198 - The Trans Inclusion Controversy That Took Over La Leche League with Helen Joyce & Marian Tompson

Gender: A Wider Lens

Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley

Health & Fitness, Society & Culture, Mental Health

4.6 • 961 Ratings

🗓️ 20 December 2024

⏱️ 75 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this special episode, Sasha and Stella pass the mic to honorary guest host, journalist, author, and feminist campaigner, Helen Joyce, who interviews Marian Tompson, in connection with Joyce’s recent article about Marian in The Times, "Why I Quit the Breastfeeding Charity I Founded Over Trans Ideology".

Marian Tompson, along with six other mothers, founded the global breastfeeding support network, La Leche League, in 1956. In November 2024, Tompson resigned from both the organization and its Board of Directors, believing it had strayed from its original mission to support biological mothers in breastfeeding.

Helen’s conversation with Marian touches on the physiological intricacies of breastfeeding, the historical challenges women faced to maintain breastfeeding practices, and the broader implications of integrating transgender individuals into traditionally female-centered spaces like La Leche League. Together, they share a candid discussion exploring how biological realities, societal shifts, and ideological debates converge in today’s discourse on gender, motherhood, and breastfeeding.

For links and resources relevant to this episode, access the full show notes at https://www.widerlenspod.com/p/episode-198

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Stella O'Malley, a psychotherapist in Ireland.
0:04.0	And I'm Sasha Ayyad, an adolescent therapist in the United States.
0:08.0	And this is Gender, a Wider Lens, a podcast dedicated to the shifting concepts around gender in our contemporary culture.
0:16.0	Through in-depth interviews, personal stories, and psychological exploration, we seek to open up the discourse
0:22.7	around this hot button issue. Join us as we look at gender from a wider lens.
0:30.9	Hi, Stella, and welcome Helen Joyce. We're so glad to have you today for this special episode.
0:37.0	Oh, thanks.
0:38.3	Yeah, it's a world premiere, you know.
0:40.8	Yes.
0:42.3	Because Helen, you're going to be our guest host and you're speaking to Marian Thompson.
0:48.4	And it's going to be, I think, a really, really interesting conversation about La Leche, about breastfeeding, about what
0:57.0	happened to Marion in our 95th year. Yeah. And we were just touching on how, you know,
1:03.9	breastfeeding is such an important topic. But as you discovered through writing your article,
1:08.8	Helen, it's very hard to talk about.
1:11.2	And in fact, we haven't really covered it in depth on the show, even though it's such a vital
1:15.7	aspect of the female experience, the motherhood experience.
1:19.8	And we're really excited to kind of feature this conversation.
1:23.8	Tell us a little bit about Marion Thompson and Laleche League.
1:26.9	And then we'll discuss what ended up happening more recently.
1:30.8	Sure. So Marian Thompson was the person who had the idea of La Leche League, which means the league of the milk. It's Spanish for the milk. And it was named after a mother and baby, like a Madonna and child in Spanish because she knew back in the 1950s
1:47.6	when she was trying to encourage other women to breastfeed and support other women to
1:51.0	breast that you just couldn't say breast. So they reached around for something to call it.
	...

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