298 F. Giles
particularly through cross-nursing arrangements or milk sharing, ‘issues
a direct challenge to the perceived sacrosanct wholeness of the kind of
motherhood that authorises private and individualist constructions of
maternal identity’ ( 2004 : 288). This is what Linda Blum also identified
as the conflation of exclusive breastfeeding with exclusive mothering
( 2000 ).
Lissa Skitolsky puts this even more directly, arguing that we need to
separate the provision of breastmilk from the provision of breastfeeding,
so that a shared capacity to feed each other’s children might be fostered:
Feminists have long advocated for a more distributed child care frame-
work...but have only recently recognized that our conception of mater-
nity is tied to our conception of breastfeeding; what is currently viewed as
a private act of nourishment that strengthens and sanctifies the mother-child
bond, should, instead, be viewed as a potentially communal effort that wid-
ens the responsibility of maternity and strengthens and sanctifies the commu-
nity bonds with mothers and children. This would provide children with
the benefits of learning to trust multiple caretakers and knowing firsthand
an ethical community based on reciprocal, caring relations forged for the
sake our well-being and nourishment.’ ( 2012 : 72 [italics added])The tension between individualist constructions of the maternal and its
intersubjective practice is reflected in the varying terminology applied
to breastfeeding and human milk sharing: on the one hand, breast-
milk and breastfeeding is promoted as an intimate, even spiritually
inflected substance and practice; and on the other hand, the more for-
mal, slightly abstract term, human milk, is reserved for acts of dona-
tion, sale, and research. As a cisgender female, my preference when
talking with women, and in describing my own mothering practices,
is to refer to breastmilk as an acknowledgement of its specific, embod-
ied properties, and the many symbolic connotations of the term breast.
Similarly, MacDonald refers to breastfeeding and breastmilk through-
out his memoir, despite preferring to think of himself as chested rather
than breasted since his top surgery. However, some transgender men
nursing their offspring have adopted the term ‘chestfeeding’ as well as
‘mammal feeding’ and just ‘feeding’.^6 The advocacy mantra, ‘breast is
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