A co-founder of the world’s oldest breastfeeding charity has resigned over its promotion of male ‘chestfeeding’.
Marian Tompson, who is 94 years old, helped found La Leche League in 1956. The global organisation was formed to help mothers support each other, but it is now forcing local groups to admit men who identify as women.
In her resignation letter, Tompson lamented: “This shift from following the norms of nature, which is the core of mothering through breastfeeding, to indulging the fantasies of adults, is destroying our organisation.”
Compared to Nazis
In La Leche League GB, Miriam Main has resigned from the Board of Directors after she was compared to “a Nazi” for raising concerns over men attending support groups and the erasure of sex-specific language.
This shift from following the norms of nature, to indulging the fantasies of adults, is destroying our organisation.
Main, one of several trustees who were suspended for their stance, reported that she suffered “months of mistruths, propaganda and insidious comments directed at me on social media”.
Helen Joyce, Director of Advocacy for women’s group Sex Matters, said the situation is “one of the starkest examples of how gender-identity ideology turns organisations upside-down. By including men who want to breastfeed in its services, LLL is destroying its founding mission to support breastfeeding mothers.”
Mothers
Earlier this year, the suspended members of La Leche League GB’s Board of Directors urged the Charity Commission to intervene under the Equality Act 2010’s provisions for single-sex spaces.
one of the starkest examples of how gender-identity ideology turns organisations upside-down
The group, which has now been voted out, told the regulator that many members will not breastfeed in the presence of men and allowing them into meetings would cause volunteer leaders to leave.
One leader explained: “In the most recent diktat, we were informed that our charity is not and ‘cannot become a single-sex’ charity. We had already been told that the term ‘mother’ could be a ‘roadblock’.”
“But these are not small changes or ‘additive’ terms to our messaging: it is fundamentally problematic to delivering on our philosophy as a charity. Crucially, it is not in the interests of mothers or babies.”
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