Gone are the days when natural parenting, birth, and breastfeeding associations were actually natural.
NATURAL MOTHERING COMMUNITIES, PULLED APART
One by one, we’ve watched our organizations be bought out by bigger interests– interests that have sold a line to mothers about the new wave of the future’s “natural” and how it’s just the same (and maybe better).
Enter: Male Breastfeeding… from our friends at La Leche League International, on Facebook. Of course there’s “trans men” (trans identified females) who get pregnant, birth, and breastfeed– and this is supposed to be proof that the male of our species gets pregnant and “chestfeeds” too (because guys don’t have “breasts” or anything– that’s just sick!). But now, out of the other side of the mouth comes “males have mammaries too”, meaning that someone born physically male can in fact “breastfeed” (now it’s a breast, because breasts are only for pretty ladies, duh– even if all sexes have them) with the right support. And, that they should.
Beginning an infant’s life on its mother’s natural breastmilk as the gold standard for nourishment is pretty much the point of natural organizations like La Leche League, but now it bows to a new master– the almighty dollar. Because let’s face it– there’s no money in breastmilk and it was only a matter of time before Big Pharma and the medical industry found a clever new way to wear Grandma’s clothes and get the natural parenting community to walk into a new trap. That trap is the idea that you can only be for LGB rights if you are not questioning of transgender issues and the science behind it.
Right wing women in our natural communities have less problem with this. Women on that side of the field are far less afraid of seeming bigoted or homophobic (or now, “transphobic”), and are willing to admit that where ever nature has been neglected is no longer the place for them. Women on the Left or left-leaning on social issues, however, feel either forced or convinced to go along with whatever line of rhetoric is alleged allyship to trans, out of pressure to not be anti-LGB– no matter how unnatural or science/drug/technology-based the item on the table being promoted is.
What this means, then, is not just a wide split in our communities of support for natural birthing, parenting, and breastfeeding (industry’s good old divide and conquer), but a sudden lack of a home for leftist or progressive women who still remember what “natural” means and aren’t willing to compromise that just to appease the LGBTLMNOP gods. It is harder and harder for these women to find any place to turn to that will be pro-LGB while also admitting that we have some questions about big science and big pharma’s role in the takeover of our “authentic existences”.
For years now (some may say a century, others will say at least decades), natural mothering types have been a mild thorn in the side of industry and big pharma/medicine. But if you thought Dr. She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and her hateful trolls were a problem, they’re nothing compared to Big Daddy Business, who is finally seeing his day. You see, natural parenting blogs, magazines, documentaries, books, websites, etc. were definitely growing in influence, especially with the reach of social media. (This becomes more and more apparent as entities like Facebook, Youtube, Pinterest, Google, and more move to block “fake news”, which includes things like “alternative” information on vaccine injury and opposition– for example.) More and more mothers were finding each other for support and questioning the ethics and “facts” of the medical establishment, and finding the old ways. They have been returning to the natural and making healthier humans as a result. Still, while growing, our groups have remained somewhat on the fringe– making the timing perfect for dividing an already-marginal community right in half over what is perceived to be a human rights issue, rather than what it actually is– a question of medical ethics and a duty to the cause of natural and holistic health. An automatic skepticism for anything not organically from the purest available source, as designed.
Before we get any larger or more influential, it would be important to buy out, infiltrate, separate and lay waste to anything we’ve built. This can be done by simply redefining things, or reframing oppositional things as if they’ve fit our criteria all along. This is as deceptive as people arguing that epidural-critical information, for example, is anti-feminist, anti-autonomy, and sexist/patriarchal– and thusly spinning epidurals as being a valuable part of the natural and holistic parenting experience. Sure, it makes no sense on its face, but the spin can be made and would have, if they thought it could successfully anchor within our movements. Much more compelling and harder to deny is anything trans related, because while no one is willing to deny trans people anything lest they be seen as bigots, it has always been okay to deny women things. That’s been going on for a long time and never stopped being okay.
So getting back to LLL’s post in which you learn that men can “chestfeed” but ladies “breastfeed”, because we all have breasts but only ladies have breasts, and because there is nothing at all wrong with cross-sex hormones either in utero for a developing fetus or having to do with the breast milk a baby must consume, your choice is to either ride that wave to be “supportive” or be considered harassing and shown the door. In-line commenters said things such as “this was shared with a TERF page” [TERF stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist”, which is a misnomer and a slur that a woman is called when she seems to critically question anything even remotely touching on trans issues], seemingly missing the memo that it was shared with mothers and breastfeeders in their own communities and circles– it wasn’t shared outside your community, we ARE the community. Yes, my liberal sisters, TERFs are natural mothers too (and perhaps the only left wing natural mothers left). TERFs, as you call them, need breastfeeding support, community around natural birth, answers about big pharma and what they want to pump our kids with “for the greater good”, etc. You could say that being a TERF and acknowledging and revering biological reality is pretty much the origin point of all our natural movements.
