Has the NHS gone Woke?
I am all for treating people fairly and being non-discriminatory, but sometimes you have to draw a line.
For example, in the UK National Health Service (NHS) website, which is on the whole helpful and a useful source of information on health matters, in their efforts to try to please all the people all of the time, they sometimes go off the rails and write nonsense.
There is a section headed: ‘Chestfeeding if you’re trans or non-binary.’ And in case this isn’t clear, they tell us:
Chestfeeding is feeding your baby with milk from your chest. If you’re able to chestfeed, it’s your decision whether you do and you can change your mind at any time. You will be fully supported in any decisions you make.
Let’s re-write this in plain English, leaving out the bits that are merely statements of the obvious:
‘Breastfeeding is feeding your baby with milk from your breasts.’
Since this is also obvious, we could leave out the whole section.
Let’s move on to the next part:
Chestfeeding if you’ve had chest (top) surgery
If you’ve had chest (top) surgery to remove soft tissue, you may still be able to chestfeed or express your milk. It’s not possible to know how much milk you will produce and if it will be enough for your baby. You may need to offer your baby supplementary feeds. Your baby may find it difficult to latch on to your nipple if there is less soft tissue available. In this case, talk to your midwife.
Poor midwife. Why should she be expected to deal with this abnormal situation? And how many women are there who have had their healthy breasts removed because of a delusion that they are, or because of a desire to be, men? And furthermore, of these people, how many subsequently regret this, manage nonetheless to become pregnant and give birth but find it impossible to breastfeed?
Why don’t they call ‘top surgery’ what it is? It doesn’t mean removal of soft tissue. It means surgical removal of the breasts, or bilateral mastectomy. Obviously, a woman who’s been mutilated in this way – for mutilation it is – will be unable to breastfeed. That’s the whole point of submitting to this unethical procedure. But if the operation is done badly so that some breast tissue is left behind, then even so it will be highly unlikely that such a woman will be able to breastfeed. Or was she sitting on the fence from the beginning? Did she say to her surgeon, ‘In case I change my mind, will you please leave enough breast tissue so I can breastfeed in the future if I want to?’
The nonsense continues:
Binding while chestfeeding
If you bind (reduce the appearance of soft tissue by flattening your chest) and are chestfeeding, there may be a higher chance of you getting an infection called mastitis. Mastitis is when your chest becomes swollen, hot and painful. You may want to try wearing a larger size binder than before.
This is absurd. If a woman wishes to disguise her feminine contours by flattening her breasts with a ‘binder,’ presumably she won’t want to engage in that most marvellous function of the normal female breasts – feeding her baby with her own milk. Using a binder cannot be recommended under any circumstances – it can damage the breasts, predispose to mastitis, and restrict breathing.
There is also the related situation where a man wishes to breastfeed. This is theoretically possible, after a fashion, but it would mean taking a cocktail of drugs to induce secretions from the rudimentary mammary glands that men have. Such secretions cannot in any way be compared to a mother’s milk; it would contain a chemical soup of the drugs he would need to take to induce this abnormal activity – and feeding it to a baby could be considered abuse.
The only way for a man to breastfeed is for him to be reborn as a woman in the next life.
Text © Gabriel Symonds
Picture credit: Nikolett Emmert on Pexels
23 February 2025