And for some of us it’s something else!
The verbal re-engineering continues. A self-described “Trans & Queer Centered Full-Spectrum Doula & Childbirth Educator” wants to know what you and you and YOU call that thing where you give a baby milk that your body produces and the baby derives nourishment thereby.
While we’re working to dispel stigma around feeding babies from our bodies this month, I just want to pipe up with a little reminder that this practice goes by many names for many different people! For some of us, it’s chestfeeding, for some of us it’s bodyfeeding, and for some of us it’s something else! What words do you use to talk about feeding your baby the milk that your body makes?
I gotta say, “bodyfeeding” sounds pretty gross. Too many options.
In Spanish it’s dar de mamar. Mamar derives from Latin mamma, “breast”, which is cognate with “mammal” and also English “mamma”. (Ultimately all related to the earliest recognizable sounds a baby makes, which in many (most, perhaps) languages ends up being associated with the person who gave birth.
This is what I think of when I hear terms like “bodyfeeding”:
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/absurd-creature-week-glyptapanteles-wasp-caterpillar-bodyguard/
This is even more silly than the attempts to redefine “woman” to mean something else. There, you can at least see the political motive – the new people included want to take advantage of women’s rights and protections.
Here, we have people who are apparently can’t hear the word “breast” associated with some part of their body because it might upset their genderfeels. How is this different from a plain old conservative religious prude who demands that you just can’t say THAT word?
Men have breasts you stupid little shits; they get breast cancer (at a lower rate admittedly) and under certain circumstances even lactate.
Jesus Fucking Christ I’m sick of this shit… At least AOC managed to mention misogyny and homophobia last night without referencing trans anything.
So a female transman is so uncomfortable with being associated with anything female that hearing the word “breast” applied to themselves triggers a sense of anguish and frustration, yet delivering a baby out of their vagina passes their “not associated with female” comfort-level test. Got it.
Perhaps they think that, for transmen, the act of giving birth is really just ejaculating an extremely big “sperm.”
So women can have penises but men can’t have breasts? Apparently trans activists aren’t all on the same page.
And, sorry, Ophelia, but I don’t see how you can call “bodyfeeding” gross when it’s adjacent to the grossest word in all of history, “chestfeeding”. Yuck. It gives me the willies every time I read that.
Maroon, that’s not the only common expression for breastfeeding in Spanish. People also say “dar el pecho.” One interesting thing about that is that “pecho” may be translated as either chest or breast, depending on context.
And, yes, chest feeding seems sad. I am reminded of a male cat I had who would let the little nippers have a go at him. One can’t help but anthropomorphize; he was, after all, castrated.
“All bodies can lactate and feed their babies providing they have an adequate bodily level of prolactin”
ohsweetjeebuzfuck.
I’ll accept “nourishing the infant via secretions of the mammary glands”.
Anything else is imprecise.
(FFS, bodyfeeding!?!!??!!!)
For double FS, no, for infinity FS, “chestfeeding”?
Look, if you’re feeding a baby with your body, you’d better be breastfeeding them.
I must say that the mum in the picture doesn’t look too happy about what she’s doing. Or is she some sort of Huxleyan robot?
I think those aren’t eyes, but a mustache.
Why would anyone who has given themselves a title which is the ancient Greek word for a female slave be remotely interested in removing perfectly normal phrases from the English language because of genderfeels?
Yes, Papito, a moustache, or separated moustachios! Why didn’t I see it! Not that it makes the person wearing them look any happier. The baby or blob doesn’t look all that happy, either. I’m not surprised. Douladdy ah lay!
Re #11
Ha! I hadn’t thought about that. I know that “doula” is used now to refer to a variety of medical assistants, but I hadn’t considered the origin of the word.
Jesus christ, I don’t know which is more pathetic – the insecurity of people that don’t like their breasts being called breasts because that reminds them that they have breasts, or the puny grasp of English implied in demanding breastfeeding be changed to chestfeeding. Do they really not know that another meaning of breast is a synonym of chest? I guess so.
But “mammary” shares the same etymology as “mammal” and mamar, ultimately deriving from a word for “mother”. To be inclusive of all those trans-fathers who excrete milk from their bodies, we should also accept “pappary glands”. And of course be supportive of anyone who wants to call them “non-binary parentary glands”.
Papito,
OK, I should have said “the most common expression in Spain is…”. Better?
I thought that bodyfeeding was that rather bizarre method of dining where the food is served and eaten directly off the body of a naked woman (because the world always needs new ways of demeaning women, I suppose).
‘Chestfeeding’ has given me an idea for a daytime cookery-based game show. The contestants have to choose from a selection of sealed chests, each contaiining a different set of ingredients, and have to create a delicious meal in 30 minutes using only what is in the chest they pick. There will be a live audience but the cameras will not be pointing at them, so any nursing mothers amongst them can breastfeed their infants in comfort if they wish.
The Spanish madre comes from Latin mater, coming from Greek μητέρα, which itself can be traced all the way down to Proto-Indo-European méh₂ters. Meanwhile, the word for breast in Spanish is pecho, which goes back to Latin pectus, PIE peg-.
Mamar and Mama go back to Latin mamma, which means breast, deriving from the Greek μάμμη, meaning both mother and breast. This Greek word does not have PIE roots, and was back-formed from baby talk at that time. All of the cognates of mamma, like mammary and mammal, derive from Latin and that rootless Greek root.
The word breast itself is traceable down through Germanic brust to PIE bhreus-, and has never been specific to sex. In PIE, bhreus- means “to swell, or sprout.”
It would etymologically foolish to change any of these terms for nicety to gender questions. After, all, as Pliny said:
Also, “bodyfeeding” sounds like what they do to prisoners on hunger strike at Guantanamo.
Papito,
What’s your source for the Greek derivation of the Latin word? The Online Etymological Dictionary suggests (though doesn’t state outright) an Indo-European root: