As good
Every bit as good for babies, they say.
An NHS trust has said that breast milk produced by trans women who were assigned male at birth [i.e. men] is as good for babies as that produced by a mother who has given birth.
In a letter to campaigners, the University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust (USHT), said that the milk produced by trans women after taking a combination of drugs is “comparable to that produced following the birth of a baby”.
“Comparable” is a weasel-word there. Sure, you can compare the two, but they’re not the same, or alike.
In an August 2023 response, the hospital defended its claims, referring to five scientific papers dating back to 1977 and pointing to World Health Organisation (WHO) guidance and “overwhelming evidence” that “human milk” is better for a baby than formula milk.
Well yes, “human milk” meaning the milk mothers produce. Not meaning the liquid men can produce after they take a cocktail of hormones and progestin.
For a person born male to breastfeed, they must develop milk-producing glands by taking the hormone progestin.
A drug is required to lactate, such as domperidone, which is often prescribed to women struggling to breastfeed, and helps to stimulate the production of prolactin – a separate hormone that tells the body to produce milk.
Domperidone, also known by the brand name Motilum, was not intended for this, but is prescribed off-label by doctors, despite the manufacturer, Janssen, itself recommending against it because of possible side effects to a baby’s heart.
Oh, well, just the heart, so that’s no big deal.
The patient leaflet for Motilium says: “Small amounts have been detected in breastmilk. Motilium may cause unwanted side effects affecting the heart in a breastfed baby. [It] should be used during breastfeeding only if your physician considers this clearly necessary.”
Is it “clearly necessary” for men to be able to produce nipple goo to feed to babies?
Lottie Moore, of the Policy Exchange, which uncovered the letter, said the trust “is unbalanced and naïve in its assertion that the secretions produced by a male on hormones can nourish an infant in the way a mother’s breast milk can”.
USHT has removed the webpage where the guidance was published, but now links to an external website, La Leche League, which states it “supports everyone who wants to breastfeed or chestfeed in reaching their goals”.
Even if they’re men, and even if the men “reaching their goals” is bad for the baby’s nutrition and health. Rock on, daddies!
There you go again, fetishizing the health of the baby over the all-important self-image of the brave trans woman. Priorities, people, priorities.
Not to mention the psychological damage to the child. This rejection of nature is utterly depraved.
I don’t think we know if it’s psychologically damaging or not. I don’t recall seeing any suggestions that it is.
Someone pointed out a while back that if this is actually true generations of mothers could have managed to get a night’s sleep once in a while if their husbands shared the feeding rota. If it is actually true mothers should start insisting that fathers support them in this.
And, also, related to twiliter’s comment, generations of fathers could have shared in the bonding that nursing triggers.
I bottle fed my daughter and shared in the bonding, that’s not what I’m talking about. My daughter asked me once whether she was breast fed or bottle fed only. It’s a legitimate question, and we had a discussion about it. We had a similar discussion when she was pregnant with my grandson. Imagine finding out your trans father or surrogate (whatever) male breast fed you. I would find it profoundly disturbing (particularly at the age when my daughter was wondering about it). Maybe y’all wouldn’t be? I’m disturbed by a lot of things that some people aren’t, such as things that are perverse to our biological nature, but maybe it’s just me.
You can be a good dad without growing tits, ffs. Sometimes I don’t understand the spin here. Do people think it’s ok for men to grow fake tits and feed defenseless infants? I sure don’t.
The spin? What spin?
And why are you asking if we think it’s ok for men to grow fake tits and feed defenseless infants when this post you’re commenting on is very hostile to that idea, as are a large number of previous posts?
All I meant at #5 is that bonding is another psychological aspect of the subject (in addition to the one you raised). There aren’t good reasons for men to try to breast-feed their babies but there are good reasons for men to want to share in the feeding; that’s all I meant.
Well, on the subject of psychological damage, I would consider a male physically breast feeding an infant an assault, possibly sexual assault depending on the situation. Victims of such assaults commonly suffer psychological damage. — I don’t know what kind of fathers guest @4 has been around, but the ones I have known loved and cared for their children and the mothers of their children as well, and pitched in to help as much as possible. — Anyway, I would find a trans biological male’s motivations for breast feeding extremely suspect, and almost entirely self serving.
Guess I was being defensive, bad fathers do happen. Sorry about that. My spin on the spin could be wrong, I wouldn’t rule it out. ;)
@8 the point is that it is clearly not true that male lactation is even remotely healthy or safe for a baby. If it were there would be good reasons to encourage males in general to do it, and no one, as far as we can tell, has yet been insane enough to suggest that.