Natural parenting movements are now becoming 100% fully supportive of males who may never lactate or have their own children, while excluding defiant, real women and mothers who either need or provide valuable education on natural holistic parenting (some who have done so for years and pioneered the resurgence), all in the name of being “inclusive”. Inclusive to whom? To people who wish to be part of our communities but fall outside the circle of life which they pertain to, while excluding the very women who paved the way for our wisdom to be spread and those newcomers in need of the maternal wisdom to actually use in practical life. The lifeline to mothers is drowning. It’s being intentionally submerged. And I’m not sure all the players involved are even aware of the part they’re playing. (Patriarchy is that much of a mindfuck.)
So how did this happen? The call may be coming from inside the house right now, but before that it originated from an outside source. While some of our leftist sisters have been thoroughly indoctrinated by media messages about “inclusivity” to unwaveringly support anything associated with transgenderism, big business has also been buying up any of our orgs and associations that were built to offer support and education for our natural-minded goals. That’s why actors and PR reps (including men, people with no children, and people with no previous interest or involvement in natural parenting activism) are being hired to give speeches on behalf of MANA [Midwives Association of North America, who has changed their language to make birthing appear to be a “gender neutral” activity and cause], while those who actually know about natural birth or have experienced one are cast out as unfaithfuls and branded with a scarlet T for TERF when they fail to toe the line. And our leftist sisters are either ignoring it or saying “that’s what you get” for disobeying Big Daddy, blissfully unaware that the medical industry now has them cornered and with nowhere to hide. It will be like shooting fish in a barrel, and with some of the women even volunteering as tribute. How many birthing goddess women will be the first to line up to offer up their uterus for donation, for example? Or will cheerlead a female lesbian friend into cutting off their breasts to fit their perception of gender, while still spouting the purity of our breasts’ “liquid gold” on the other hand?
“They came for the TERFs, and I said nothing. And finally they came for me, and there was no one left who would speak for me.”
Because you see, in the end the aim was never about your right to individual liberty. That is evident in the punishment for thought crimes occurring for the women expressing any hint of doubt or dissent– they are not respected or valued for their liberty to do so, they are shamed and shunned. The aim was total domination by industry over your very real, human, female bodies, and in fact all of our bodies. “Individual liberty” was just the red herring to get your endorsement and blind allegiance.
LA LECHE LEAGUE’S ANTI-NATURAL AGENDA
Users took to a post by La Leche League on Facebook which detailed how you can get a male to produce a few ounces of breastmilk to sustain an infant off of. It was full of many women thanking the League for the “education”, “clarity”, and “inclusion”. What there was perhaps more of (although it has been silenced, deleted, and users banned) were women questioning whether or not this was natural, appropriate, or in line with their values for wholesome beginnings.
Get it? Drops of milk from a human, no matter how they are obtained, is considered good and natural. This is how you sanction (I mean, “support”) males putting a neonate up to their nipple. (WHERE is the mother? Either radio silence from LLL, or they offer a host of disaster scenarios to explain the mother’s absence, like we all just got gleefully killed off in a soap.)
(Where is the mother, again?)
Well, goodbye natural parenting! Move over, organic– everything new is old again. Make way for neo-organic, brought to you by the Biotech industry.
La Leche League is no different from other entities taken over by corporate spokespersons. I noticed the admin for the page, a woman named Caroline, had two other interesting occupations under her belt (besides just being in charge of the social media representation of LLL International). One was a PR firm an “Association Management Company” (some vague language about “offering solutions” to companies, etc; her role specifically has to do with “administration in nonprofits”.). The other was a Biotech company.
Myself and concerned others (who are all natural parenting mothers) were over there to ask questions about admin’s tie to Biotech and Public Relations, and where the funding was coming from, but this must have constituted harassment or bigotry because we were swiftly removed from the page and banned from further commenting. (It used to be that people came in promoting technology over nature were trolling… but now those questioning technology over nature are the “trolls”.) Well, it was either that or when I mentioned that babies are real, whole human beings worthy of the best nourishment nature could provide and not accessories to affirm anyone’s gender. Hateful, hateful conduct, to be sure.
As far as we know, Caroline has no previous experience with issues, involvement, nor activism surrounding natural parenting and breastfeeding. We do know that she is Team Ultrasound, “One and Done”, and believes you actually *can* tell who is a boy or a girl based on genitals (despite the PR spin she’s been paid to push).
Does Caroline herself know that she is a tool for the man, to co-opt and then crush women’s causes? Probably not– she is probably just an empowered career woman trying to empower other women by doing what she is told (which is why women’s liberation does not simply mean seeing more women in careers or in power; this neglects tiers of power and the insidiousness of patriarchy). And as an individual, she is potentially not invested enough in our natural movements to care when this is pointed out to her, making her the perfect candidate, which surely the higher entities understood when hiring her.
They have a profile they go for: peripherally invested in the issue if possible, but not highly passionate and aware as others in the field and with no networking or personal loyalty issues to disrupt the candidate’s work (others in the life who would hold them accountable if they stray off course), competent enough to perform the tasks asked of her, and career-motivated and ambitious. Bonus points if it can appeal to the do-gooder sensibility that pads our egos. She checks all criteria off this list.
So for the same reason medwives and female OBs cannot be approached with some analysis of their part in subjugation, people like Caroline cannot be told they are the bad guys either. No one wants to find that out about themselves, when putting your head on the pillow at night as a hero while earning a decent living is basically every good person’s dream. The ego rejects outside info shattering that, every time. This is how women are played off of each other like pawns to remain useful cogs in the machine. This is how patriarchy has been so successful for so long.
It’s not an accident, it’s a strategy. And one we are falling for and losing.
PERSONAL NOTES, AS A NATURAL MOTHER
Natural parenting advocates like myself organized under the understanding that not all choices are equal. Things are not indiscriminately good just because you chose them [< a philosophy that liberal feminism is actually based off of] which is why we advocate for what we believe is a higher standard. While our fight is for autonomy, it is not without caveats; we condemn the distortion and lies big industry endorses, and we favor the healthy, holistic, and usually less profitable alternatives. We are not fighting for the individual’s right to self-harm anyway as a valid “choice”, as this kind of behavior is already the norm and does not need defending or supporting.
[The genius of transgenderism in politics is, it plays the part of the less heard tiny minority underdog while being funded by the biggest financial and medical players in the field. And no other disadvantaged group enjoys that kind of power.]
We believe there can be no true consent without informed consent, and that fully informed consent is extremely rare. The aim is for increased health and that comes through critical information which is being denied. We also believe that so long as you are sick or enslaved to a sick system, you are naturally less equipped to make the best choices. Making choices under duress or with limited capacity or resources is not a free choice, if a choice at all. Poor choices come from poor circumstances. “Support only” activism works best only for the status quo, and that benefits those in power.
About 4 years ago now I was denounced as a TERF in natural birthing communities for daring to still believe in biology and have labels for it. I was told by fellow unassisted birthers that in a matter of only decades, trans women would be able to carry pregnancies– as if this was a good thing. But these were also people who considered themselves infertile despite having many children and while still at a very young age, and people who would buy and use hormones off the internet believing it would aid pregnancy, and people who didn’t disagree if hospital birthers called their experience “unassisted”. (For all the female autonomy goddess power hype we used to discuss, I am now informed by these same people that “the uterus is not a female organ”, while sexist bunk “brain science” will be held up as some proof that the brain somehow has a sex/gender. Go figure.)
Herein lies the rift. Not everyone in our community always believed in the truth, that words matter and have real meanings, that natural ways are more healing and healthful and deserve to be fought for on that basis, that women have been oppressed for our anatomy, or in resisting industrial control. Many of the women in our natural communities aren’t in service to nature but to self; they are devoted to the idea that the individual should do whatever they want without regard for the potential consequences. They play to the tune of their choices being more healthful when it’s somehow convenient, but they aren’t consistent. I’m not accusing them of not having organic purity, but not having logical congruence– to recognize that things are not automatically the healthy or best way just because you “chose” it. That’s all. These are not people skeptical of technology, they just resent being told what to do by authority. In that case, they were never really with us. It may be impossible to bridge the divide with people who believe in information only insofar as it can serve the self’s current wants and gratification and egoic justifications for things, rather than the duty to provide honest and critical information that is otherwise controversial and hidden over it being inconvenient to the prevailing system.
In other words, if they can be convinced that the system can work for them (despite disenfranchising certain others or rewriting all reality), they will work with the system. That’s an enemy to resistance everywhere, and at the bare minimum, the holistic.
