'Men' Can Also Breastfeed Children? Advocacy Group Says 'Yes' As It Welcomes Transgender 'Nursing Men'
The world is getting stranger and stranger, almost by the day. Now, a breastfeeding advocacy group known as La Leche League International (LLLI) is saying that men, just like women, can also breastfeed children.
The group said it accepted the idea of breastfeeding men in 2014, LifeSite News reported. It even changed its policy on the ground that "the cultural understanding of gender has expanded" and that "it is now recognized that some men are able to breastfeed."
A blog post from the National Catholic Register last Wednesday included a statement on the modified policy of LLLI, an Illinois-based international organization that has been providing breastfeeding support for more than 60 years.
Three years ago, the group said, it began allowing "men who otherwise meet the prerequisites for becoming a volunteer applicant" to become the group's breastfeeding counselors.
Those prerequisites include "personal experience breastfeeding a baby for at least nine months."
Glenn Stanton, the blog's author, quickly clarified that the "men" the LLLI is referring to are not the biological ones but those women who believe they are men, who "keep their uteruses and breasts, giving birth and nursing their babies like any other women."
He said a breastfeeding counselor is assigned to help new and struggling mothers in "mastering the intimate act of nursing their infant children."
Stanton's blog post includes links to two websites—one, an online TIME magazine column and the other a blog from Milk Junkies.
The articles in the two websites contain the testimonials of women who identify as men but who apparently were able to become pregnant and breastfeed their children.
Commenting on the testimonials, Stanton wondered how "an anxious mother, struggling with her own self-confidence and changing body" could learn breastfeeding techniques from "a bearded woman presenting herself as a man." He said it's simply "ridiculous" to expect that such a woman would "be totally cool with it."
