Two key figures at Britain’s oldest breastfeeding charity have resigned after it described the term ‘mother’ as a “roadblock” to inclusivity, declared that questioning gender ideology is “harmful”, and introduced a trans policy that allows men to attend support groups (Mail, Times).
Miriam Main is leaving La Leche League GB (LLLGB), the British wing of La Leche League (LLL), which has more than 70 groups across the UK and gives mother-to-mother support to those finding it hard to breastfeed, after a diktat from the global organisation elicited fears that volunteers will have to give advice to transgender women.
At present, LLLGB’s meetings are female-only, and directors have been resisting attempts to permit males.
Main, who is a trustee as well as LLLGB’s PR director, resigned on Monday, saying that she refused to help biological men “perform a poor imitation of breastfeeding”, which she said put babies’ safety at risk.
In her resignation note, Main also spoke of “bullying, lies, and cruelty of recent times” and said that this had been “unreasonably hard to endure”.
She added: “I hope that the wonderful work of hundreds of women is not lost through mixing causes and politics.”
Main’s departure came as one of the founders of the LLL in 1956, quit last week over the decision to admit men.
In a damning resignation letter from the board of directors, Marian Tompson, 94, described the organisation as “a travesty of my original intent”, and condemned the group’s shift from focusing on mothering to include men “who, for whatever reason, want to have the experience of breastfeeding despite no careful long-term research on male lactation and how that may affect the baby”.
Her letter, sent to LLL leaders, added: “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.”
Trouble has been brewing since earlier this year, when LLLGB suspended six trustees for demanding that biological men be excluded from their services, amidst claims that gender ideology activists within the charity had created a culture of “censorship, harassment and bullying”.
The suspension was imposed after the group wrote to the US-led board of the charity, LLLI, questioning its shift to gender ideology, and asking to remain single-sex.
In February, LLLI responded to the trustees’ demands, telling them: “We focus on providing breastfeeding support and understand the importance of making our spaces welcoming to all those who want to breastfeed or give their babies human milk.
“We don’t argue with parents or other leaders about how they identify; we accept them with respect, just as they say they are, and do not refer to them with words that conflict with their identity.”
The US-led board then suspended the six trustees, who represent the majority of LLLGB’s board of directors, claiming: “The continued promotion of LLL as an organisation that excludes people is damaging LLL’s credibility.”
It remains unclear why, if that is the case, LLLI continues to allow groups in countries which do not accept trans rights, including many Muslim ones, to exclude biological men.
Following their suspension, the trustees sent a serious incident report to the Charity Commission, saying the charity’s demand that trans women were admitted was against UK law because single-sex places are protected.
The report, which was seen by the Mail, warns that if the charity’s international parent body forces the policy on them and trans women were able to attend meetings, it would exclude “a significant number of our beneficiaries, i.e., mothers… who will not breastfeed around men, whether for religious reasons, modesty, previous (or current) experience of male violence of ‘just’ discomfort.
“We consider that insistence on opening meetings to males and supporting males to lactate will prompt many leaders [i.e., volunteer mothers experienced in the normal course of breastfeeding] to leave,” the report adds.
Reacting to news of LLLI’s heavy-handed approach to staff who dare to stand up for women’s sex-based rights, a spokeswoman for the group said: “Pressure to abandon mother-only breastfeeding services has been building internationally at LLL for several years as gender identity activism has gathered force. We are now at the point that group leaders around the world are being told they must support ‘male lactation’.”
The spokeswoman continued: “We have exhausted every process available to us to defend sex-based services. LLL International and a small number of fellow trustees at LLLGB have undermined our efforts and left us with no choice but to alert the Charity Commission.”
Speaking anonymously to the Telegraph, one LLLGB Leader said at the time that she was “utterly disheartened by the way our charity has become obsessed and sidetracked by sex and gender issues”.
“We had already been told that the term ‘mother’ could be a ‘roadblock’,” she added, “[and] any attempt to question or debate these positions is hounded down as ‘harmful’.”
Helen Joyce, a director at the gender-critical campaign group Sex Matters, told the Times: “The situation at LLL 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.”
