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How exactly do men wanting to breastfeed cause a problem here? Are they doing big group lactation sessions and don't want men to see their breasts? Is it a budgetary issue? The article just assumes this is Clearly A Bad Thing because Men, but it never actually articulates any specific objections.
It may not be good for the babies. Hormones around childbirth and breastfeeding are fairly complex, and show up in the milk.
Wouldn't learning more about that be a good idea, then? If it's a bad idea, it would be valuable to know that and be able to explain to these men how they're potentially risking the kid's health. And if it turns out to be a good idea, then cool, more people to help with breastfeeding
To the extent that there are breastfeeding trans women willing to participate in a study, then yes, someone should do the study. Not necessarily LLL.
Right, but what's wrong with LLL being the ones to do it, if they so choose?
If the article was "law requires LLL to admit male members", I could see why you're upset, but this seems to be the organization voluntarily changing. Not once does the article suggest anyone is forcing their way in.
They can. But it's kind of against their core mission, which is about less reliance on medicalization and corporations for childbirth and feeding. So they'll advocate for things like placing the baby on the mother's chest immediately after birth, without taking them to weigh or clean first, starting breastfeeding as soon as possible, because it's way harder to breastfeed when starting later, and babies get nipple confusion, slow flow bottles so mixed fed babies don't get impatient with the breast, being patient with growth spurts and cluster feeding, and so on. This is related to breast milk being a better food, immunological interactions, and not being reliant on formula (I was very glad to not be trying to buy it during the shortage a few years ago, for instance).
(I am currently doing mixed feeding, about 1/3 formula, 2/3 breastmilk, both because baby was in the ICU a few days his first week of life on formula, and the hospital was making me do some terribly depressing triple feeding, and because I'm working full time. I am not a breastfeeding purist, and have found some lactation consultants press too hard and have caused problems for my babies when I returned to work.)
On the other hand, modern formula isn't all that bad, actually. Adoption and surrogacy at very young ages are central examples of times when donor milk or formula are good choices. LLL has a video on their homepage showing someone who's face is cut off (unusual in their materials, which usually feature an entire mother and baby), a "baby" with a full head of hair, and something about dripping milk down the breast from a syringe. It is an extremely non-central example of breastfeeding. Then there's an article about non-gestational parents breastfeeding, which admits that it's quite hard, and most parents who do it are not able to do exclusive breastfeeding.
The whole regime of taking hormones, pumping, getting a partial supply, trying to get an adopted baby who's more than a few days old and not previously breastfed to go along with it, but still supplementing a lot, maybe more than half... sounds terrible, exhausting, expensive, and just probably like a bad idea for most people. I do not think it's a good idea to be advocating for breastfeeding among parents who are not the birth mother for "bonding". Babies bond with caregiver fathers just fine. Formula is fine. They look like they've lost the plot with breastfeeding extremism.
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Notably, there is no reason for including men. While men can be given drugs to cause lactation they cannot be mothers, even if they wear a dress and grow their hair out and insist on going by ‘she’. It is impossible for a man to give birth.
Impossible with today's medical technology. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
More man-made horrors beyond our comprehension is a safe bet
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You can make an argument regarding "mother is unable to breastfeed because dead/mastectomy following breast cancer; father can't arrange a wet-nurse and thus tries to do it himself". It's a shaky argument, but it's an argument.
The consensus IIRC is that:
The reasons nobody's done it are:
Mostly, modern formula is basically fine, the effects are there, but small, and almost no fathers are willing to go to the lengths necessary to try producing milk rather than relying on donor milk and formula.
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Okay, but this isn't about mothers, this is about breastfeeding. If men can be made to lactate, what stops them from breastfeeding? The second sentence of the post made this pretty clear: "La Leche League was founded in 1956 to improve breastfeeding rates in the United States." Men breastfeeding seems like an obvious win there; previously there were zero, so even one is an improved rate!
From what I recall of this issue, male "milk" isn't even really milk, is it? Does it have any caloric value? What is the actual benefit of men engaging in this behavior? It seems to me to be pretty obviously fetishistic, and if I were the founder of the company and on the council, I would resign too if I had to pretend it isn't fetishistic and actually worth talking about.
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The League was founded in part on specific concern for infant and maternal health and development. Men don't lactate without hormonal intervention (or, in some cases, cancer) and studies on the health impact of such choices are... not nonexistent, I suspect, but almost certainly some combination of weak, bad, or politically motivated. The difficulties a new mother might have with breastfeeding may have some overlap with the difficulties a lactating man might have, but there are no clear health or infant development reasons to help men who lactate, the way there definitely are with new mothers.
When you create an organization specifically to address women's issues with a natural feminine process, then "Men" clearly articulates a pretty damn specific objection. I assume there would also be frustration with women who present as masculine, if they keep trying to police the language of breastfeeding with absurd neologisms like "chestfeeding." If you make an organization dedicated to breastfeeding and a bunch of entryists show up to tell you to use a different word, failure to address that swiftly and unapologetically will probably result in, well, pretty much what the article describes.
I mean, if guys had a Shaving Club, I'd imagine some women with PCOS might benefit from showing up. If the club is really about shaving, that shouldn't be a problem, should it?
The article didn't say anything about language policing or otherwise acting rudely. It's just upset that there's women at the shaving club.
Presumably learning more about male lactation would help the mission of infant health and breastfeeding: either it turns out to work and we have a cool new option, or it turns out to be a bad idea and now we can articulate specific concerns and help people understand why it's a bad idea.
This is a remarkably terrible analogy. Consider instead a support group for sufferers and survivors of prostate cancer. Having a bunch of women show up to talk about their experiences with cervical cancer would not really fit the discussion prompt, even though there would be some obvious overlap in experience of, say, chemotherapy or medical malpractice or whatever.
No, it's upset that there are Men at the Women's club. It's upset that an organization dedicated to the advancement of women's health is being co-opted for the advancement of men's preferences and desires.
I am doubtful that you will ever find anyone who is able to do the actual science without their political biases fucking it up. But if you could, like, okay? That has nothing to do with this case; if you want to make this argument, do the actual science first, instead of doing the activism first by filling women's spaces with men.
Why? LLL shifted to invite them in. No one is forcing LLL here. To quote the exact quote here in this thread: "LLL’s focus has subtly shifted to include men". Why are you so upset at the women's club voluntarily choosing to shift their focus?
If the prostate support group wants to evolve into a cancer support group, is that really so awful?
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