Support group promoting male ‘chestfeeding’ sparks outrage

A group in Edinburgh promoting the practice of biological men ‘chestfeeding’ babies has sparked outrage.

The weekly support group ‘Queer Milk’ is explicitly inclusive of men who identify as women and are taking cross-sex hormones to mimic breastfeeding.

It is run by the charity LBGT Health and Wellbeing, which is given hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding by the Scottish Government, the NHS, and local councils.

‘Chestfeeding’

The group’s advertisement for the ‘Queer Milk’ support group says: “You are welcome to attend the group whatever your feeding journey looks like. Whether you are mixed feeding, chestfeeding, breastfeeding, using an SNS or donor milk or any of the beautiful and varied ways you might be giving human milk to your baby.”

However, Dr Alice Hodkinson, co-founder of campaign group Biology in Medicine, stated: “There’s no such thing as chestfeeding. You need to be a woman and you need to have breasts to breastfeed.”

She explained that, while mothers can produce pints of milk for their child, the most that men have been recorded producing is “a thimbleful”.

Dr Hodkinson noted: “This is not for the baby. This does not benefit the baby, and we have to be very clear about this, that there’s something else going on that a man should want to do this.”

Campaigners

Biology in Medicine wrote on X: “It may be *queer*, but it isn’t *milk*. Any secretions produced by men who take a cocktail of drugs are not suitable for feeding babies.”

Susan Smith, Co-Director of women’s rights group For Women Scotland, stated: “Defenceless and innocent babies are not props to be used to affirm delusional men, and the fact that public money is being used to promote the notion that they are is nauseating.”

Former Olympic swimmer and women’s rights campaigner Sharron Davies wrote: “Stop putting men’s feelings before safeguarding or the health of babies! Madness”.

Politicians

Mandy Lindsay MSP called it “State-funded child abuse”, saying: “Innocent infants are not there to validate anyone’s identity or fetish. They need protection, not ideology.”

MSP Meghan Gallacher noted: “we don’t know the risks associated with it”, and urged the Government to withdraw any funding “supporting organisations that perform experiments on children”.

A Scottish Government spokesman said the LBGT Health and Wellbeing group is funded through its Equality and Human Rights Fund which “is for specific, agreed activities”, adding: “We do not provide funding for lactation services through this fund.”