Maternal Vampirism
Men making “milk” and healthcare systems signing off on it is peak colony collapse material
At the risk of belaboring a topic I am frankly completely sick of-we have to talk about it. If you have had the privilege of not having yet seen the circulating various articles on the topic, trans lactation is in the news. This time it’s not just the individuals themselves, but an institution-which is really what I am interested in coming for. I have already discussed this unfortunate abomination here and here, and would be quite pleased to never utter another word about it, but here we are again, compelled by rage and the need to cry “but it isn’t right!” into the ether.
You likely have heard a letter that was leaked out of the University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust posited that the milk some lactation-happy trans-identified males are forcing themselves to produce by way of consuming a cocktail of drugs and hormones is “comparable to that produced [by a mother] following the birth of a baby.” I’m not typically one to bust out the clown emoji but I’m awfully, awfully tempted to after writing that out. That’s right, we have major healthcare institutions touting the supposed equality between male and female breast milk now.
Most people read these headlines and immediately understand that this is wrong. I am confident in assuming the majority of people-silent or not-would agree on this if they were polled. Considering this, one would think that there is no need to further examine or interrogate this subject. Man milk=no thank you, right? Well, right, of course, but I think this sort of headline and the events behind it illuminate some general realities about culture that need a sharp correction.
Firstly, this is an example of the allowing we have become so tolerant of and which is a mistake. This is the allowing of males to undergo female rites of passage. This is the allowing of males to experience female physiological milestones, a step in womanhood which is a marker of full biological maturity, which is a duty of maternity. When we not only allow but encourage males to undergo female rites of passage and force our physiological milestones upon their undeserving and unequipped bodies what does that say about how we really feel about innate female phenomena? Nothing good.
If imitation is a form of flattery, why do I not feel flattered? Perhaps because this is not flattery but indeed it is a sort of biological plagiarism. Why is plagiarism considered so bad and so taboo? It is due to the fact that it signals a true sense of disrespect and disregard for the other person’s sacrifice, expertise and hard work. Not only that, but it cheapens and dilutes the value of the other person’s ideas and unique perspectives. In the same sense, men co-opting female experiences is a venomous act of cheapening, a signaling of devaluation, a broadcast of how novel our bodies and life experiences are to them.
Only now it isn’t just these individual men-it’s the healthcare system.
Mary Wollstonecraft stated that breastfeeding is one of “the first duties of a mother”. I tend to agree-and while this topic is one that is largely contentious and argued about in the motherhood space, from a physiological perspective, it really isn’t arguable. We are, in fact, made to nurse our babies. It is non-negotiable in many senses, modern technology has only fairly recently made it optional. It is truly a mammalian duty of care.
“In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation that is imposed on an individual, requiring adherence to a standard of reasonable care to avoid careless acts that could foreseeably harm others, and lead to claim in negligence. It is the first element that must be established to proceed with an action in negligence.”
Society is being negligent. Why does neglect matter, why is it a crime? Because it is the implication of obligation being ignored. Negligence deals in the realm of responsibility, and we have a general knowing of what responsibilities are innate. Breastfeeding is an innate obligation for mothers, and the protection of this essential act of survival is an innate obligation for fathers, communities and society at large.
The male lactation endeavor goes against all species specific duties of care. In entertaining this we are neglecting our mammalian responsibilities further than we already have. It is this neglect that is signaling to women and mothers everywhere, to future mothers-little girls, that our collective effort at nourishing and growing up the next generations are not appreciated in the least.
We have already neglected this aspect of mothering in innumerable ways. Breastfeeding in the Western world is largely jeopardized by the prioritization of economy and market over family and motherhood. The absolute struggle to be able to do what is most natural and right-nurse our children AT THE BREAST (aka not pumping in a closet at a 9 to 5) is a testament to this. Not only this, but those who profit off of the separation of mother and child consistently put out predatory marketing that is hellbent on replacing maternal love and care in the name of profit. There is a very vampiric energy to all of this-whether it be industry, economy, or ideology-mothers and babies are the vital essence that these forces seek to feed off of.
This is where I must ask-what is the cultural perception of babies? It seems that babies are perceived often as either pesky, annoying problems to solve or commodities to sell and create false identity around, as with surrogacy and gay couples manufacturing children. Males utilizing infants as a means to affirmation, and healthcare systems encouraging this, is a gross violation of the humanity of babies. This entire strange phenomenon is an extension of the idea that babies are not real people.
