Three weeks ago the Huffington Post published an article detailing the distress of transgendered parents who breastfeed, “The Troubling Erasure of Trans Parents Who Breastfeed.”

The article describes the way gendered pronouns and attitudes are excluding men who nurse, and the legalities associated with challenging the heretofore female-centric endeavor of breastfeeding.

In particular, women who have had chest surgery and now identify as men, described how they are made to feel unwelcome in breastfeeding circles. Here is one example from Canada:

When the article was shared on the Facebook page of the leading breastfeeding resource website KellyMom.com Friday afternoon, more troubling erasures occurred — of KellyMom fans’ comments.

Even in the highly specific internet outpost of breastfeeding, dissent will not be tolerated. Anyone expressing objection, concern, or even questioning the policy of deleting comments from the site, was censored by KellyMom page administrators.

In fact, at the top of the post, KellyMom.com administrators wrote:

Great discussion of the importance of inclusive and gender-neutral language when discussing issues of nursing and ways that the community can be more inclusive of all parents on this journey. ***COMMUNITY NOTE*** KellyMom supports all parents on their journey to breastfeed/chestfeed. Any comments that are not inclusive of all parents within this community will be removed. Thank you!

For KellyMom.com, the calculation that to allow an actual “discussion” is far too dangerous; the P.C.-police might be out patrolling this afternoon. So rather than allow an actual discussion about the content of the article, they deleted. With abandon. (You have to love the cheery sendoff, “Thank you!”) Of course KellyMom.com has every right to delete comments they don’t like — that’s their business.

KellyMom’s silencing of comments on the post is especially rich given they’ve shared an article about the supposed silencing of one community.

So, what might a reader/Facebook fan of the KellyMom Facebook page be commenting about, anyways? Here are a few quotes from the article posted, originally on Huffington Post:

Despite acknowledgment by many in birthing communities that pregnancy is not limited to women, the language used by most people still hasn’t changed. Jasper Moon, a genderqueer parent who prefers to be called “ren” by their child (short for “parent”), notes that when they hear the term “nursing mother,” they know “that obviously doesn’t apply to me.”

Or…

In 2011, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement urging Ob/Gyns to be prepared to treat transgender patients. Yet transphobia in birthing communities persists. Take, for instance, Women-Centered Midwifery, a group of gender-critical midwifes that recently issued an open letter to the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA). The group expressed concern over the gender-neutral language being used by MANA, and expressed the antiquated belief that gender is tied to biology.

And…

Despite acknowledgment by many in birthing communities that pregnancy is not limited to women, the language used by most people still hasn’t changed. Jasper Moon, a genderqueer parent who prefers to be called “ren” by their child (short for “parent”), notes that when they hear the term “nursing mother,” they know “that obviously doesn’t apply to me.”

You won’t find any of those comments on the post because they are being deleted, quickly and thoroughly.

A sort of “P.C. cleansing” of the page. I know because it took my comment exactly 12 minutes to be deleted. Lest you think I took off on some “woman-centric, cis-gendered breastfeeding rant,” here is what I wrote (and screen-grabbed):

“I guess you don’t support those of us who have a different viewpoint — Your readers can’t disagree with this highly controversial article? Wow”

In the eleven minutes that my comment was up on the page, it garnered 4 likes before it was unceremoniously trash-canned. So this is what it feels like to be shunned, from a breastfeeding community no less, for deviating from the new normal.

Some KellyMom fans agree with the website’s cleansing of dissent. Jess Lavelle commented:

Thank you for removing the comments that are not inclusive. Breast/chestfeeding is hard, and I’ll hold the hand of anybody who takes the journey with me: man or woman.

It appears there’s actually only one thing KellyMom.com is inclusive of: agreement.

Just who is the excluded community these days?