And yet the transphilia types do encourage males who claim to be women to do it. Amazing, isn’t it?
Seems like an analysis of milk from a woman and “milk” from a man on a drug cocktail could be compared with basic lab equipment. Funny how that has never been done, as far as I know. Might be the “milk” would have all kinds of drugs in it?
Pretending that milk isn’t milk just because the source is icky and gross is childish and stupid. I’m sure that all the chemicals necessary for the excretion to count in the category of milk are there. There’s sufficient evidence just with domperidone that it’s not great for an infant. Above all there’s no medically necessary reason to induce lactation in males in the first place. That should be sufficient in of itself.
Breastfeeding *is* disgusting, like so many biological functions, but the visceral reaction to stupid men engaging in it is just tinged with purity/impurity thinking.
Can you point, on the doll, to the place where I pretended that milk isn’t milk just because the source is icky and gross?
Also can you explain on what basis you are sure that all the chemicals necessary for the excretion to count in the category of milk are there?
It’s criminal that both TiFs and TiMs prioritize their precious “identities” over the health of their infant children; “transmen” so they can keep taking T to be “men” and “trnswomen” so they can induce lactation so they can be “women.” The babies become props in the psychodramas of the “parents” who have been entrusted with their lives. Babies are not props; parenthood is sacrifice.
@OB 13-14:
Was more addressing vibes (twiliter going Freudian and Southwest88
putting it in scare quotes).
I dunno, I find the whole thing sufficiently summed up by the idea that there is no good reason to do this; even amongst the gobbos inducing lactation is a weird thing to do (though as a co-morbid paraphilia it makes sense). You’re not making up any real shortage of breastfeeding with a handful of blokes who are understood to be taking some pretty serious medication (and quite probably dangerous to natal health), so why promote it?
No good reason plus…I don’t know, maybe this is kind of an “ick” reaction, but it’s just so insulting. To women, I mean. “Get out of the way, little lady, I can do this better than you.” I’m so tired of it. The grabbing, the taking, the shoving, the knocking aside.
Recently I was reading quotes from a TiM discussion of various ways to simulate a period by shoving various items in one’s rectum or smearing various liquids on underwear. It was seen as oh-so-feminine and validating. Inducing lactation for feeding seems like more of the same, except there is another person involved.
I still am yet to see anything that proves that what a male person can produce from their nipples is in fact milk? That any male would brazenly assume that whatever comes out is fine/acceptable/superior is gobsmacking. I’ve spent years around breastfeeding women and I can’t tell you how common it is for mothers and mothers to be to fret endlessly about the quality and quantity of milk they have now or might produce in future. Whether over the counter or essential medication might cause issues for supply or make it unsuitable for baby, and how rarely this is even subject to serious research (everything tends to default to warning against it, and referring you to your doctor, who frequently doesn’t know either). The mums who “pump and dump” to spare baby their drink of wine on a night out. It’s as if there’s Impostor Syndrome running rampant among breastfeeding mothers, all sure they’ll fail (a situation formula manufacturers are more than aware of and exploit for financial gain). The repeated reassurance of bottle feeding mothers that they aren’t horrible mothers. Doctor’s reluctance to prescribe all manner of medications if you’re breastfeeding.
But I don’t see any of that among these men. They’re convinced of their superiority, and doctors freely issue these poorly studied medications.
My grandfather’s myeloma-riddled bone marrow still produced antibodies, that they were deformed, useless antibodies was unassailable, but still antibodies they were…
Would you think they’ve got some sort of weird abscess under their nips?
Just doesn’t have much emotional valence with me… I would be interested in the average difference in chemistry though, just not as some weird political sideshow.
You don’t care. Duly noted. I’m not going to stop talking about it because you’re indifferent. You can always just ignore the whole thing.
@twilighter #8
I would disagree that a man attempting to breastfeed a baby would necessarily be any kind of assault. In my experience, parents of both sexes often legitimately do things with babies that would absolutely be considered sexual misconduct if done to older children, and which adolescents/teens would certainly think was “icky” if/when they heard about it. I’ve heard plenty of stories of dads who offered their nipple to a hungry infant while waiting for mum to be available, and I have a hard time seeing what would be wrong with that. Baby would often be happy to suck without results for a bit (and would feed better later if this managed to prevent her/him from getting into a tizzy). Questions about the effect of the medications in particular, and overall nutritional adequacy of the milk in general, I think are the more important considerations here. (There’s a lot of weirdness about the importance of breastfeeding, and how to do it exactly right – mostly among women, but I can see how people who desperately want to “be” women would get trapped by it as well.)
It’s still an interesting subject…