Marketing miracle
When marketing discovers trans rhetoric and cannot believe its luck.
If you were marketing baby formula wouldn’t you be hugging yourself with glee? You get to talk about “putting breastfeeding on a pedestal”!! Without shame! In fact with a glow of righteous fervor, because you’re on the side of the downtrodden! Those selfish arrogant bitches, I mean cows, who can nurse their babies have lorded it over the men who identify as women for too long, so buy our formula and strike a blow for justice. #ShakeTheStigma
Remember the Nestlé scandal? Mike Muller in The Guardian in 2013:
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, I gave Nestlé chair Peter Brabeck, a present – an original, signed copy of The Baby Killer, the 1974 report that I wrote for War on Want.
The Baby Killer explained how multinational milk companies like his were causing infant illness and death in poor communities by promoting bottle feeding and discouraging breast feeding.
Our Swiss associates were less subtle. They titled the report “Nestlé Toten Babies” (or Nestlé Kills Babies), which a Swiss court found was libelous. On the substance of the argument, however, the judge warned Nestlé that if the company did not want to face accusations of causing death and illness through sales practices such as using sales reps dressed in nurses’ uniforms, they should change the way that they did business.
No more need for that, now they can just burble about supporting every kind of Feeding Journey.
A friend of mine is a nurse and a lactation consultant, extremely pro breastfeeding, all breasts are good breasts, all nipples are good nipples, Nestle is the scum of the earth. She is also pro trans, transwomen are women, JKR is the scum of the earth. I avoid arguing with her, but on the occasions we’ve managed to talk about these things, I could not get her to see the blatant contradiction here.
I was not able to breastfeed my son. I did not feel somehow left out by conversations about breastfeeding. I did feel annoyed by women who excoriated me for what was not my fault. The conversation may need to change, but not by removing breastfeeding from the conversation, since it is the best way to feed an infant, especially in terms of immunity.
For those of us who could not feed our children that way, we need to quit being vilified as some sort of criminal, but that doesn’t mean we need to pretend on language.
What about me?! I can’t breastfeed my children, because (a) I am male, and (b) I don’t have any children. Why can’t the conversation ever be about meeeee? Why does it always have to be about women? Why does everything always have to be about women?
</sarcasm
Sorry, that was uncalled for.
While there is a sort of “militant” wing of the breastfeeding community which does tend to shame or denigrate those mothers who can’t (“you just haven’t tried hard enough!”) or won’t (“apparently your baby’s long term health isn’t worth anything to you”) breastfeed, my guess is you’re right. They’re not urging people to stop sitting in judgment over women who identify as women, but reminding folks that TWAW..
Is it about transwomen? Or is it, at least ostensibly, about transmen? The picture says “And I am an expectant father”. That souds like it means not “my partner is expecting”, but “I am a pregnant women who is pretending to be a man”. It’s hard to tell the sex from the photo, between the stubble (caused by external testosterone??) and the cut-off face.
The term “expectant father” has been in fairly common use to refer to a husband whose wife is pregnant, a counterpart to “expectant mother”. Both are expecting a child to enter their lives. Nothing to do with the husband giving birth; more just a way of including the husband in the process.
I stand corrected.
iknklast
Yes, it’s one of those lazy arguments we’ve all come to expect these days, substituting for a real argument. There are two obvious possibilities:
1. There’s an assumption that nobody will pay too much attention to the argument or think about it in any way. They’ll be grateful that the ‘thinking’ has been done for them and saunter along with the argument with the arrogance of the unthinking, or
2. Everyone really is, honestly and without caveat, that stupid.
My sister in law was unable to breastfeed her first child. The pressure, dismissal of her concerns, lack of compassion, lack of research and sheer unfriendliness from her midwives and other care workers was horrific. I’d call it abuse. At the same time, every media message was that breastfeeding is best and mothers (to use the forbidden word) who can’t are just not trying hard enough.
Clearly this needs to change, but rather than, say, being more thoughtful, less judgemental and doing more to help breastfeeding women, the proposed ‘solution’ is to remove women from the conversation altogether. It’s ‘lazy’ in the sense that it’s exploiting something we know is bad (the vilification of women who struggle or don’t want to breastfeed) to justify a conclusion that obviously doesn’t follow (erase women entirely).
It’s evil for the same reason.
And it just couldn’t resist that extra slice of guilt at the end, could it? “A fed baby is what matters most.” So that any objections to the erasure of half the population are seen as narcissistic or as putting the needs of babies second to ego.
When everyone knows it’s the needs of global mega-corporations to sell us stuff that’s most important.
It could also read as gay man who has hired a surrogate.