My esteemed colleague Stephen Green published a piece on transgender developments in the UK and Berlin in which he points out that a degree of sanity is being restored in Britain by the über-progressive National Health Services, of all people. It made me wonder when the so-called medical professionals here in these United States will harken back to their early childhood days, when we learned “boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.”
Those with actual gender dysphoria have been relegated to the sidelines while government bureaucrats “woke” their way to feeling better about their anonymous cog existence in the machine that literally doesn’t care about anyone, except the bot auto-signing their check. (Is that still a thing, signing actual checks?)
Bewbs: Government’s Newest Disease or Something
Women are being erased, especially in the medical field where female anatomy now sounds like third graders whispering newly-discovered illicit truths behind the slide. Yeah, and girls have an extra hole — a bonus hole! Even the Centers for Disease Control has decided to weigh in because disease control and pregnancy go hand-in-hand like peanut butter and mayonnaise.
Over the summer, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) published guidelines for transgender parents wanting to “chestfeed” their infants. Women and womyn can now have babies and *checks notes* breastfeed chestfeed them.
You would be hard-pressed to find a mother today who has not been bombarded with the phrase Breast is Best! From the moment a healthcare provider gets involved in her pregnancy, the assumption is a mother will breastfeed her baby. Formula is a choice — if she doesn’t want to bond with her baby or give her child their best chance at optimal development or shed those pesky postpartum pounds.
“Formula is the devil!”
— Bobby Boucher’s Mom, probably
Formula shaming is real, but so is breastfeeding derision. Mothers who are able to nurse their children will be cooed and fawned over — as long as they do so invisibly. Breast is Best! until someone sees it, and then it’s disgusting and offensive.
Women have silently battled these contradicting expectations, along with all of the other mayhem that accompanies having a newborn — postpartum depression, hair loss, tidal waves of hormones, exhaustion, and all kinds of fluids. But here comes a transgender person being praised for unnaturally doing what women are naturally expected to do.
Understanding this hypocritical cycle brings us back to the why: why is the CDC in the business of “chestfeeding” guidance in the first place?
Women of every political stripe and generation have taken the arrows from the Breast is Best! But You’d Better Be Invisible When You Do quiver.
Conservatives who view transgender “chestfeeding” as one more symptom of a ballooning mental illness see this as a slap in the face. Progressive women face the impossible task of reconciling their feelings with their desire to include absolutely everyone everywhere and, well, being a woman. Moms in the middle don’t want to be labeled a bigot or psychopath or whatever ad hominem du jour.
Exclusively for our VIPs: Transgender News: UK Moves to Protect Women’s Spaces, U.S. Planned Parenthood Preys on Austistic Teens
As if the catty circular firing squad wasn’t enough, now the federal government is picking a side. Somehow the CDC, whose stated mission is to “protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S.,” has elbowed its way into the most intimate decision a mother can make. Since when is breastfeeding a threat to America? I digress.
It’s one thing when abrasive neighbors tell us “Hate has no home here!” It’s somewhat tolerable when a private company tells us that even if you aren’t born with it, it can still be Maybelline. But when the United States Government, the ever-growing behemoth that is supposed to “insure domestic Tranquility,” decides to put its thumb on the scale of discourse, everyone notices.
One Woman’s Shame Is Another Womyn’s Accolade
Women, who have struggled with low milk supplies, babies who don’t want to make fish-lips, finding a safe alternative to lanolin because it’s gross, and eliminating dairy and legumes from their diets to figure out why Baby is gassy, have been pushed aside to make way for someone new and exciting.
And that’s what a lot of moms are too busy to say: they are tired — (I could stop right there, but I won’t) — they are tired of being erased by a movement that insists we “trust the science” but cannot and will not define what a woman is.
Breastfeeding is scientific. During pregnancy, a woman’s breast tissue changes to prepare for lactation. Immediately after delivery, hormones shift violently and oxytocin cues the body to produce and release milk. The neural pathway forged in the mother’s brain associates the positive feelings of nursing with lactation, so when the baby latches again and again, the brain signals oxytocin which triggers the release of milk. Each breast operates independently, which is why a mom with twins can make two variations of breastmilk, one for each child and that child’s nutritional needs.
This basic understanding of the science behind breastfeeding makes it easy to see why women take it so personally when unable to nurse their babies. “What is wrong with me?” is a common question among new mothers who struggle; the problem, they feel, is with them as a woman. They just did the most natural thing for a woman to do: grow and birth a human baby, and yet they struggle to feed it.
But a biological man who can take a series of medications and hormone therapies to produce milk (men are still mammals, after all) — and it doesn’t seem to matter if they can’t do it “right” — is celebrated because they can. No matter your political leaning, for a woman who finds at least some value in her ability to birth and nurture children, it’s a jagged pill to swallow.
How long will it take for a transgender “chestfeeder” to start doling out advice at the next La Leche League meeting, and will that be mansplaining, or nah?
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