Further determined to incinerate any semblance of credibility they may have been perceived to have left, PolitiFact is out with a new “explainer” lecturing sane people who don’t believe men are capable of breastfeeding.
While PolitiFact usually evaluates statements of fact on a scale from “True” to “Pants on Fire,” they’ll often cover hot-button issues in “explainer” articles where they can push a narrative while technically not taking an official stance. Their article came in response to conservatives who put the Centers for Disease Control on blast after they were believed to have recently published guidance on their official website for “trans and non-binary” individuals on how to “chestfeed” their infants (though they actually used that term on their website since 2018).
The CDC’s website poses the question “Can transgender parents who have had breast surgery breastfeed or chestfeed their infants?” which they answer with a “yes,” explaining that “Some transgender parents who have had breast/top surgery may wish to breastfeed, or chestfeed (a term used by some transgender and non-binary parents), their infants” and that “Healthcare providers working with these families should be familiar with medical, emotional, and social aspects of gender transitions to provide optimal family-centered care and meet the nutritional needs of the infant.”
To accommodate the post-truth reality we now live in, PolitiFact argues that dudes can in fact lactate by conflating milk produced by drugs and hormone therapies with milk naturally produced by biological women (or as they were formally known, “women”). Presumably, even PolitiFact is aware of how flimsy this kind of argument is, hence why they opted to put it in an “explainer” article where they wouldn’t have to justify a truth rating.
PolitiFact writes “Can transgender women lactate? The answer is yes, but it is rare….. If mammary tissue is developed, lactation can be ‘induced’ by mimicking the hormones produced in pregnancy. Induced lactation is not new and not exclusive to transgender people.”
As NewsBusters’ Alex Christy noted, PolitiFact also then downplays potential medical consequences of induced lactation:
It’s unclear who exactly the target audience for their article is, but fortunately, not a single person seems to be convinced by it:
Women. Only women can EVER breast feed! Men will NEVER be able to breast feed
— Women Are Not Costumes For Men (@TeeCee032) August 1, 2023
Bias nonsense. Many left wing/independent women have denounced this term as well. Stop pretending just conservatives have a problem with gender ideology. Only women BREASTFEED + no one has to pretend otherwise.
— JJ032🇨🇦 (@JJ03210) July 31, 2023
When you start your tweet with “conservative news outlets”, you immediately show your bias and lose all credibility!
— Lyman Eadie (@Xethm81) July 31, 2023
Lol! Conservatives? It’s not only conservatives you hacks, it’s freaking people with common sense!
— Brownsuck1973 (@brownsuck1973) July 31, 2023
Matt Palumbo is the author of Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers: How the Left Hijacked and Weaponized the Fact-Checking Industry and The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros
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