About an hour at a time
Oh look, a new way to torment women, and starve their babies while you’re at it.
Men drinking their partners’ breast milk is not uncommon in some areas of Uganda, and in parts of Tanzania and Kenya. It is now being linked to gender violence and coercive behaviour and there are concerns over the impact on babies’ nutrition. Little was known about the practice until Uganda’s minister of state for health, Sarah Opendi, broke the silence in parliament in 2018 and warned against “a growing culture of men demanding to suckle, which was becoming a problem for some breastfeeding mothers and their babies”.
Or, you know, all breastfeeding mothers and their babies.
The preliminary research suggested that men often drink before the child is fed, usually once a day, sometimes more frequently, and for about an hour at a time.
An hour…but no doubt there are still gallons and gallons left for the baby, and the mother has nothing better to do than let the man use her as a beverage dispenser.
Women did not seem to have much choice in the matter. “It appears to be a hugely coerced behaviour from the people we spoke to,” added Merritt.
When asked what might happen if she said no, one woman replied: “I fear that my husband might go elsewhere if I wouldn’t let it happen.”
How about he buys a cow or a goat?
Health professionals, including midwives and nutritionists, told researchers about cases where babies had to be given formula milk because partners wanted the breast milk, and where women came to clinic with infected or bitten nipples caused by a man suckling. There are also risks to babies of cross-infection from the man’s saliva.
Oh well, it’s only women.
Why buy a cow when you can get the milk for free?
Seriously, it’s like they’re plunging the depths of male entitlement. I haven’t read the article, but I’m guessing there’s some strange belief in the curative powers of mother’s milk at work here. Perhaps it can be countered by spreading dark rumors that breast milk makes adult men impotent. Or, makes their penis fall off. I have a hazy recollection of hearing about an African panic attack about that, though I can’t recall what they thought it was related to. Possibly a curse.
A mother’s curse.
I wonder if these same men also insist that a menstruating woman is a dirty woman.
And no one seems to have asked whether this is some short term craze, like medieval ‘dancing madness,’ or some Sacred Cultural Tradition, like FGM.
Unless we can blame it on U.S. Corporations, or cis-privilege, and there’s always Zionism.