‘Breastfeeding men’ is an Orwellian lie

I thought we had decided, as a society, that women should be free to breastfeed without being gawped at by blokes? That mums should have the right to nurse, wherever they might find themselves, without being irked by dickheads? Well, it seems we’ve changed our minds. It seems we’ve instituted a new rule: that a man’s ‘right’ to hang around feeding mothers counts for more than a mother’s right to feed in peace. And you’ll never guess which ideology is responsible for this trouncing of nursing mums’ dignity? Yep, the trans ideology.

Not content with sauntering into women’s sports or sitting balls-out in women’s changing rooms, now it seems some ‘transwomen’ – ie, fellas – want the right to mingle in breastfeeding circles. This is the news that La Leche League GB (LLLGB), the British wing of the world’s largest breastfeeding charity, is under pressure to allow ‘transwomen’ – again, fellas – to use its services. This could possibly mean that at one of their breastfeeding support groups, where new mums gather to discuss their nursing struggles, there could be a big bloke in a dress moaning about his dry-ass nipples and lack of lactation. Honestly, it’s the last thing a new mum needs.

It is the board of directors of La Leche League that is insisting the British division of its charity take the knee to the gender cult. It will surprise not one living soul that the board is based in the US. According to the Telegraph, they’ve instructed LLLGB that their services ‘cannot be single sex’ and they must agree to offer advice on ‘male lactation’. Perhaps they must also agree that 2 + 2 = 5. Worse, LLL’s American bosses have reportedly said the term ‘mother’ can be a ‘roadblock’ in certain discussions around breastfeeding and that questioning gender ideology is ‘harmful’.

This is proper lunacy, isn’t it? Avoiding the word mother in some discussions about breastfeeding is like dodging the word footballer when talking about football. It is mothers and mothers only – adult human females who have given birth – who breastfeed. As to the idea that breastfeeding support groups should not be single-sex – one despairs. It’s hard to think of any other arena more deserving of single-sex status than a breastfeeding support group. New motherhood can be hard. Breastfeeding can be tough. Women need a space where they can talk about it all. It is a testament to the dick-swinging narcissism of the trans ideology that it is willing to lay waste even to the social good of assisting nursing mums, all in the name of never offending men who mistake their hormone-pumped moobs for real breasts.

Thankfully, LLLGB is fighting back. One of its leaders says there’s a lot of anger that ‘our charity has become obsessed and sidetracked by sex and gender issues’. And it really has. LLL’s website is awash with the mantras of the gender cult. We welcome all nursing parents, it says, regardless of ‘gender identity’. So men too. We provide a ‘safe space to talk about breastfeeding and chestfeeding’, it continues. Yikes. Volunteers at LLLGB are resisting what they call the ‘diktats’ from on high. And they’re paying a stiff price for doing so: six trustees have reportedly been suspended for their blasphemies against genderism. The Charity Commission is now investigating.

Imagine being suspended from a breastfeeding charity for believing breastfeeding is a female activity. What next – astronomers given the heave-ho for saying Earth orbits the Sun? The idea that it can be ‘harmful’ to question gender ideology is ridiculous. Harmful for who? Men under the delusion that they have milk in their useless nipples? Call me callous but I’ll save my tears for someone else. What’s really ‘harmful’ is woke society’s insane opening up of every female space to ‘biological males’, as we’re forced to refer to men these days. If we were to rob new mums of spaces for intimate discussion, the social consequences would not be good.

But then, who cares about society when there are eccentric identities to be flattered and validated? That’s what this latest trans spat really speaks to – the way wokeness subjugates the needs of society to the desires of identity ideologues. The validation of an individual’s sense of self – even when that sense of self has no basis in truth, reason or decency – now takes precedence over every other social consideration. Women-only spaces, women’s sports, help for new mums – all might find themselves sacrificed at the altar of acknowledging a man’s post-truth belief that he’s a lady. And so we see that the culture of narcissism is about so much more than kids taking too many selfies or everyone being on a perma-diet. Rather, it’s a deeply destructive ideology whose elevation of vanity over society, of trans sensitivity over women’s liberty, rips at the social fabric.

I don’t know if this counts as ‘harmful’ but someone needs to say it: men can’t breastfeed. Sure, they can undergo hormonal procedures that mimic, to a degree, the process of lactation. But what comes out ain’t ‘mother’s milk’, and everyone knows it. Worse, most of these men tend to be on estrogen and other supplements, to aid their ‘gender transition’. So there’s no telling what medical residues might lurk in whatever gunk comes from their ‘breasts’. Nothing better captures the neo-misogyny of the woke era than the fact that mums who feed their babies formula milk are condemned while men who foist druggy secretions on mewling infants are celebrated. Women who do their best are damned, while men who do the worst are cheered – it’s Sexism 101.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His new book – A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy