The Womanly Art of Not Playing Along

Breastfeeding doesn’t care about ideology

The well known and international woman-to-woman breastfeeding support organization La Leche League announced awhile back that the new edition of their core text, in circulation and widely used since 1958, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding is undergoing a makeover complete with a title that erases the very population they serve. How? By slashing the scarlet letters that spell W-O-M-A-N-L-Y out and casting them away like trash. Out with the old and in with the new, shiny version of womanhood that includes anyone and everyone!

The OG

Breastfeeding and birth are the traditional pinnacle of female power, and whether it is politically correct or not to say that, I frankly do not care. Many take this sort of statement personally and will cry “but it’s not for everyone!”, “I have other purposes”, and the like. And they are right, it’s not for everyone and each female has a wealth of purpose, particularly in the creative realm-creation is our bread and butter whether it’s creating a baby in our womb or not. This said, from the beginning of humanity to now, our ability to create, sustain and nourish life has been a potent source of personal feminine transformation.

A mother made is a woman transformed, and everyone knows it. A woman who has known the pride of watching her baby gain fat little thighs and a milky, gummy grin-perhaps despite some deep struggles-is a woman who knows just how deep her well of capability is. Which is why the fetishization of both breastmilk itself and the act of nursing by both men and commercial interests in our current sick iteration of society is an affront to womankind.

Why? Because somewhere between cell cultured lab-made “human milk” and males using off-label pharmaceuticals to induce lactation lie real women just trying to feed our babies, many of which struggling to do so because of the set up of modern life. Meager maternity leave, limited postpartum support, diets that don’t support the nursing mother well, formula advertising being shoved in our faces everywhere we look, lack of being exposed to modeling of healthy breastfeeding relationships while growing up-they all lend themselves to a world in which nursing our babies is just often very hard.

It’s the same way that somewhere between designer IVF surrogate babies and the scientists pouring their resources and intelligence into conceptualizing things like uterus transplants for men or making mice babies out of solely male DNA in labs, lie real women who are just giving birth and trying to survive and hopefully thrive. Resources are being funneled away from the actual literal source of life itself-the mother-and into anything and everything that seeks to diminish her power in order to gain their own.

Particularly egregious and vile is the paraphilic perversion that is trans identified males taking it upon themselves to induce lactation, and equally as vile is the unquestioned support they receive for their endeavors from medical professionals. The thievery of one of woman’s most sacred and special experiences by men to indulge their delusions is absolutely an attack on every woman who has ever brought her newborn baby, full of need and ever so vulnerable, to her sore breast to suckle the milk our bodies work so hard to make in the name of both survival and the most pure form of love. Anyone who spouts the language of “just be kind” to these men in supporting their desires to lactate is equally culpable in this insult to women everywhere.

Which is why something like La Leche League changing the name of their beloved book to be more inclusive is so ridiculous. When I was a 21 year old single mother desperate to succeed at breastfeeding because it felt like the only truly valuable thing that I could offer my baby at the time (I know now looking back that there was much more I had to offer of course, but doing first time motherhood alone and young was an experience that left me quite anxious and worried I was coming up short), this book-a used copy passed on by a coworker-helped me immensely. It may sound hyperbolic in this context now, but the title especially made me feel like I was now, despite my shortcomings, a part of this sisterhood of women. Women who know things about life and babies and our bodies. I was enlivened by this idea, and the advice that was within the pages guided me through the early months of motherhood and nursing my daughter.

The La Leche League was founded in Chicago by 7 Catholic housewives that ended up with a cumulative 55 children and who encouraged women to not only breastfeed in a social climate that looked down on it, but also to give birth without being heavily drugged as was the standard at the time. These were women who knew things about life and babies and our bodies. They held meetings in their homes. I think of these women and these cozy, intimate in-home meetings and feel a sense of nostalgia. Women helping and guiding other women. A far cry from the organization of today that refuses to print the word “womanly” on it's classic text.

In addition to changing the book title, the LLL has changed the language of breastfeeding to include “chest feeding” and “body feeding” on many of it’s documents and articles, it has an entire web page devoted to trans breastfeeding (yes, I realize much of which is for biological females who are trans identified but trans “women” are still catered to as well) and welcome men into their Facebook group for inducing lactation. A group that states in it’s rules that anything deemed transphobic leads to the ejection button and that members are not allowed to address the group (of breastfeeding women) as women. They even have a “transgender/genderfluid tip sheet” that encourages leaders to welcome all trans identified males to in-person meetings. The sheet states: “Encourage the trans breastfeeding parent to attend LLL meetings and ensure that you are providing a safe and positive environment. We know that peer support is an important predictor of a parent's success achieving their personal breastfeeding goals. Trans parents may already feel isolated, especially if they do not know other LGBT families. Group meetings can be tremendously beneficial.”

THIS is where not playing along becomes relevant. Men do not belong in a breastfeeding support group. Men with lactation fetishes seeking to implicate infants in those fetishes belong astronomically far away from ANY private women’s space. It is not women’s responsibility to make them feel less isolated. It is not our responsibility to be beneficial for them. It is not our responsibility to help them attain any of their goals. It is not our responsibility to ignore our own actual safety in order for them to have an imaginary “safe space”. We must not play along with this most dangerous game.

In fact, let us remember that when people speak of safe spaces, they are speaking metaphorically. This is the language of people who believe words are literal violence and search out every tiny micro-transgression in order to shame the transgressors. Being someone who has spent a good deal of time on various breastfeeding support and birth worker groups, I know that the real meaning of “safe space” is “space where no one is allowed to speak with clarity lest they offend the tiny handful of delusionals”. No thanks, I’m good.

Birth workers love to talk about consent, especially those in the more “holistic” side of maternal healthcare. Often those same birth workers love to also talk about inclusivity. And what I have found is that-they love consent until it comes to inclusivity and they love inclusivity until it comes to those of us who don’t consent to it. Many women do not consent to the changing of the language of the childbearing experience, the language of motherhood. Many women see these words as sacred. Many women do not consent to the inclusion of men in our spaces. Many women do not consent to the obligation to applaud these men in their efforts to mimic what cannot be mimicked about womanhood, about us.

A quick interlude on the valuation of wording-Often when I or others speak of words like mother as being sacred, I get dismissed on account of my “flowery” or “poetic” language. People will say things like “your fancy words don’t change the progress we are making”. This is the discounting of what could be called poetic language in favor of the almighty (often very biased and well funded) evidenced-based-science-math-numbers-are-god way of explaining things. Think Emily Oster, whose success exists because apparently parents need an economist to make pretty charts and infographics for them in order to know how to do the most basic of parental duties, and who is heavily lauded for her work.

This is what much of mainstream America values-data. Take the soul and spirit right out of the equation, replace with spreadsheets please. This is why it is so easy to make fun of a woman saying her most valued title-mother-is sacred and holy. As society forgets beauty, we lose poetry, we lose meaning, we lose the ability to communicate in a more than surface level way. It’s art and beauty versus science and math, and somewhere along the line the two were not allowed to mix any longer.

This is where these women are failing other women. By valuing data and inclusivity over sincere expression and the innately exclusionary nature of motherhood and birth and breastfeeding-they are enabling the cycle of female oppression. The oppression that happens when women are not listened to. The oppression that happens in situations such as when males seeking advice in a LLL Facebook group on how to force themselves to produce milk get priority over actual women in the same group simply because those women uttered one of the thousands of ways to be transphobic.

There’s one thing I don’t need data for and that is the fact that breastfeeding doesn’t care about ideology. Breastfeeding is a force of life. Life wants to continue the circle, the cycle, by its very nature. Trans ideology, men trying to lactate-these concepts are ones that break the circle, and end the cycle. Life doesn’t have time or patience for such foolishness, and that is a great comfort to me.

Breastfeeding, the old fashioned way

What isn’t a comfort is knowing how many women applaud this same foolishness, many of these women being the ones who are leading the way in making our most female of female experiences available to men. Lactation professionals, doulas, various other women in the birth realm. So many women getting indoctrinated through “trainings” that espouse gender neutral language and inclusivity, so indoctrinated that they are blind to the fact that they are hurting the same women they set out to help. Let us not get so wrapped up in research and media and virtue signaling and trainings and certifications that we forget the reality of the work of women. This work of women is in service of women, and women only. All of this forced language, all of this congratulatory fawning over men getting drops of liquid in their pumps or men calling themselves “mothers”-it is diluting the meaning of women to women support and taking away from the women who truly need it.

I think we need to re-imagine what real support looks like. We need to get away from the nit-picky bullshit and back into the depths of what this work actually is. It is work where no one should have authority over anyone else-whether it be the sort of clinical authority that brings about tricky power dynamics or the authority to throw another woman out for telling the truth. It is work where sincerity and heart carry the most weight. It is work where the dignity of women is respected. It is work that begins with not playing along.