Evan Urquhart @e_urq

There's a clever little trick behind the outrage over "chestfeeding" as a suggested alternative (not replacement) to breastfeeding, and the reason it works is, once again, say it with me:

TRANSMASCULINE INVISIBILITY.

Evan Urquhart @e_urq

The trick is simple, once you understand how it works.

First, people hate & fear trans women, because they're ignorant.

Second, they never think about trans men.

So, when they hear "X hospital suggests chestfeeding as an alternative to breastfeeding" what do they picture?

Evan Urquhart @e_urq

They do NOT picture a muscular hairy trans man with a deep voice carrying, giving birth to, and feeding a child, and the incongruity of him having breasts.

Of course they don't, bc trans men don't exist in their minds.

Evan Urquhart @e_urq

Instead, they picture an evil trans woman- likely a broad caricature of "man in a dress" coming in to a pregnant woman's bedside and demanding her breasts no longer be called breasts out of pure villainy.

Evan Urquhart @e_urq

This trick only works because trans men are so invisible as to be outside the picture frame of ordinary somewhat transphobic but not that informed people's minds.

If you picture a trans man giving birth, him saying "chestfeeding" might be a little awkward, but it's not scary.

Evan Urquhart @e_urq

But if you're unable to conjure the imagine of a trans man to your mind, because of transmasc invisibility, you make trans women the culprits (as always) and ascribe some sort of evil motives of jealousy and hatred of cis women to them.

Evan Urquhart @e_urq

And, presto! By making trans men disappear, you've turned a relatively simple issue of some trans AFABs feeling more comfortable with alternate language into this ominous sign of the erasure of women.

Evan Urquhart @e_urq

Of course, more advanced transphobes know that trans men are the people for whom "chestfeeding" applies, and they have their own baroque reasoning about why trans men are really poor lil deluded women in need of saviors to stop them being trans.

Evan Urquhart @e_urq

But for your average person "chestfeeding" only activates their prejudices bc they're NOT thinking of trans men, rather than bc they think trans men are women who need to be reminded of what sex they are.

I’ve stayed away from “chestfeeding” discourse because it’s not my lane, but transphobes keep throwing it into the transfemme side of the road, and this thread explains why.

Trans men and non-binary transmascs exist in nearly a 1:1 ratio to transfems, but they are consistently ignored in transphobic discourse. It happens with breastfeeding, it happens with pregnancy, it happens with conversations about menstruation and menstrual products. There was a big stink last year about Always dropping the venus symbol from pad packaging to be more inclusive of non-women, and terfs were all blaming trans women for it.