Colin Wright is a biologist who often writes about sex and gender. He often pisses off people by claiming that there are only two sexes (and see here). But now, according to Instagram, he has also engaged in "hate speech." Here is his Tweet where he explains what happened at Instagram:
You can read the entire thread here.
Abigail Shrier has taken a lot of heat for sharing well-documented information and raising important questions about transgender treatment and therapy. For example:
Abigail Shrier’s book Irreversible Damage has created quite a stir. When it was first released in June 2020, Amazon refused to allow the publisher to run sponsored advertisements of the book. After Joe Rogan interviewed Shrier on his podcast, some Spotify employees demanded that the episode be taken down. More recently, Target took the book off its shelves in response to a complaint from a person on Twitter, but later put it back due to other complaints from free speech advocates. Several others have declared the book to be transphobic and harmful to the trans* community (just skim some of the reviews on Amazon)—a particularly hot take among those who have not read the book.
A few days ago, Shrier published an article discussing interviews she has conducted with two well credentialed experts. Shrier's expressed motive is to help families with teenagers who are struggling with how to proceed. Shrier's interviews vindicated many of the points she made in her previous writings, including her book, Irreversible Damage. Here is an excerpt from "Why Marci Matters: Dr. Marci Bowers’ and Dr. Erica Anderson’s Candor Could Help Thousands of Families":
On Monday, I published probably the most important piece of my career thus far: an interview I did with two top gender medical providers – vaginoplasty expert and gender surgeon Dr. Marci Bowers and child psychologist at the UCSF gender clinic, Dr. Erica Anderson, who spoke candidly about risks of current treatment protocols guiding transgender medicine.For the first time in the U.S., top gender medical providers collectively acknowledged four facts: early puberty blockade can lead to significant surgical complication and also permanent sexual dysfunction; peer and social media influence do seem to play a role in encouraging the current, unprecedented spike in transgender identification by teen girls; and the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) – of which both Bowers Anderson are board members – has been excluding doctors who question current medical protocols to its detriment.
But the bombshell – the point made to me in interviews with so many endocrinologists, but never by any providers of transgender medicine – was that “orgasmic naïveté” is real and it’s a problem.
In Bowers’ words:
When you block puberty, the problem is that a lot of the kids are orgasmically naive. So in other words, if you've never had an orgasm pre-surgery and then your puberty's blocked, it's very difficult to achieve that afterwards. And I think that I consider that a big problem, actually. It's kind of an overlooked problem that in our informed consent of children undergoing puberty blockers, we've in some respects overlooked that a little bit.
The story told by Milli Hill is stunning, disturbing and increasingly played out these days. Here the comment that caused her to become the object of intense hate by trans rights activists:
“Thanks. Good to see this post. I would challenge the term ‘birthing person’ in this context though, especially on international day to end violence against women. It is women who are seen as the ‘fragile sex’ etc, and obstetric violence is violence against women. Let’s not forget who the oppressed are here, and why.”
This comment was the match that lit the gasoline.
Last Nov I expressed the view that obstetric violence is violence against women. It happens to women 'because they are female'. The resulting pile on was horrific. I've finally decided to tell my story and shine a light on this misogynistic bullying.
Hill is an eloquent and sensitive thinker and writer, but that didn't protect her. Despite being the target of a hate-fest, Hill is maintaining her position and her measured state of mind. I end here with this excerpt, but I highly recommend here article, "I Will Not be Silenced."
By sharing this story, I am aware I am laying it in front of you for your judgement. You may decide that my views about obstetric violence or the distinction between sex and gender are wrong. And that’s OK. It should be ok for us to hold different views and to respectfully discuss them. When we do so, it’s sometimes even possible to change people’s minds. Alternatively, we don’t change their minds, but our own clarity of thought benefits from the dialogue, and we develop and grow from the experience of sharing our views and disagreeing. We discover branches of thought we have not yet explored, we enter into grey areas, we see new perspectives. This is the kind of nuanced discussion that elevates humanity and promotes ideals such as peace, progress, growth and tolerance.
The opposite happens when we decide it is acceptable to mistreat, silence or bully people with whom we do not agree. It should never be acceptable to threaten individual’s livelihoods in the way that is currently happening to so many women. I can see that the tide is currently beginning to turn on this, as more women speak out – and this is my main motivation for speaking out. But I also hope that at some point there is a period of reflection on just how far the policing of women’s thoughts and opinions was allowed to go before anybody really noticed. To those of us in the eye of the storm, it felt completely dystopian, and this was exacerbated by the fact that the majority of people seemed to have no idea that a modern day ‘witch hunt’ was happening – or perhaps they did know, but looked the other way.
I also hope that people take time to consider why those who are being dragged to the pyre are not just women, but in most cases, lifelong left-leaning, open minded, educated and tolerant women, often with a history of supporting minority groups or working in areas concerned with justice and fairness. Either there is something in the water that has caused these usually rational and inclusive women to turn into hateful bigots overnight, or they have a point that’s worth listening to.
Meanwhile, J.K.Rowling stepped in to offer some words of support for Hill, somehow increasing her attractiveness as a target for venom:
Trans men are not the same as men. Trans women are not the same as women. Men were not born as women, whereas trans men were. These are not mean spirited things to say. They are facts. Trans men were born as women and they present as men. If they want me to refer to them as men, I happily will. No problem. But that doesn't change the fact that trans men are not exactly the same as natural born men. Buck Angel, a trans man, explains:
