery is inevitably gendered, specific to cisgender women who are nursing a baby that they themselves gave birth to.
Isn’t that awful? Women are always shoving themselves forward that way, hogging the mic, taking up all the slots, erasing everyone else. Imagine women pretending breastfeeding is something women do. Slags.
For a long time, no one has questioned that language. But in recent years, as acceptance of genders outside the binary grows, our understanding of many things that have long gone unchallenged have needed to shift. There has been a push for gender-neutral language when talking about reproductive justice, from abortion to pregnancy.
Yeah! Because what better way is there to overturn women’s relegation to second-class status than to stop talking about the reproductive realities that are the source of that second-class status? Godalmighty can we please finally stop talking about women? By the way did you know that for every word a man says, a woman says seven hundred million words? Fact.
Despite acknowledgment by many in birthing communities that pregnancy is not limited to women, the language used by most people still hasn’t changed. Jasper Moon, a genderqueer parent who prefers to be called “ren” by their child (short for “parent”), notes that when they hear the term “nursing mother,” they know “that obviously doesn’t apply to me.”
The term “mother” is itself problematic. As J. Kathleen (Jake) Marcus, an attorney in Philadelphia who specializes in parenting and gender legal issues, notes, “Kids are nursed by people who are not their mothers all the time.” While this is less common in Western culture, people have been nursing their friends’ and family members’ kids throughout history.
Yes: wet nurses. They were women though. It wasn’t men who did it. It wasn’t “people”; it was women. Trans people shouldn’t be erased, but neither should women.
I suppose we all need to be known as parental units now. Do we designate who is who by letters, numbers, names?
Why does it look like the trans community more than any other minority wants to erase everything that came before but especially women? I always thought that minority’s and their ally’s were fighting for their rightful place at the table not to take over and dictate what everyone else gets to do or say.
I thought ‘everything is political’ was over in the 60’s. Some of these views of gender seem to come from an abstract metaphysical universe.
“Women are always shoving themselves forward that way, hogging the mic.” We can’t allow that. “… like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.”
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Recall the resistance to admit Emmy Noether to the university faculty. One can’t imagine mathematical physics without Noether’s beautiful (in the sense of Dirac), foundational theorems.
Where’s the push for gender neutral language regarding vasectomies, sperm counts, and erectile dysfunction?
Proposal: all advertising should be subject to proportional representation, subject to the nearest 0.5%. 99.5% (+/-) of posters will depict AFAB women. 0.5% (+/-) of posters will depict AMAB women. Who’s with me?
Point #1: I sincerely doubt that anyone who breastfeeds is being erased due to gender confusion. Lactating is a pretty specific thing, not subject to much interpretation. The last time I saw a breastfeeding baby and thought “hey wait, is that a woman or a man?” was … never? Then again, when I see a breastfeeding baby, I automatically look away, because nobody wants to be THAT person. :) Plus, nobody shouldn’t be exposing their filthy breasts in public anyway — take it outside, you tramps.
[Last sentence may have contained sarcasm for purposes of illustrating a point.]
Point #2: In a world where breast-feeding children by whomever is still met with public opprobrium, criticizing public health campaigns for targeting the vast, vast majority of people who breastfeed — and the people who need to understand that breastfeeding is Just Fine — is unbelievable. Have none of these people bothered to google “breastfeeding fired”? For fuck’s sake.
Addendum: Click-baity sites like the HuffPo tend to enrage me. I don’t want to discount the difficulties of nursing trans people. I do, however, feel strongly that attacking public health programs aimed at a population suffering from poverty (yes, Virgninia, poor people need to breastfeed too), discrimination (and even wealthy women face impact!), and for chrissake being a new mother (because goddamn, that’s not hard at all)… is wrong.
I think there is an interesting analogy to the whole trans-gender issue here:
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/12/07/457147952/people-of-color-with-albinism-ask-where-do-i-belong
Quote from the article:
” In a society where race is intrinsic to the fabric of our society — leaving aside the myths of post-racialism and colorblind politics — where do people of color, but without color, fit? “
Jesus. I can see it coming soon: breastfeeding will no longer be a female issue, but rather a mammary-haver issue.
We are developing a serious category problem.
It’s interesting that albinism in black people because I thought of that yesterday when trying to think of a good analogy. The point I’m trying to think about is that not everything is “erasure” simply because you don’t account for all variations.
I thought of myself, in fact. I thought about how un-seriously I would be taken if I said “Look at the troubling erasure of Chicanas who have light skin and light eyes and drop their accent and get good grades and find a professional job – they are being erased and denied their identity every time Latinos are portrayed as poor immigrants with dark skin!” How obnoxious would that be.
yes, Virgninia, poor people need to breastfeed too
In many (perhaps most) cases, poor people stand to benefit more from breastfeeding. since the cost for the extra food that the mother needs to eat to produce milk is much less than the cost of formula (plus bottlefeeding paraphernalia).
Also, based on my recollection (and a recent quick google to verify), a significant number of breastfeeding images only show the baby at the breast, without showing much of the rest of the mother (oops – I should say “breast-haver”)
@ Theo Bromine:
Indeed that is true. It’s also true that breastfeeding is a significant expense for working mothers who may not (pumps, bottles, and sundries), which is why any number of programs exist to promote and financially support breastfeeding (WIC in the US, the voucher program in the UK, etc).
Which is, of course, as it should be (and why the cutting of such programs under austerian regimes is troubling) — obviously we should be working for healthy outcomes
By the way, your comment helped me pinpoint just why that article aggravated me so damn much. The children are a clear afterthought. There are one and a half paragraphs at the end of the article that belatedly acknowledge that breastfeeding is important to child health, but the rest of it is about how the parent feels.
There are, however, six paragraphs on breastfeeding legislation and regulations, which I must point out includes this:
The children, though? An afterthought.
I know, I know, it’s the Huffington Post, what do I expect. Next I’ll be complaining that NPR does a bad job of covering … everything.
PS There are some really interesting sections of the comments. Requires wading through some sludge though — though I have learned that you can be a TERF without being radical, or a feminist. Trans-exclusionary is sufficient.
PatrickG, I don’t mind the emphasis on how The Parent feels. So often when we talk about breastfeeding, women are heavily pressured to not even think about how they feel or what they want and only focus on what’s good for the baby.
We are going to go back to the days when no-one talked about Women’s Health issues because it was all too icky for men.
learie: I very much appreciate the reminder of the SQUICK factor. Thanks.
We have second-wave feminism to thank for being able to talk about periods and breastfeeding and menopause: all those consciousness raising and earth mother talk fests made the difference.
How deeply ironic.
Removing the words woman and women from dialogue is a step backward. ‘Women and trans men’ is the only phrase I can think of.