“Girls Can Do Anything” But Sorry, Boys Can’t

Physiology has limits, even if feelings and beliefs don’t

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in 2020 almost 800 women a day died from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. A maternal death occurred nearly every two minutes in 2020.

The paternal death rate relating to pregnancy and childbirth was 0. Put another way, the percentage of “birthing people” harmed by becoming pregnant and giving birth was 100% for natal females and 0% for natal males.

The causes of 75% of preventable maternal deaths are:

· severe bleeding (mostly bleeding after childbirth);

· infections (usually after childbirth);

· high blood pressure during pregnancy (pre-eclampsia and eclampsia);

· complications from delivery; and

· unsafe abortion.

These conditions usually occur because there is no health system or a poorly resourced one and women are not a priority for care within the culture they live in.

In most societies if a mother dies leaving young children, their father just remarries/partners another woman and starts over again. No biggie.

Approximately 19 percent of men experience erectile dysfunction over the course of their lifetime, while over 90 percent of women report some symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). But there are over five times more studies into erectile dysfunction than into PMS.

One analysis found (not to anyone’s surprise), that “gendered” (in this case meaning sexed) research not only favored men’s diseases over women’s, but that men were “overfunded” for their conditions when compared with women.

Prior to 1993 not only were there no women in clinical trials, even female mice were excluded. Our hormonal cycles just mess up those white coated explorers in the labs trying to make things better for people (well male bodied people at least). Better to just carry on without us and/or pretend that women are just smaller, inferior men.

Just being superior is no longer enough for some men

No longer content with settling with the patriarchal aims of domination, suppression and exploitation of women, some male bodied persons have announced that they can “women” better than we could ever do this ourselves. (I read one man’s blog where he stated that since he had ‘become’ a woman, we women were all jealous of his “shapely calves”.)

And while I haven’t seen any reports about men bragging about pushing babies out of (well, not sure where that would be), another man is getting way more than his fifteen minutes of fame as a “struggling mum” who by the way, until recently was also breastfeeding “her” baby.

I had no idea that London had so few women living there that when the UK television channel ITV ran an item on the cost-of-living crisis featuring Thames Water pricing structure they chose to feature a “struggling mum” who was not any sort of mother at all because he’s a man.

This story quickly escalated well beyond the cost of water, thanks to his telling the world that in addition to being unhappy at paying his water bill, he had also breastfed his baby “for a few weeks”.

Cue international outrage

For anyone just emerging from a coma who wants to read about this, just put into your favorite search engine his name: Mika Minio-Paluello and you will be inundated with information, most of which is actually totally unverified. For example, we only have his word for it that he breastfed a baby at all. But men never lie about their accomplishments, do they?

Breastfeeding or just sleeping? Credit: Daily Mail

Both the baby that he is holding in the photo and this older child who appears to be no older than two do not appear to have anything bordering on a real mother in existence. Mika refers to living with a “housemate”, not a partner. You can’t give children a mother by erasing women and identifying as a mother.

Of course, the message from the other side is that any doubts about the merits of male lactation comes from a place of bigoted transphobia, because well, that’s also all they ever say.

We have facts, they have feelings. Feelings are important, but not when they actually hurt others by for example, encouraging them to go to doctors for ‘treatment’ that mutilates them and leaves them unable to function as they were designed to.

Men breastfeeding, lactating males; it’s all the same crap as usual

I have written an earlier post about men breastfeeding and I think that many other authors have covered this particular fellow quite well enough. For a balanced look at lactating males, this article covers the basics well.

So, for the remainder of my time here, I am going to wander around the back corridors a bit, while expressing some of my own feelings and beliefs about men breastfeeding. The rainbow people do not have a monopoly on feelings and beliefs; us believers in biology have plenty of plenty of these too.

The “ick/yuk” factor

Disgust is an emotional response of rejection or revulsion to something potentially contagious or something considered offensive, distasteful or unpleasant. I think this is a huge reason why most people do not think that men should be breastfeeding. Especially babies, because they are the very epitome of innocence and purity in most human societies.

What are some other practices that (unlike infant feeding methods, which when incorrectly done can actually kill babies) that most sane people would prefer not to consider doing?

How about necrophilia? Hey, the body is dead, so you don’t even need to worry about consent. Who is harmed by having sex with a dead person? There really is no rational basis for revulsion around this practice. It doesn’t hurt anyone does it? Yet it is illegal to have any sort of sexual relations with a corpse in many countries and I don’t hear anyone crying “bigot” about this.

What about bestiality? Animals have sex with each other so clearly, they are OK with doing this. As long as you are not hurting or forcing yourself on an animal, where’s the harm? And unbelievably, there are countries that have animal brothels so I guess that not everyone is that disgusted by this. Celibacy is looking pretty good right about now actually…

Please note that both of these are largely male (not female) activities. Is there a pattern here?

Physiology of the human body or the limits of reality

Reproductively and in every other way, males and females are not the same as each other. Sex-based differences in normal physiological function and effects of sex steroid hormones on the function of multiple organ systems mean that when it comes to health, women and men really do live separate and different lives. Even when we have the same problem, such as heart disease, our presentation, disease course and reactions to medications can be so different that applying male standards only to these causes harm to women, whose bodies do not act or respond as men's do in the same situation.

The Olympics until recently held most of its sporting competitions segregated by sex because it recognized these differences. The major exception are the equestrian events where neither the sex of the humans nor the horses are felt to be a winning factor.

The Olympic marathon record times are 2:06:3 for men and 2:23:07 for women. So, a whole lot of men beat the winning woman, which is why the categories are separated so that women can win; otherwise, they never would come close to the podium.