We are coming to the table with vastly different motives. We are not in the same political fight for freedom. We need to find and join with people who are. We need to cast our net wide again to find those people, now, before we are more fully censored.
[There is currently an exodus from Facebook & Twitter by people who have been banned or censored by the platforms. Please come to MeWe like other radical feminists and vaccine critics, etc., have done where free speech and alternative information is not censored and your personal information is not sold. Find our groups. We have already started networking and planting seeds there. It could be the place we still have to communicate with one another as conditions worsen at the presently popular sites.]
I as a lifelong left-wing-aligned female who both resents being told what to do AND is skeptical of technology do not appreciate orgs like LLL resorting to fascist censoring of real mothers and breastfeeders in service to an agenda that props up technology above people. This is not who they claimed to serve when they were founded and serve other interests now, instead.
The tunnel vision of individualists (flying high on instant gratification) will one day come crashing down on them when, to their surprise, technophilia was not the Pleasure Island utopia they thought it would be while they were having fun (and the people who cautioned the warnings have been thoroughly banished). The powers that be are not and never were interested in preserving the liberty and autonomy of the individual, ultimately. That is just the carrot dangled in front of them to get them to submit to controlling entities. There will be no one there to protect them or rescue them if they continue down this path unchecked, but I’m hoping enough of us can now read between the lines before it gets too far, politically. Because it doesn’t end with LLL or MANA– there are more and there will be more, bought and falsely representing us with smiling robotic spokesfolx. Because I unlike my former friends do not believe trans women will carry pregnancies, nor do I think it’s good or necessary. I do not believe taking foreign hormones to lactate or alter pregnancies are automatically good and without consequence. I don’t believe questioning that consequence is bigotry. It’s our duty.
I believe in a matter of a handful of years this genderist movement will have run its course and there will be a conflict between the people and the power entities who promoted these ideas to the people as “liberation”. The reason I believe that is that is it too much at odds with reality, and that includes the tangible realities faced by females and by homosexuals. It also defies the common sense that the majority of the people across the world still have when it comes to a commonly-defined reality. In fact, this agenda even runs opposite to the former friends who became my opponents, who still– despite all their claims, their denial, their campaigning– give their children gendered names corresponding to their sexes (observed genitals). Just like Caroline at LLL and her ultrasounds, people merely pretend to not know what physical reality of male/female is. And they were willing to outcast their sisters and sell us down the river to do it.
Substances and technology worship are used to keep us dumb, sick, and enslaved. I was natural because I wanted a departure from a corrupt establishment, not because they didn’t give me enough toys and I wanted to act out in rebellion. We need to reach our left wing sisters who still realize there is a corrupt establishment and don’t want to be roped back into it. They will be awake enough (and lacking in petulance) to understand what is happening here and resist. It’s going to take maturity and bravery and I know some of our sisters who’ve been silently reading and watching on have got it.
“Autonomy” is not about individual freedom from the facts. And natural mothering is so much more than the illusion of choice.
YOUR MOVE.
I’m obviously very phobic of the future (and what some like to market to us as “progress”), which is exactly what I heard every time I questioned the practices of OB/GYN, Gattaca, artificial wombs, GMO, and testing out synthetic substances on babies over generations. As a woman and mother who resists, I don’t think this was ever a question. It’s what all of us came here to sign up for. The real question is whether being some kind of technophile and biophobe is the only way to prove you’re not a “transphobe”. And if you believe the framing being laid out for you by the media at the funding of big business interests, the answer is not only YES, but yes in lock-step.
I’m just wondering how biotechnology, altering DNA, vaccines, foreign cross-sex hormones, etc., and all these other aspects of Big Pharma and the medical industrial complex have any place in organizations that allegedly used to shield women from this patriarchal overreach and focus on getting back to basics.
And I’m wondering how long you’re going to go along with it. Or if you’re going to say something.
For more on these topics, please Google “transhumanism”, “Jennifer Pritzker”, and “Martine Rothblatt”.
Edit: Some other must-see pieces for you if you are interested in La Leche’s descent–
“Stick to the Script” discusses the document found on LLL policy for dealing with women who make comments about biology or sexism, but the document is later replaced with an anime furry image calling women FARTs.
“Inauthentic Selves” is a lengthy and worthwhile read about where all the sudden money is coming from in the alleged LGBT+, when back in the day lesbians working to combat AIDS had to scramble for donation change after they attended their third funeral that week (paraphrased). Just who the funders are may shock you.
theperfectbirth 