The Need for Absolute Moral Purity on Transgender Issues: The Story of Milli Hill
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:
Transgender Nomenclature
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:
Flattened and Ossified World Views
Chimamanda Adichie is one of the thoughtful writers who has dared to touch the third rail of transgender activists.
I gave an interview in March 2017 in which I said that a trans woman is a trans woman, (the larger point of which was to say that we should be able to acknowledge difference while being fully inclusive, that in fact the whole premise of inclusiveness is difference.)
In her article, "IT IS OBSCENE: A TRUE REFLECTION IN THREE PARTS," she describes the fallout. I admire her honesty and courage, her willingness to say what needs to be said, but also her kind-heartedness. Here is an excerpt:
I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship.
I find it obscene.
There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class.
People who ask you to ‘educate’ yourself while not having actually read any books themselves, while not being able to intelligently defend their own ideological positions, because by ‘educate,’ they actually mean ‘parrot what I say, flatten all nuance, wish away complexity.’
People who do not recognize that what they call a sophisticated take is really a simplistic mix of abstraction and orthodoxy – sophistication in this case being a showing-off of how au fait they are on the current version of ideological orthodoxy.
People who wield the words ‘violence’ and ‘weaponize’ like tarnished pitchforks. People who depend on obfuscation, who have no compassion for anybody genuinely curious or confused. Ask them a question and you are told that the answer is to repeat a mantra. Ask again for clarity and be accused of violence. (How ironic, speaking of violence, that it is one of these two who encouraged Twitter followers to pick up machetes and attack me.)
And so we have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow.
The Problem with the Transgender Affirmative Care Standard
This is an excerpt from a review of Abigail Shier's book Irreversible Damage by Dr. Harriet Hall, from a section called, "The customer is always right."
A new “affirmative care” standard of mental health care has been adopted by nearly every medical accrediting organization. The American Psychological Association guidelines go much further than respecting and supporting trans identities; they mandate that therapists adopt gender ideology themselves. Therapists must accept and affirm the patient’s self-diagnosis. Shrier likens this to telling an anorexic teen “If you think you are fat, then you are. Let’s talk about liposuction and weight-loss programs”. She asks whether a standard guided less by biology than by political correctness is in the best interests of the patient.Dr. Hall emphasizes that she is open to current treatments, but only where the patient needs them:We don’t provide affirmative care for anorexia. We don’t say “Yes, you are fat” and offer to help them reduce their weight even more. Part of a therapist’s role is to question a patient’s self-assessment.
I support hormones and gender surgeries for adults who will benefit from them. I care about the welfare of these adolescent girls and it bothers me that some of them may be unduly influenced and take irreversible steps they will later regret.
Dr. Hall concludes:
[Abigail Shrier's book] will undoubtedly be criticized just as Lisa Littman’s study was. Yes, it’s full of anecdotes and horror stories, and we know the plural of anecdote is not data, but Shrier looked diligently for good scientific studies and didn’t find much. And that’s the problem. We desperately need good science, and it’s not likely to happen in the current political climate. Anyone who addresses this subject can expect to be attacked by activists. Is ROGD a legitimate category? We don’t know, since the necessary controlled studies have not been done. I fully expect Shrier to be called a transphobe and to be vilified for harming transgender people, and I’m sure I will be labeled a transphobe just for reviewing her book.
She brings up some alarming facts that desperately need to be looked into. The incidence of teen gender dysphoria is rising and appears to be linked to internet influences and social peer groups. The number of people identifying as lesbians is dropping. Therapists are accepting patients’ self-diagnoses unquestioningly, and irreversible treatments are being offered without therapist involvement. We know at least some of these patients will desist and detransition, and we have no way to predict which ones. Children are being instructed in how to lie to parents and doctors to coerce them into providing the treatments they want. Families are being destroyed.