The world bench press records follow the same pattern. While the winning weight for men is 1,320 lbs. (598.7kgs), the best weight ever bench pressed by a woman is 605 lbs. (274.4kgs), which careful readers will note is less than half of the men’s record. 

Clearly if as a society we want women to engage in competitive sports, we need to give them a chance to compete without men as otherwise they would lack any incentive to participate. Nobody trains at the elite level with the expectation of never winning.

Mammalian sex is binary because that’s how we reproduce

Those in the thrall of gender woo who claim that sex is a social construction are wrong and the ultimate proof of this is in held in the bodies of those who gestate babies. Please refer to the first two paragraphs of this piece and note which sex is dying in reproducing our species and which sex isn’t. Men are not making any bodily sacrifices to produce babies.

Women’s entire developmental arc is geared to conceiving, gestating, birthing, breastfeeding and nurturing the next generation of human beings. Until relatively recently, avoiding pregnancy while having an adult sex life was a real problem for women, both because of the very high price this takes on a woman’s body and the societal price of having a “wrong” child (that is, one born outside of a legal marriage).

Note please, that men do not pay this price in any way. Their contribution to creating a new person may be as little as a single orgasm and they are more likely to be lauded for their manly virility than castigated for doing something that society condemns.

Leaving aside the philosophical reasons why male lactation is actually just a complete joke, the physical reasons are even more compelling. Male bodies are not concerned with breastfeeding in any way at all. Galactorrhea is milk production from the breast unrelated to pregnancy or lactation. Men who spontaneously produce fluid that exits from their nipples are experiencing a diseased state. Most have a pituitary tumor, and the other recognized cause of this state is as a result of re-feeding after a prolonged and profound starvation. Any ‘milk’ that a man produces is not as a result of pregnancy, nor does it change in response the needs of an individual baby the way that every breastfeeding woman’s milk is tailored to the needs of her baby.

The only other way that males can deliberately enter a lactational state is by artificial means, similar to how some female athletes won competitions in an earlier era. East German female athletes suffered permanent harms from the male steroids they were forced to consume to have the privileged careers they enjoyed.  Males can only deliberately enter a lactational state by artificial means, similar to how these female athletes cheated their way to victories.

Mammals can’t change sex and mimicking the other sex to this degree is creating a fiction that serves no one except narcissistic men.

Many women struggle to breastfeed, so why are we helping men (who will always fail)?

According to global breastfeeding reports, only 48% of countries fulfil the WHO recommendation for exclusive breastfeeding for six months and continued breastfeeding to two years and countries in the global north have the lowest rates. The reasons for this are complex, intertwined and different depending on the economic state of individual countries. There is one overriding reason that is always present: women are not supported to breastfeed their babies.

A myriad of factors are at play here and this is not the place to delve into this in any detail, but my question is:

When the normal physiological function of breastfeeding is so often not achieved by women why are we spending any time at all on a cohort where there are no benefits at all to be gained? The complication rates of phalloplasty surgeries are very high at 76.5%. How would men with erectile dysfunction problems feel if trans “men” were prioritized for research and support in how well the penis functions?

There is no AGP/baby dyad

“Immediately after she gives birth, a woman and her infant are physically separate, but their physiology, physical safety, and emotional well-being remain deeply interconnected.” This is the definition of the mother/baby dyad.

Babies adjust to life outside using the bodies of their mothers

It should be obvious why this is so. That new human who grew in a woman for about 40 weeks has already made permanent changes in her body and her influences have molded the unique baby she births. This is true even if the baby dies or is given away or is not genetically hers. There really is no physiological separation between a mother and her baby especially in those early weeks after birth.

There is no physiological connection between any man and a baby. A baby does not recognize a sperm contributor as anyone special. There is no physical connection between a baby and a man’s heartbeat, breathing or skin temperature.

I am not saying that dads are not important, they surely are. But dads don’t lactate as a direct consequence of pregnancy and birth of their baby and no baby is expecting him to even try.

Men who have autogynephilia (AGP) have a sexual fetish that means that they become sexually aroused at the thought of themselves as women. Many are content to present as women and claim a woman’s identity. But some take this one step further and want to do what only women can do and one of those things is breastfeeding.

Women breastfeed because they love their babies; men breastfeed because they love themselves.

They breastfeed for the affirmation this gives them that they are “really” women. There is no thought or care about the welfare of babies who have been separated from their mothers to indulge this male fantasy. Taking babies from their mothers so they can be fed by bodies not equipped to do so is medical experimentation and should not be condoned by anyone.

Breastfeeding organizations such as La Leche League International (LLLI) who support “everyone” to breastfeed, including men are telling their volunteer Leaders (who are all mothers as this is a criterion for leadership) that they must support AGP men who ask for help with the “normal course of breastfeeding”, which is clearly a nonsense as there is no such thing for men.

LLL Leaders also recognize and support the fact that breastfeeding is so much more than an infant feeding method, it is a relationship between a woman and her baby that starts during pregnancy and develops over the years that follow birth, with her baby at her breast for many months.

Men breastfeeding is just the opposite. Rupturing the mother/baby dyad so that a man can supply a bit of generic milk for a few weeks (which is all they ever manage) for the purpose of gender affirmation (and in some cases, a sexual turn on) appears to be the aim of men who want to breastfeed.

Supporting male lactation may sound wonderful to some, but then so do other things that we used to support. If businesses used slaves, rather than employees their profits would be higher. Child labor is less costly than paying adults to work.

Rather than putting yet more research time and money into endorsing a process that our biology and physiology do not support, we should be optimizing our resources into assisting women to do what their bodies are already prepared to do so beautifully. Everyone would be better off, rather than catering to just a few men with a fetish.