Male lactation morphs real human babies into mere props. This is an obvious problem, but when you consider the other accompanying props, it becomes acutely disgusting. What other props does a trans-identified male utilize in order to “become woman”? Initially, things such as silicone breast forms, lipstick, short skirts…all things garish and acutely male in the sense that they represent what is “fuckable” to men. As the gig evolves, the props are physically forced into the body, by pill or syringe or surgery, but remain just that-props. Like a clown with his red, squeaking nose and painted-on frightening grin, the man who wishes to be woman is a cartoon physically laden with a slew of offensive props. Should babies be included in this list?
The protection of and reverence for the humanity of babies should be at the very top of our collective priority list, yet it seems to get bumped further and further down the line. Now it is evidently firmly underneath things like “gender affirmation”. This is a malignancy. A malignancy that very much reminds me of colony collapse disorder in bees. Colony collapse disorder is an abnormal phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a honey bee colony disappear, leaving behind a queen, plenty of food, and a few nurse bees to care for the remaining immature bees.
Mothers are the queens, maidens are the nurse bees, and male fetishists and the industries that are upholding their desires over the rights and integrity of women and babies are the the negligent worker bees. I will be so bold as to say that the right and purposeful role of honorable men is to protect the rights and integrity of mothers and children-and these men and the multitude of pandering and scheming industries that cater to them are failing to perform their roles. Role failure contributes to societal collapse.
Women are life-givers and life-sustainers through the work of childbearing and lactation. Men are life-initiators through the act of conception and life-protectors through acts of valor and sacrifice. There is an input difference here-the roles are equally valuable but the nature of them is very different energetically and emotionally. Ultimately, both the life-making potential that women hold and the life-manifestation that babies are are the vital essence of humanity and civilization.
And what is a vampire? It is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the vital essence of the living.
We are being fed upon. There is a definite scourge of maternal vampirism at play. The forces that prey on the vital need a good stake through the heart. From the individual men who believe themselves and their delusions to matter more than the rights of infants to the healthcare traitors who assist them in their endeavors to the systems that uphold these acts, such as healthcare, research and tech-may the good sun shine upon them. In that light, the mother and child may flourish and the insidious and greedy may melt away into stinking liquid, and then be purified by the Earth, evaporating into the metaphysical water cycle.
Thank you, Emily, for being one of the very few commentators on this that centers the most vulnerable humans on the planet: babies. The number of articles I have read that barely even mention babies (who are the ones who are actually at risk here, not the dudes in dresses who need babies as props for their performance art lives) has been staggering.
But not surprising because the surrogacy literature too seems to not realize that it's babies that are being created, bought and sold to satisfy the desires of adults (who claim the "human right" to "create a family" by whatever means they can afford).
When a woman is breastfeeding a baby, no one asks where she got the baby from, it's just assumed that she was pregnant and now she's feeding her baby. If some man with a kink fetish is "breastfeeding" a baby, we should all be asking where he got that baby, because he sure as hell didn't make it himself. Even if he contributed a sperm, from the baby's perspective he is a physiological and literal stranger. No baby ever popped out of a woman's body and asked, "where's my dad?" Since when have medics advocated for unregulated medical experimentation on babies?
The other factor that has escaped any notice is the detrimental effects on women's health who have babies and don't breastfeed them. We are more than Ezi-Bake ovens, we are complex human beings who are designed to birth and then breastfeed and when that doesn't happen, our bodies assume the baby has died and release some more eggs to have another try at it.
The biggest mistake of all though, is that we are even debating this in the first place. Disrupting the mother/baby dyad which is the mammalian norm for optimal development needs to have a really good reason to be done as it causes lifelong harm to women, babies and well, everyone actually. Satisfying the kinks of men who claim they can only be happy as women does not meet this threshold by any standards at all.
Thank you for writing this. This topic gets me so heated it’s hard to stay calm. My first thought when reading about all of this was… why couldn’t they just leave it alone? Why can’t we have this?
I’ve seen many people online talk about trans women wanting to “share the burden of breastfeeding” with their partners. But breastfeeding isn’t a burden. It is sacred, an induction into motherhood and full womanhood. It’s something women have been doing since the dawn of time.
You will never get me to believe that breast milk that has been bioengineered will ever come close to the same as the milk of a woman who has carried and birthed a baby and has breast milk that is perfectly made for her baby.
Not to mention the stigma around breastfeeding and the lack of resources for women who want to breastfeed. Instead of helping those women and improving breastfeeding rates to better public health, this is what we’re doing? GAH. I could go on and on and on about this.