It’s Not a Failure to Admit You Were Wrong
But it is a total abdication of responsibility to carry on regardless
By adopting an ideological definition of “women”, it would seem that anything can happen. “Not all birthing people are women”, “men having babies” need to be catered to and “lactating families” are supposedly taking the burden of care for babies off us overworked mothers.
But if you believe in biology as I do, and you are wedded to an Enlightenment version of science and truth, then you can save some words because the shorthand term for birthing people is women, real men can’t and don’t have babies and no, you can’t put Granddad on the breastfeeding roster so you can have a nap.
It’s bad enough when individuals claim to believe that sex is only a social construction, that lesbians who don’t want to have sex with penises are transphobic, genital fetishists and that “everyone” deserves support to breastfeed if they want to. I believe in free speech and also believe that mentally competent adults have agency, which includes the right to make choices I don’t agree with, even if this causes them harm. This does not extend to causing harm to others.
For the same reasons it is unacceptable to shout “fire!” in a crowded theater (unless there is actually a fire), it is just plain WRONG to indoctrinate children and young adults into believing that their bodies are wrong in any way at all and even worse, that any ‘errors’ can be easily replicated with some exogenous hormones and a spot of surgery.
Looking for a way to derail your life? I have some ideas….
“Gender dysphoria” is a mental health condition that can never be fixed by taking some pills or injections and by having bits of your body cut off and/or rearranged like some sort of demented jigsaw puzzle. This condition is characterized by a delusional belief that your “gender identity” is at odds with your sex that was “assigned at birth”. Sometimes this is referred to as “being born in the wrong body”.
Until recently this sort of thinking might get you admitted to the local psych unit, but now for reasons that make no sense to a sane person, it is promoted to gender nonconforming children and widely celebrated nearly everywhere in the Global North, mainly to the detriment of women and children.
The virtual Bible of those who embrace this cult belief system is found by following the clinical guidance as promoted in Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8, published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).
If ever there was a document that celebrated form over function, this is it! According to WPATH, as long as your bits look the part, there are no problems. Well, um, there might be some minor issues (such as your new vagina necrosing, or your nipple grafts falling off), but hey, one more surgery never hurt anyone right? And according to WPATH, even after you can’t pee properly, you can no longer orgasm and your dating pool is reduced significantly, you have nearly a 0% chance of regret. Never mind the ever-increasing army of detransitioners speaking out and taking these fraudsters to court. They aren’t counted in WPATH statistics.
You know what word never appears once in these Standards of Care? Breastfeeding. In the entire 260-page treatise, not one mention about the functionally of the most important body part that every baby looks for once born. Breast or breasts is in there ten times, but all of these are in reference to removing them from women and adding them onto men.
What your body is designed to do is of no concern to the genderborgs of WPATH as long as it looks the part.
You have unwanted breasts, I have a scalpel, let’s go!
From a Western cultural point of view, breasts are mainly for the pleasure of men, if you believe all the advertising based on women in cleavage revealing tops selling nearly every consumer product ever. Breasts are the reason that back in my childhood days, many boys avidly paged through the National Geographic hoping for a feature on African tribes that featured topless women going about their lives.
But like every other body part we possess, we have breasts because they help us to function as normal adults.
For many women, their breasts are an integral part of their sexual pleasure and an important erogenous zone. Reproductive biology is designed to be pleasurable for both parties because this is how you get more babies with your genes in them. The fact that this is not always true is due to sociocultural reasons, not physiological factors. Nipples in particular are rich in nerve endings that are connected to the genitals.
The primary function of human breasts is the same as all other mammalian mothers: we have breasts to feed our vulnerable young who have very specific dietary needs until they reach an age when they can start to eat family foods. In the case of human mammals, the length of time that babies benefit from continuing to breastfeed, even after they are chowing down at the family dinner table is measured in years, not days, weeks or months. We are an extremely slow developing animal, which is reflected in the long time period that constitutes the pre-adult stage we call childhood.
“Gender affirming care” is a perversion
Care, as defined by the Oxford dictionary has several interrelated meanings including:
The provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something.
Serious attention or consideration applied to doing something correctly or to avoid damage or risk.
Feel concern or interest; attach importance to something.
Look after and provide for the needs of.
Most people realize that children and their immature brains need protecting from their immaturity and lack of judgement. This is the rationale behind age related restrictions. Most children have periods of resentment around this because they “know” they are capable of making sound decisions (they’re not).
All gender affirming care creates (not avoids) damage or risk and it is a parental obligation to, while validating their children’s feelings, maintain a long-term view of anything that may be harmful to their future adult lives.
If a girl decides that she no longer wants her breasts (because of the unwanted attention they get her from boys and men), in many Western countries it is all too easy to have them removed. An immature brain is not capable of thinking ahead to an unknown adult life; most teens if asked if they want to have children someday have either not considered this at all or just reject the idea. Even fewer think about breastfeeding.
