La Leche League founder quits over inclusion of men (aka 'transwomen')
Trevor, what on earth are you doing there?
There are five baby pictures on the cover of the latest edition of La Leche League’s book, The Art of Breastfeeding. In case anyone was wondering why the word “womanly” has been deleted from the book’s title (which was, until this ninth edition, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding), the clue is in one of the pictures. Five babies, five parents - four mothers and one man.
Possibly the male-looking picture is of Trevor. Trevor is a woman who calls herself a “transmasculine person.” She used to be an LLL leader in Canada and still maintains a pro-breastfeeding blog called milk junkies. Although she had what is called “top surgery” as part of her “transition” (which involved no other physical modifications other than those caused by hormone treatment), she managed to breastfeed her two children (conceived with her "partner," a "gay man"). This is not something to be taken for granted as a double mastectomy often leaves a woman without her milk ducts, and sometimes without anywhere for the milk, supposing she can still produce it, to come out.
'Male lactation' is nothing more than 'indulging adult fantasies'
Marian Tompson is 94. She was one of the original founders of the La Leche League but has now resigned in protest not against women like Trevor being LLL leaders, but against the inclusion of genuine men (claiming to be trans) in the organization, in its mothers’ meetings, and everywhere else they have managed to insinuate themselves.
In a letter she wrote explaining her reasons for leaving LLL, Tompson condemned what she called the organization’s shift to “indulging the fantasies of adults.”
From an organization with the specific mission of supporting biological women who want to give their babies the best start in life by breastfeeding them, LLL’s focus has subtly shifted to include men who, for whatever reason, want to have the experience of breastfeeding, despite no careful long-term research on male lactation and how that may affect the baby.
Tompson added that she had tried to persuade senior members of LLL to restore the organization to the way it once was, but had failed, and that the result was that LLL had become “a travesty of my original intent.”
This shift from following the norms of nature, which is the core of mothering through breastfeeding, to indulging the fantasies of adults, is destroying our organization.
La Leche League: Female-only policies 'damage our credibility'
Commenting on Tompson’s decision, Helen Joyce of the British women’s rights charity Sex Matters said that it highlighted “one of the starkest examples of how gender-identity ideology turns organizations upside-down.”
By including men who want to breastfeed in its services, LLL is destroying its founding mission to support breastfeeding mothers. It also goes against the wishes of many mothers, group leaders and trustees around the world, who have been fighting to convince LLL International to hold fast to its woman-focused mission.
In fact, LLL has been drifting toward its current positions for some time. Earlier this year, six trustees of its UK branch were suspended after asking its international board to keep men out. Their request was met with a flat refusal and an insistence on remaining “welcoming” to everyone, male or female:
We focus on providing breastfeeding support and understand the importance of making our spaces welcoming to all those who want to breastfeed or give their babies human milk.
We don’t argue with parents or other leaders about how they identify; we accept them with respect, just as they say they are, and do not refer to them with words that conflict with their identity.
Explaining their decision to suspend the six protesting trustees, LLL International said that their “continued promotion of LLL as an organization that excludes people is damaging LLL’s credibility.”
New word on the banned list: Mother
One of the six suspended leaders told The Telegraph that she was totally “disheartened” by the focus on gender ideology which ran contrary, she felt, to the interests of both mothers and their babies.
Many breastfeeding supporters like me feel utterly disheartened by the way our charity has become obsessed and sidetracked by sex and gender issues. In the most recent diktat, we were informed that our charity is not and “cannot become a single-sex” charity.
Crucially, it is not in the interests of mothers or babies. This is not about excluding; it is about safeguarding the vital breastfeeding education spaces that must exist for women... [to] help them access the right support.
She added that the organization was forcing its leaders around the world to admit men into meetings and to promote the concept of “male lactation" — and that it was also effectively banning the use of the word “mother,” calling it a “roadblock.”
Include one person, exclude everyone else
On mumsnet.com, mothers shared their feelings about the developments, with the overwhelming majority of them strongly opposed to admitting men to group meetings, regardless of how they might “identify.” One woman described what happened when the leader of her LLL group decided to admit men: the women left.
This is what my women's group did. Man joined, organizer wanted to be “inclusive.” We all had each others’ numbers, so we all left that group and reconvened via WhatsApp elsewhere.
The 14 of us left, leaving the organizer, the man, and the organizer’s friend in the old group.
Another woman described a similar experience, when women attending a group meeting with an LLL counselor discovered that there was a man among them. The counselor was then forced to hold one-on-one consultations with each woman in turn in a small side-room, as not a single woman agreed to receive the practical help she needed to breastfeed in front of the man.
Is everything that comes out of a human 'milk'?
Further investigation into where La Leche League is holding reveals quite a number of apparent contradictions. While the 9th edition of The Art of Breastfeeding features much of the content included in previous editions, it adds segments designed to “be inclusive of” so-called transwomen (i.e., men) which undermine much of the pro-breastfeeding information they provide.
For example, the book describes the naturally occurring preparation for breastfeeding made by a woman’s body while she is gestating her baby, and adds that in fact, preparation began “even before you [i.e., the mother] were born. As your body developed inside your mother’s womb, tiny ducts for carrying milk formed in your chest...” The book also, in the same chapter, describes “A Different Way” for people who are “adopting, or [having a] baby being carried by a surrogate” who can “take hormones to encourage breast growth...” with no comment on how this might impact the baby.
The La Leche League's website is similarly fraught with contradictions. Human milk is described as “amazing”:
It has everything a growing baby needs in exactly the right amounts. Plus, babies can easily digest it all. Research shows that a baby who is not fed on human milk is more likely to suffer from illnesses and diseases, both as a child and later in life.
And yet, on the very same webpage, LLL discusses what is known as the Newman-Goldfarb protocol (developed for women who want to breastfeed, it must be stressed, not men claiming to be female), and presents it as a valid option for “transwomen” to “stimulate their milk supply” with no comment on whether this liquid men can manufacture also “has everything a growing baby needs in exactly the right amounts.”
La Leche League also fails to mention the possible adverse effects for the baby; possibly that is due to the fact that the full extent of adverse effects are largely unknown (and certainly in the long-term), although some of the dangers of giving “milk” full of domperidone and spironolactone have already emerged.
Child abuse = using a child for your own selfish ends
As one women commenting on mumsnet pointed out, this omission is shocking, coming as it does from an organization that claims to put the baby’s welfare front and center:
Furthermore, you would think the LLL are exactly the specific organization to have this substance [male “milk”] tested to find out the nutritional value.
When your job is to promote breastfeeding, surely to God, you should be able to knowledgeably discuss the content of the milk you're advocating for?? I hope they get held to account for the liquid they are recommending to be fed to babies.
Milli Hill, author of The Positive Birth Book and Give Birth Like a Feminist, agrees, and goes a step further with her conclusion:
Breastfeeding is not about the experience of the person doing the feeding — it is about nourishing and nurturing a baby.
There is no reason for an adult to do this to a baby, and I would go so far as to describe it as abusive.” [emphasis added]
No trans-breastfeeders in Islamabad?
In Australia, a woman named Jasmine Sussex who expressed similar views has been summoned before the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Sussex called men taking drugs in order to “breastfeed” a baby a “dangerous fetish,” and was sued by a man who identifies as a woman.
“Ms.” Buckley has publicized his story, complete with pictures, and revealed that he is taking domperidone in order to “breastfeed” his and his wife’s baby so that “I can have the experience of breastfeeding.”
So much for the US, the UK, and Australia. In other parts of the world, however — namely, Muslim lands in the Middle East and elsewhere, La Leche League does allow female-only groups to convene and permits leaders to exclude men, however they may identify.
The Gold Report reached out to La Leche League International in a letter:
"With regard to your organization's policies on inclusion of men ("transwomen") in La Leche League and the decision to suspend six LLL leaders from the UK who objected to this, I would appreciate if you could clarify your policies regarding LLL groups in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East (and elsewhere).
"It has come to my attention that in such countries, LLL groups are allowed to be female-only. Could you clarify why one policy applies to Muslim lands and another to the rest of the world?"
No reply was forthcoming at the time of this publication.
