On the bus
So can men breastfeed infants or no?? Some say yes; some even say yes of course they can and you’re a bigot for saying no.
Stunningly obvious that ‘lived experience’ matters. Many women here are talking about babies/breastfeeding and how difficult it can be. Then a load of ideologues telling us that men can breastfeed who clearly have never done it or ever looked after a baby? Latch on. To reality.
The NHS actually has official guidance on ‘Dads and breastfeeding’.
You know what it says? “Some men really like the changes in their partner’s breasts during breastfeeding”.
You know what it doesn’t say? “Men can breastfeed”.
Why?
Because they can’t.
My piece for @TheCriticMag on Mika Minio-Paluello being platformed by ITV claiming to be a mother. This was written before he posted a picture “breastfeeding” or it would be angrier still. ‘Men are not mothers’. Motherfaker.
The image of a transwoman in a breastfeeding pose with a very young infant is deeply disturbing. Be whoever you want to be but a baby is not a prop, it is helpless and utterly dependent human. Feeding it some chemically induced goo to validate your own sense of self is abuse.
The image in question is this one:
“Here’s me on a public bus, being photographed, where it just so happens a bunch of strangers can watch me in my private, most intimate and validating moment of being a woman. Plus there’s a baby.”
“NO. Stop looking at babby! Lookit me being its mum!”
That’s so creepy and gross I can’t … There’s no way to interpret such behavior that doesn’t involve prioritizing his own validation and pleasure over the well being of the infant. It’s borderline pedophilic.
Some things just scream mental illness.
A small proportion of trans women taking cross sex hormones develop lactation to some degree, and a subset of those have enough lactation to feed a baby for a time. Example. The trans woman of this story claims to have successfully lactated to some degree, and given the documented examples of this, I see no reason to doubt that there is actual feeding taking place in that photo. The comment about chemically induced goo strikes me as simple fearmongering, akin to calling genetically modified foods ‘frankenfoods’. The milk produced appears to be genuine milk, albeit in much reliable supply.
That said, I agree that it is still valid to say “men do not breastfeed.” When we describe an organism or a physiological system, we do so in terms of normal health and function. We describe humans as having four limbs, and five digits per appendage despite the existence of people with some other number; bipedalism despite some people lacking the ability to walk, binocular sight despite blindness and missing eyes.
When a male human develops mammary tissue and perhaps even lactation, we call this gynecomastia and describe it as an abnormality. Persistent cases get treatment.
We also recognise the difference between normal function of the human organism versus modifications made by medical intervention. We do not include ink in our general description of skin despite many people’s skin featuring ink, nor pacemakers in our description of the heart nor screws when describing bones. We recognise these as elements made by human intervention, distinguishing them from the ordinary development and function of the system.
Medically induced cross sex anatomy does not invalidate the general statements that males do not breastfeed, females do not have penises, and so on through the specious arguments based on medical experimentation.
Holms, nursing mothers, having been induced to lactate by the pregnancy, do not produce a uniform milk throughout the period of nursing. The infants’ nutritional needs change and the mothers’ milk changes to meet the needs. For example, initially a mother’s milk will be far richer with a higher content of fats and sugars than later in the nursing process.
Men induced to lactate by artificial means don’t do the same thing. They produce a uniform substance that doesn’t vary because the brain hasn’t been primed by the pregnancy to release all the right ‘instructions’ to vary the content. So, while it might be inaccurate to refer to a man’s lactate as a ‘chemical goo’ it does raise the question of whether it is giving the infant the necessary nutrition. Is the baby’s development being retarded through under-nutrition? Just as with the use of puberty blockers, is this another uncontrolled medical experiment, the results of which will not be known for many years?
I don’t think calling the product of male lactation “chemically induced goo” is simple fearmongering, because the lactation really is chemically induced, and because nursing mothers are given strict orders not to take so much as an aspirin, for the safety of the baby. “Goo” is a pejorative, yes, but “chemically induced” is just the reality.