The Off Topic Topic

[Liep]

Our King is dying. After several operations for blot clots, lung cancer and a dementia diagnosis what took him out was a vacation to Egypt.

And he's gone.

I'm surprised at how many people are lined up along the road to see his casket driven to Amalienborg. I'm guessing the Republic is still a while away.

[Josquius]

His point about equality and not being a king is fair now I think about it

[Maladict]

His point about equality and not being a king is fair now I think about it

We're all equal after death.

[Grey Fox]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/14/transgender-woman-breastfeed-health

Transgender woman able to breastfeed in first documented case

A 30-year-old transgender woman has been able to breastfeed her child, the first ever case of induced lactation in a transgender woman to be documented in academic literature.

Doctors said the case shows "modest but functional lactation can be induced in transgender women". The account was published in Transgender Health.

Tamar Reisman of Mount Sinai hospital in New York, one of the doctors who reported the case, said: "Transgender medicine is becoming part of mainstream medicine. We're getting more evidence-based data, we're getting more standardized care, we're getting more reproductive options."

The transgender woman went to doctors when her partner was five months pregnant. She said her partner did not want to breastfeed the couple's child, so she hoped to take on the responsibility.

Reisman and Zil Goldstein wrote that the woman was being treated for insomnia and anxiety, but otherwise appeared to be a "pleasant, well-nourished, well-developed woman".

The patient had taken hormone therapy for six years, but had not had gender reassignment or breast augmentation before she approached doctors. Reisman and Goldstein used a framework known to induce lactation in cisgender women who had not experienced a pregnancy to promote the patient's lactation.

The patient took a gradually increasing regimen of the female hormones progesterone and estradiol, stimulated her chest with a breast milk pump, and took domperidone, a nausea medication known to increase milk production.

Domperidone is used internationally but it is not approved in the US, because in some intravenous instances it produced cardiac arrhythmias, cardiac arrest and sudden death. It is licensed to treat nausea in the UK. The patient obtained the drug from Canada.

Advertisement

Reisman said that with an optimized hormone regimen it may be possible to induce lactation without domperidone, because chest stimulation naturally increases the breast milk-producing hormone prolactin.

"There have been self-reported cases online of transgender woman trying DIY regiments to induce breastfeeding, but this is the first case of induced functional lactation in the academic literature," Reisman said. There are also cases of transgender men carrying pregnancies and breastfeeding, she said.

However, Reisman said the case has also attracted questions about whether men could now breastfeed. "That, implicitly, is saying that you see transgender women as cisgender men, which is transphobic," she said.

Joshua Safer, an endocrinologist at Boston Medical Center not involved in the case, told the New Scientist the report is "a very big deal".

"Many transgender women are looking to have as many of the experiences of non-transgender women as they can, so I can see this will be extremely popular," Safer said.

The bit I put in bold seems a bit much.

but it is true.

Men cannot breastfeed, women can.

[grumbler]

but it is true.

Men cannot breastfeed, women can.

This is mere argument by assertion.  If the article is correct, men CAN breast-feed, given the relevant treatments ahead of time.

[Grey Fox]

but it is true.

Men cannot breastfeed, women can.

This is mere argument by assertion.  If the article is correct, men CAN breast-feed, given the relevant treatments ahead of time.

If given the relevant treatments ahead of time, does one automatically become a transgendered women?

[Josquius]

Pretty sure there have been documented cases of men with hormone imbalances giving a little milk

[garbon]

but it is true.

Men cannot breastfeed, women can.

This is mere argument by assertion.  If the article is correct, men CAN breast-feed, given the relevant treatments ahead of time.

If given the relevant treatments ahead of time, does one automatically become a transgendered women?

No.

[grumbler]

If given the relevant treatments ahead of time, does one automatically become a transgendered women?

Not by any definition of transgendered with which I am familiar. 

[Valmy]

So I was walking on UT campus during lunch and in front of Gregory Gym the Vietnamese Student Association had some event going on. I was on the phone so I just casually glanced in their direction and then had to do a double-take. They were using the flag of South Vietnam instead of the current Vietnamese Flag. I thought for a second I would just walk over there and ask why that was but then thought to look it up on my phone first just to make sure I wasn't going to step on any cultural sensitivity grenades and boy am I glad I did. That rabbit hole goes pretty deep.

So yeah, the flag of South Vietnam is still a thing and in fact can lead to protests and serious shit on your campus if you forget it.

[Jacob]

So I was walking on UT campus during lunch and in front of Gregory Gym the Vietnamese Student Association had some event going on. I was on the phone so I just casually glanced in their direction and then had to do a double-take. They were using the flag of South Vietnam instead of the current Vietnamese Flag. I thought for a second I would just walk over there and ask why that was but then thought to look it up on my phone first just to make sure I wasn't going to step on any cultural sensitivity grenades and boy am I glad I did. That rabbit hole goes pretty deep.

So yeah, the flag of South Vietnam is still a thing and in fact can lead to protests and serious shit on your campus if you forget it.

There's a park near my house where at least once a year a group of Vietnamese will congregate in national costumes, some wearing South Vietnamese uniforms and medals (and carrying decomissioned M16s), under the flag of South Vietnam. They make fiery speeches (in Vietnamese), presumably about the barbarity of the current Vietnamese regime.

[Barrister]

So I was walking on UT campus during lunch and in front of Gregory Gym the Vietnamese Student Association had some event going on. I was on the phone so I just casually glanced in their direction and then had to do a double-take. They were using the flag of South Vietnam instead of the current Vietnamese Flag. I thought for a second I would just walk over there and ask why that was but then thought to look it up on my phone first just to make sure I wasn't going to step on any cultural sensitivity grenades and boy am I glad I did. That rabbit hole goes pretty deep.

So yeah, the flag of South Vietnam is still a thing and in fact can lead to protests and serious shit on your campus if you forget it.

My limited understanding is that most Vietnamese immigrants to Canada/US fled in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saigon and are not at all impressed with the current government - and even those that have come over since are largely family members of those who came before, and have similar feelings.

[The Brain]

Many people who've had to flee from Communism are less than impressed by Communism.

[derspiess]

Makes sense to me.  Why would children/grandchildren of Vietnamese refugees want to display the communist regime's flag? 

[Jacob]

Makes sense to me.  Why would children/grandchildren of Vietnamese refugees want to display the communist regime's flag?

Yeah there's nothing puzzling about it.