by Brenda Power, Daily Mail
And that’s not the most bizarre thing he espouses
You know how you think you’ve finally heard everything? Well, buckle up. An Irish breastfeeding NGO has invited a man who promotes male lactation to speak at its conference here in October.
That’s right, this is a bloke who believes newborn babies can be fed male breast milk, a chemically-induced pus-like nipple discharge also known by the lipsmacking name of galactorrhea, and that’s all perfectly normal and wonderful.
Oh, and you’re subsidising this particular NGO to the tune of €100,000 a year. To hire a man who advocates male breastfeeding – in a country, by the way, where the level of breastfeeding by boring old females is among the lowest in Europe.
Jacob Engelsman (really, shouldn’t that be Engelsperson?), who is not a parent, not a doctor, not a healthcare professional of any kind and, as far as I can tell, most definitely not a woman, is to appear at the national conference of the Association of Lactation Consultants of Ireland (ALCI) at a Galway hotel next month.
Engelsman will be discussing ‘Lactation support for gender-diverse families’ and, according to the ALCI, this will include ‘clinical care for transgender and non-binary patients’ and ‘the impacts of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on lactation’.
Now since healthy, fertile new mothers are rarely in need of hormone replacement therapy, I suspect that Engelsman’s main target audience is trans-identified males taking female hormones who want to cosplay at being mammies by suckling newborn infants.
You will not be surprised, then, to learn that his previous gigs included a US fetish convention called Frolicon – tagline, ‘Where Nerdy Meets Naughty’ – and one of his past presentations was called, ‘Inducing Lactation for Kinksters’.
Read also: Where Does Male Lactation Fit in Breastfeeding Support Networks? by Catherine Monaghan, Genspect
and from June 2025: Why is the NHS running male breastfeeding workshops? by Joan Smith, UnHerd