An organisation of doctors called the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine (ABM) has issued new guidelines that suggest using terms such as “chestfeeding”, “human milk feeding”, and “parent’s milk” to promote what it describes as “gender-inclusive language”.
According to the reports, the Chicago based ABM has issued a statement on “infant feeding and lactation-related language and gender”, co-authored by eight doctors. In the statement, the academy said that “the use of de-sexed or gender-inclusive language is appropriate in many settings.”
“ABM recognizes that not all people who give birth and lactate identify as female, and that some of these individuals identify as neither female nor male,” ABM said in a document.
In the new guidelines, the ABM has suggested “gender-inclusive terms” for “breastfeeding” that include – “chestfeeding”, “lactating, expressing”, “pumping”, “human milk feeding”. Similarly, alternatives for “breast milk” include “milk”, “human milk”, “mother’s own milk”, “parent’s milk”, and “father’s milk”.
One of the co-authors, Dr Laura Kair of the UC Davis Children’s Hospital, claimed that “language has power.”
“The language that we use should be as inclusive as possible when discussing infant feeding,” she said adding that it is best for them to ask the patients about their affirmed terminology. When communicating medical research, language should accurately reflect the population studied so as not to mask research needs, she added.
Meanwhile, critics have slammed such terminology. Actress Kirstie Alley said she was “tired” of phrases “nullifying” women and their ability to breastfeed.
“I’m a little tired of the degrading and nullifying of women and their abilities. Breastfeeding is one of our abilities. It’s a beautiful and important ability. Knock off the nullifying of women for the sake of lunatics. Equal rights does not equal insanity,” Alley tweeted.
https://twitter.com/kirstiealley/status/1426516832488411142?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThis proposal joins that several proposals by the woke movement that essentially aims to ‘cancel’ women, where all feminine terms are replaced with ‘gender-neutral’ terms. These terminologies come after President Biden’s administration used the phrase “birthing people” instead of “mothers” in a 2022 budget proposal, causing massive outrage worldwide.
Earlier, in a similar bizarre incident, a hospital trust in the United Kingdom had instructed its staff to adopt “gender-inclusive language” for its perinatal services, including referring to “breastfeeding” as “chestfeeding” and “mother” with “mother or birthing parent”.
The Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust had decided to be more “gender-inclusive” to respect “trans and non-binary birthing people”. In doing so, they had changed the post-natal terminologies and instructed their staff to use phrases such as “human milk”, “chest milk”, and “milk from the feeding mother or parent” instead of the word “breastmilk”. They had concluded that the word “breast” is discriminatory.
This particular health trust had become the first to formally implement the “gender-inclusive” policy for its maternity services, which will now be referred to as “perinatal services” because the word “maternity” was not “gender-inclusive” for the trust.
The trust has also changed terminologies of “woman” with “woman or person”, “father” with “parent”, “co-parent” or “second biological parent”.