A trustee and public relations director of La Leche League GB (LLLGB) has resigned after Britain’s oldest breastfeeding charity introduced an “inclusivity” policy allowing men who pretend to be women to learn how to breastfeed.
Miriam Main resigned on Monday and said she refuses to help men “perform a poor imitation of breastfeeding,” which can put babies’ safety at risk, according to a Times of London report.
“Directors at the charity’s British arm have already requested that the Charity Commission intervene over the inclusivity policy, which permits biological males to seek support from the organi[z]ation,” the report states.
Main’s resignation comes a week after 94-year-old American Marian Tompson, one of the founders of the La Leche League (LLL) in 1956, quit last week over the charity’s policy to admit men.
In a letter sent to LLL leaders, she described the organization as a “travesty.”
“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 organi[z]ation,” she wrote, according to the report.
LLL was founded in the United States by a group of mothers with the aim of changing societal attitudes toward breastfeeding and helping mother with support and education related to nursing their little ones. LLL supports more than 1,000 parents each year in the United Kingdom, the report states.
Main wrote in her resignation note about “bullying, lies, and cruelty in recent times,” which had been “unreasonably hard to endure.”
“I hope that the wonderful work of hundreds of women is not lost through mixing causes and politics,” she added.
LLLGB documents on “transgender and non-binary” parents reportedly state that the organization “supports everyone who wants to breastfeed or chestfeed in reaching their goals,” and says that they “do not discriminate based on sex, gender, or gender identity.”
The policy allowing men pretending to be women to learn to breastfeed or “chestfeed” was allegedly pushed by a minority of the organization’s board members in the UK, who brought LLL International as “back-up,” according to the report. Directors reportedly raised concerns that the policy would force volunteers to cater to men who wish to “breastfeed” babies.
Zion Tankard, executive director of La Leche League International, told the outlet that the organizations respect’s Main’s decision to leave, but said her “contributions and legacy are highly valued as a founder. He emphasized the organization’s supposed mission of upholding “the values of empathy and understanding.”
Director of Sex Matters Helen Joyce told the outlet the situation is “one of the starkest examples of how gender-identity ideology turns organizations upside-down” and said the organization is “destroying its founding mission…”
LLLGB did not respond to request for comment by time of the original report’s publication.