Celebrating harms: not all “parents” can breastfeed
If you can’t understand why or how women-founded mother to mother support groups like the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA) or La Leche League International (LLLI) have been captured by the gender unicorn, well join the club because I don’t know either. The very purpose of both of these organizations is to inform, support and encourage women to use their breasts for their intended purpose, which is to nourish their babies.
Both these groups, along with countless other organizations formed to support women’s biological functioning and or health have been captured by the gender cult, which means that, just like WPATH, they now celebrate form over function.
And some of the “form” they pledge to support can’t even produce milk. I have already written extensively about men breastfeeding, including here, where I state that if you care about babies and about women’s health, there are no real arguments that support male lactation.
Trans men are damaged women
Claiming to be a man while pregnant is understandably emotionally fraught. I can understand feeling as though you were given the wrong body for how you feel (but really, someone needs to spell out why so many young girls are endeavoring to escape from our hyper-sexualized society in the only way they can think of), and I can really understand being desperate to have a baby.
The first, and often the only “gender affirming” surgery that women get in their “transition journey” is what is euphemistically referred to as “top surgery”. Also referred to as “chest masculinization surgery” what it means is the nonessential removal of a girl’s or woman’s healthy breasts. In line with the WPATH clinical guidelines, there is no lower age limit for this, so presumably as soon as those unwanted growths begin to enlarge, they can be whipped off.
If you’ve never seen top surgery in action, here you go, but I warn you this is the real deal so if you don’t like to see body tissues, blood or surgical procedures, don’t click here.
If you watched that video, then you will understand why this statement from the LLLI website is false: “If you have had chest (top) surgery you may be able to produce some milk”. Even if you could make some milk, where would it go? All the ducts and nerves between the nipple and the breast were removed.
Women who have had this surgery will never be able to breastfeed their babies. This site (which is pro “gender confirmation” surgeries) states this far more accurately than LLLI does:
The glands and ducts responsible for milk production will be removed from your body during surgery. This means that you will no longer be able to produce milk. There may be a small amount of glandular tissue left behind, but this will not be enough to produce milk.
Also, if you have free nipple grafting, which is common for medium-to-large chest sizes, your nipples will no longer be connected to any milk ducts, so the production of milk will be impossible for this reason. This is an important consideration to take into account if you are considering future pregnancy.
Though there are definitely anecdotal cases of people who can chestfeed after some types of top surgery, you should definitely not count on this, and for sure it will not be possible after procedures other than aggressive breast reduction and possibly buttonhole/inverted T.
This well received case study is about a woman who cannot breastfeed because she had her breasts removed to fix her gender dysphoria. That didn’t work either because she discovered, as most adolescents eventually do, that you can’t change your sex and that’s OK. What won’t go away is your grief when you see your baby hunting for breasts that are no longer there.
This woman’s face says it all really:
When did feelings and beliefs become more important than facts?
“If you have a serious breastfeeding problem or concern, please talk directly to a La Leche League Leader who will provide you with support, encouragement, and evidence-based information.” (Emphasis added)
This is a quote from the LLLI website, and it is in line with my understanding of how LLL has worked since its inception in 1956 (when there was zero evidence base for lactation in humans, but plenty about dairy cows). Those women who founded LLL knew the importance of backing up their womanly intuition with science if they wanted to successfully revive breastfeeding, which had nearly died out completely in many Western countries. “Formula” was named after science, and it was deemed important to counter its claims with even better factual, knowledge-based reasons to breastfeed.
The substitution of ill grounded policies in place of physiological realities has led to replacing women and mothers with “a variety of terms” that have no relevance to the vast majority of women and none for babies. This is no more than a sop for confused and delusional women and has opened the door to predatory men.
My questions for LLLI (and every other group that supports non-biological, delusional cult beliefs):
When are you going to acknowledge your complicity in causing great harm to a generation of women and their babies?
Now that the WPATH Standards of Care have been proven to be no more than a bunch of fetishist ideologists whose practices have wiped out the normal adulthood of an entire generation of young people, when are you going to stop parroting their nonsensical claims?
Do you realize that those girls who started on puberty blockers and progressed to cross sex hormones will not be approaching you even for “parenting” support because their “gender affirming care” has resulted in sterilization?
When are you going to stop gaslighting Leaders by oxymoronically obliging them to commit to supporting “everyone” to breastfeed, while at the same time assuring them, they only need to support “the normal course of breastfeeding”? NB: there is no normal course of breastfeeding for women who have no breasts or for male bodied persons.
When are you going to recognize that LLL Leaders are not being transphobic for wanting to stick to the Mission Statement that only talks about “mothers”? Why are you so “normophobic”?
“Remember this next time you witness a witch-hunt – often the witch is just a woman telling the truth.”
Very good last words - “Remember this next time you witness a witch-hunt – often the witch is just a woman telling the truth.” :-)
Birth and breastfeeding are 100% female and belong to mothers. Let's never capitulate to the deceit that pretends otherwise. Shame on LLLI.