The Art of Breastfeeding - Part Two

Pity that gender woo will limit its usefulness

I thought LLL supported mothers who want to breastfeed their babies?

My last post introduced the latest iteration of The [Womanly] Art of Breastfeeding and how the adoption of gender ideology mandated removal of women and mothers impoverish the topic of the breastfeeding relationship.

The Art of Breastfeeding - Part One

This post will discuss the real-world consequences to Leaders of supporting the so-called Rainbow Community in countries where there are laws that can get you jailed or even executed for being or appearing to support anyone who claims an identity outside of traditional heterosexuality.

I am not making any statements of judgement about people’s personal choices or on the legal systems of any countries mentioned here; I am discussing the reality of lived experiences and how they might impact women volunteering breastfeeding support.

Many countries are not “inclusive” of same sex orientation or being transgendered

First, some facts (yeah, I know that the applied postmodernist queer theory claims that there are no such things as facts, but I disagree).

According to this source, the world population as of July 2024 is 8,161,972,572. This can be broken down as follows:

Asia & Middle East: 4,806,898,007 (58.9% of world population)

Africa: 1,515,140,849 (18.6% of world population)

Europe: 745,083,824 (9.6% of world population)

Latin America & Caribbean: 663,466,072 (8.1% of world population)

Oceania: 46,088,716 (0.6% of world population), which added together makes up 95.3% of the world’s population.

North America with 385,295,105 contributes the remaining 4.7% of the global burden of humanity.  

There are 195 countries in the world, according to the United Nations: 

• 193 member states: These countries are members of the United Nations. 

• 2 non-member observer states: These countries are the Holy See (Vatican City) and the State of Palestine

The following information has been compiled through various sources, including the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association, Human Rights Watch and the Human Dignity Trust.

63 countries criminalize private, consensual, same-sex sexual activity. The majority aim this at male homosexuals.

40 countries criminalize private, consensual, same-sex sexual activity between women using laws against “lesbianism”, “sexual relations with a person of the same sex” and “gross indecency”.

12 countries have jurisdictions in which the death penalty is imposed or at least a possibility for private, consensual same-sex sexual activity. At least six of these countries have implemented the death penalty for those convicted.

14 countries specifically criminalize the gender identity and/or expression of transgender people, using so-called “cross-dressing”, “impersonation” and “disguise” laws. In many more countries transgender people are targeted by a range of laws that criminalize same-sex activity and vagrancy, hooliganism and public order offences.

So how does this affect LLL Leaders?

Although it may not be obvious to some, the “I” in LLLI stands for International. According to this source, there are approximately 6000 Leaders in over 8o countries on every continent but Antarctica. 

In the countries that have criminalizing legislation around LGBTQ people, LLL has a presence in:

37 countries in Africa

17 countries in Asia

12 countries in the Middle East

10 countries in Latin America

8 countries in Oceania

4 countries in Europe

0 countries in North America (which has the largest number of Leaders, but no criminalizing of people for their sexuality or any claimed identity.

In some countries, posting this on the internet could get you imprisoned.

If you lived in one of the countries affected by anti-LGBTQ laws, would you want to chance having in your home a book with “LGBTQIA+ families” and “trans/transgender parents” in the index? I note that no current LLLI Board members live in countries where this would be a concern. I have been told by a Board member that no one will get into trouble for assisting with breastfeeding, but this woman was arrested for wearing frog earrings that had a rainbow on them. Russians have also been arrested for posting on the internet photos of Pride flags and same sex couples embracing.

This could be construed as evidence of activity against public decency.

Leaders driving the content of the new book were warned by a Leader who lives in a country where you can be imprisoned for up to ten years for any LGBTQ activity that having some LLLI materials in her home could be problematic, but they dismissed her concerns as unfounded and unlikely. They also didn’t seem to appreciate that these laws create an opportunity for others to exploit. A jealous neighbor can claim anything that may elicit a police inspection that may then find materials that are prohibited.

As many news reports show, you do not have to be LGBTQ to get yourself into trouble, you just have to be perceived to be “supportive”, which can be confined to the opinion of the accuser. Being supportive can include something as benign as providing a space for LGBTQ people to hold a public or private meeting.

This meme is publicly available on the LLLI website:

“Happy Pride Month! We support all families to nurse or feed their babies human milk - wherever you are on your feeding journey we are here for you.”

