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Greene, outraged by a clip of a trans woman attempting to breastfeed, says the woman and her husband should lose custody of their child.
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's demonization of transgender people just doesn't stop.
The Republican congresswoman (and noted conspiracy theorist) from Georgia tweeted Tuesday that it's "child abuse" for trans people to raise children and that trans parents featured on Courteney Cox's reality show should lose custody of their child.
Season 3 of 9 Months With Courteney Cox, which streams on Facebook Watch, follows the parenting experiences of several couples, including trans couple Ahanu and Petrona. Ahanu is transmasculine and carried the child, and Petrona is a trans woman.
What really incensed Greene was a June episode showing Petrona attempting to breastfeed the baby and being frustrated when she could not; the child is being fed with formula. Trans women are sometimes capable of breastfeeding through use of hormones or other medications to induce lactation. A recent study noted successful induced lactation in a trans woman. People sometimes use domperidone, an antinausea medication, for this purpose. However, researchers warn that this use of the drug is experimental; domperidone is banned in the U.S. because of risks to heart health, but it is legal in Europe and Canada. Americans sometimes obtain it from those locations. A certain level of female hormones can also produce lactation.
But to Greene, the idea of a trans woman breastfeeding amounts to "unnatural fantasies," and she denounced trans people as "mentally unstable." Greene retweeted a message from the similarly outraged Liz Joy, a Republican who is challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko in New York State's 20th Congressional District in the 2022 election. Joy lost to Tonko in the Albany-area district in 2020.
\u201cThis is CHILD ABUSE!!!!!\n\nThis baby is in danger! \n\nRemove this child immediately.\n\nCaring for and raising children should have nothing, absolutely NOTHING, to do with fulfilling this man\u2019s unnatural fantasies.\n\nMen can NOT give birth or breast feed.\n\nThey are mentally unstable.\u201d— Marjorie Taylor Greene \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@Marjorie Taylor Greene \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1626208834
Another Republican who was enraged by the episode was U.S. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana. He appeared on Fox News Primetime Tuesday, commenting that the episode showed social media corporations are "nauseously woke" for allowing this content while banning or placing warning labels on other types of content.
Host Pete Hegseth noted that the breast-feeding clip was not labeled "medical misinformation" and said it should have been. "How is this video not an example of say ... medical misinformation?" Hegseth said. "Facebook has decided it's going to be the arbiter of truth and science. Why wouldn't they look at this video and say it doesn't pass muster?" Well, maybe Facebook did some research about induced lactation.
Both Kennedy (no relation to the famous Democratic Kennedy family of Massachusetts) and Greene have a long history of anti-trans rhetoric. During a hearing on the Equality Act in March, Kennedy asked if the pending legislation, in fostering trans inclusion in sports, would allow boys to expose their penises to girls in locker rooms or girls to expose their genitalia. (The bill does not address genitalia.)
Greene has trolled Democratic U.S. Rep. Marie Newman of Illinois, who has a trans daughter and has an office across the hall from Greene in D.C., by hanging a poster on her own office door saying, There are TWO genders: Male & Female. Trust The Science!" She has also said teaching about LGBTQ+ identity is "child abuse," and just this week she denounced fellow Republican Caitlyn Jenner, who is in a long-shot campaign for governor of California. "Stop promoting this man in a dress," Greene tweeted.
