Since When is Medical Experimentation on Babies an Acceptable Idea?

There’s really no need to have this discussion

This is not a woman or a mother, it is a costume worn by a man.

Over the last ten days or so, anyone reading this has probably also read much about that University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust leaked letter that claims milk produced by trans women, (who are biological men) with the help of drugs, is “comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby”.

Swiftly followed by an amazing BBC interview with some woman who clearly knows absolutely nothing about babies or breastfeeding, despite being introduced as an “expert”. She assured the watching public that it was in no way necessary to have had a baby to be able to lactate and that one’s sex was equally immaterial. I would not have been surprised if she had stated babies wouldn’t be able to tell the difference anyway.

The debate around this has been truly amazing, astounding and overwhelming, but with very few exceptions two really important people have been totally left out of the discussion. One of these is women giving birth. (I am not aware of any mammal on the planet who has not emerged from the body of a female of their species.)

The other people are the babies, who were born from mothers they already intimately knew, along with the expectation that they would find their mother’s breasts within the first hour after being born.

Who cares about the milk composition of males?

If you are at the point where you are debating milk qualities and nutritional variations, then you have skipped right past the most important consideration when talking about infant feeding.

Despite the non-stop bleating of the trans community (including those who do not identify as trans, but are supporters of this cult), they are in no way the “most vulnerable” segment of any society, especially once they are old enough to be claiming a right to breastfeed a baby.

The most vulnerable stage of every animal on the planet is infancy. Left to their own devices, no mammals would survive without the care of their mothers. Until relatively recently, this was true for humans too. The vast majority of babies sent to foundling homes in Europe died and to this day it is rightly regarded as a tragedy if a woman dies in childbirth, leaving her baby motherless.

An orphaned baby is only able to survive if others very promptly step forward to provide the warmth, food and comfort that the mother herself would have provided, yet even when others provide substitute maternal care it’s never quite the same.…… Just because a modern baby will survive if his or her mother dies, does not mean that no damage has been done, and no trauma has been inflicted by the loss of a mother. Just ask those who were cared for and grew up in those infamous Romanian orphanages.  

If men are breastfeeding, it is at the expense of the mother/baby dyad

The only way that anyone other than a birth mother can breastfeed is if the most foundational relationship we have is disrupted by removing a baby from his/her mother. The mother/baby dyad sets the template for how we approach relationships for the remainder of our lives. Am I loved and cared for? Are my needs being met? Is the world a safe or a dangerous place? All these questions and their answers are wired into our developing brains by the care we get, or don’t get, well before we have any words to describe our feelings, emotions or needs.

Philip Larkin’s famous poem summed this up well.

If you need any proof of this, the research that has been done on adults who were adopted provides an unending wealth of information on what happens to babies who were removed from their mothers and given to other women to raise. At least in adoption the intention and motives have some merit, unlike that other modern-day scourge of deliberately inflicted trauma of buying babies via surrogacy.

Babies are born to breastfeed from their mothers, not their fathers

I have already written at length here and here about the deleterious effects of men attempting to breastfeed, and the reasons why this is harmful to women and babies (and so, actually, everyone). Here I have written about a so-called bright idea based on men supporting their partners in new parenthood by doing some of the breastfeeding themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, babies do need dads too, but not in the role of a direct food provider during infancy.

Given the truth of all this, debating the merits or drawbacks of male vs female breast milk is just a giant red herring and a total waste of time.

It’s not as if women are supported to breastfeed!

The UK has some of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world and eight out of ten women stop breastfeeding before they wanted to.

I see absolutely no need to put a single £, $ or € into male lactation when there is not enough governmental or societal support for women to breastfeed for as long as they and their children want to. This lack of breastfeeding has dire health consequences for both babies and their mothers that is lifelong and that the health system is going to be paying for until breastfeeding rates improve.

Breastfeeding is a normal continuation of a woman’s pregnancy and birth cycle, but not men’s. Mothers make the most bespoke milk on the planet, as each feed is tailored to one specific baby at a time. (Mothers who tandem feed a baby and an older child will be producing milk designed to meet the needs of the younger baby.)

It is a mother’s body that changes temperature to heat or cool her baby, depending on what is needed, and it is her body that reacts to pathogens and revs up an immune response in her milk to counter any ill health in her baby. She can do this because of the connection that was forged in pregnancy when she and her baby exchanged cells with each other that will remain as permanent markers of their relationship.

One study claims to have compared the macronutrients and calories from the milk of one man who identifies as a woman with the “Standard Term Milk” of women and found that his milk is comparable to women’s milk.

But I would be asking which milk is being compared to male milk? Is it the milk produced by women at one month? Six months? Eighteen months? Is it the milk produced for a Small for Gestational Age baby? A boy or a girl? Because all of these are going to be different for the same mother with different babies, not even considering that it will be different to the milk of some other woman.

No man can hope to match the incredible adaptability of a woman's body to give her baby just what that baby needs, when they need it. Male bodied people are not designed to nurture babies to thrive using the resources their bodies can provide.

And then there are those who just want the illicit thrill

An unavoidable conclusion is that lactophilia is a thing. Paraphilias are persistent and recurrent sexual interests, urges, fantasies, or behaviors of marked intensity involving objects, activities, or even situations that are atypical or abnormal.

Using a baby as a sex toy.

Men with autogynephilia are in love with themselves as women. Many are content with just slapping on some makeup and a dress, but as in any addictive behavior, the longer you go the more you need to get the same level of satisfaction.

The ultimate proof of feminine womanhood is pregnancy and birth, and some so-called trans women are now claiming a right to have uterine transplants (sigh, you need more than a uterus to gestate a baby). But for those babies already conveniently here thanks to a real woman, breastfeeding has become the pinnacle of proof of their womanface identity.

In many decades of working with women, I have never once met one who breastfed to prove she was a real woman. But this appears to be the only motivation for men claiming the right to breastfeeding support. Except of course that this proves nothing other than the narcissist misogyny inherent in these men. If they loved anyone other than themselves, they would be safeguarding the interests of babies, not competing with their mothers or subjecting them to experimental diets that are inferior in every way to what their mothers can provide.

This really should be a “no debate” situation

One hallmark of the trans agenda has always been to shut down any questions or discussions around the ability to declare a preferred sex and/or gender. Questioning the presence of a penis in the women’s changing rooms at the local swimming pool is not allowed as it is deemed to be “transphobic”, which is a great way to divert any conversation away from the need to safeguard women and children from the men who would seek to harm us.

This is why I say that discussing the potential for male lactation is putting the cart before the horse. Who cares what they produce? If this is going to result in removing a baby from his or her mother to feed them on an inferior product, why are we even contemplating this? What’s next, having a chat about how baby car seats restrict a baby’s movement so should be optional?

The purpose of breastfeeding is to give our babies the very best shot at living their lives with optimal health, not to affirm the delusional thinking of adult men.

It’s bad enough that a thinly veiled men’s rights movement is erasing women from places only they need, such as in maternity care (I’m talking to you, birthing person), but this level of harm meted out to babies is unconscionable and there’s no room for any tolerance at all.