It also comes in Russian:

“Где бы вы ни находились на своем пути кормления грудью, мы поддержим вас.”

The first Russian edition of The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding was released in 2012. A Russian Leader recently wrote to say that she had just received the American edition of the book and was disappointed that Womanly had been taken out of the title.

In her words:

In Russian there's no word to translate “womanly” exactly, but when I saw the English original name of the book, it looked to me so certain, so warm and so important that I felt sad we don't have a word for it in our language. I felt so empowered, I'm a woman and it's my art too. When I've heard that this word would be removed from the name of the book in original version, I was anxious and waited to read why. The introduction I've read today made me shocked. “Womanly is an old-fashioned word.” Really? To be a woman means to be old-fashioned? The disclaimer says it's not to exclude anyone, but I feel excluded.

(A question that the LLLI Board has consistently refused to answer is why their brand of inclusivity appears to be in effect for only the LGBTQ audience, leaving out the much greater populations that are excluded including non-English speakers, disabled women and those with literacy problems.)

She expresses concern that they might not be able to translate this edition into Russian because their laws are very specific about family makeup. She explains:

In the Russian Constitution we have such words as "the family is a union of a man and a woman" and "parents are mother and father". So all the notifications of non-binary people, families with transgender parents and unusual sexual orientations are prohibited in literature. We have to remove much information and to re-write many pages with gendered language if we want to translate it and publish. And do we lose the opportunity to tell our Applicants are familiar with the latest version of the book as required?

And she ends with “So LLL will have to stop working in Russia?”.  

Many “anti-gay” laws don’t just apply to those who claim a gay or trans identity, but flow out to those who engage in “willful promotion, sponsorship, or support of LGBTQ+ activities” as in Ghana. If you are supporting a lesbian couple to “co-feed” their baby, you are without a doubt going to be perceived as breaking the law.

In effect, by arrogantly assuming that theirs is the only politically correct view, and that parts of the world that do not follow their example must be “educated” and “enlightened”, LLLI is practicing cultural imperialism. And this is being done at the peril of individual Leaders, all of whom signed up to support mothers.

This is how the US sends a message to other countries, many of which have to make a choice between foreign aid and their own cultural values.

I repeat, the “I” in LLLI is for international, but the attitude of the LLL policies that prioritize gender ideology over the mother/baby dyad are straight out of the US State Department’s memorandum on implementing their DEI agenda that is determined to weave queer theory through every facet of American foreign policy. Riding roughshod over the cultural values of others is the very definition of cultural colonization, which is a violation of the rights held by all countries to determine their own values. To do otherwise is to force subjugation of one people to another by domination.

Has LLL come full circle?

In 1956, the year of LLL’s founding, there was so little proper research work that had been done on human lactation that for any scientific information, Leaders had to turn to the massive body of research done on dairy cows. Thanks to the efforts of a few (male) medical doctors who supported the Founders of LLL, breastfeeding women were finally taken seriously as a topic worth studying and of course now, there is a wealth of valuable data that totally backs up women’s intuition and indeed the “art” that breastfeeding relies on to keep mothers and babies connected by breastfeeding.

But resistance to some stereotypes lingered longer. A Leader who is also an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant working in an African country reported that when she met with a noted pediatrician in the early 1990s, she lied when he asked if she was involved in LLL because she knew that he would refuse to work with her if she told him she was a Leader. Apparently other Leaders had criticized him for using a galactagogue (any sort of drug or substance that can help to boost milk supply) and he wasn’t having uneducated women telling him what to do.

Currently, there is at least one Leader living in Zimbabwe, where you can be jailed for up to eight years for any LGBTQ activities. Uganda, which recently passed draconian legislation against “homosexual behavior” (up to and including the death sentence), has two former Leaders providing breastfeeding support so they have avoided the danger that possession of LLL materials would have conferred on them by no longer using them.

In the late 1950s in the USA, “breastfeeding” was considered to be a word that was not acceptable in polite company or the public sphere. No newspaper would print meeting ads for a group that used this word. Why else do you think that a mispronounced/misspelled name like La Leche League would have been chosen if this was not true?

After changing the global landscape of breastfeeding in the Western world, where it very nearly died out altogether, today’s wokerati Leaders seem determined to put women back in the place they were at the time those seven mothers got together to support each other: invisible, uncounted and ignored.