While we don’t know yet what LLL will decide about Trevor and other parents like him, it highlights some of the challenges brought up by our shifting understanding of gender and identity for the women’s health movement. For LLL, the question becomes whether gender is really the most important identity marker through which to be organizing their particular community.

In this scenario, breastfeeding seems like the most important identifier, and regardless of gender, LLL could be a place where breastfeeding parents found support and kinship.

~ Miriam Pérez speculating on the possiblity that the breastfeeding support group La Leche League would accept Trevor MacDonald (pictured “breastfeeding*” his son), a transgender father, as an LLL group leader, RH Reality Check, September 7.

*Trevor, born a woman, had his breasts removed three years ago but not his reproductive organs. He gave birth 16 months ago to son Jacob but had trouble breastfeeding. He achieved success through donated breast milk given to his baby through a narrow tube near the nipple. Trevor now identifies himself as a transgendered homosexual (“Yes, I’m complicated”), married to a man.

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