Milli Hill and female physiology

I messaged Milli Hill including a link to this discussion and she replied saying that it is 'great to see support on Mumsnet'. Randomly Twitter seems much more supportive of her and the concensus is that the Facebook comments are crazy.

I had to share this absolute gem. At first I was convinced it was a piss take but reading the follow up comments I believe it is true 😂

What is meant by 'more'... that's quite subjective.

More transmen than transwomen, well, yeah (obviously).
More transmen than abused preteens/teens/women?
More transmen than sex workers?
More transmen than women, doubtful (especially, as you say, considering many are in lesbian relationships/infertile, etc).

Unless they have stats to back up their assertions I fail to see why we should pay them any heed at all. We certainly shouldn't change language - there were just shy of 210K abortions in the UK in the 2019, they were all performed on women and girls, regardless of delusions.

www.miplannedparenthood.org/post/trans-men-need-abortions-too

Relevant quote:

"There are tens of thousands of trans people, including myself, who because of steps we have taken to transition don't even know if we are capable of becoming pregnant or not. There are trans men who can't access birth control, or pelvic exams, or abortions because clinics will refuse to treat them. We're less likely to have health insurance, more likely to live in poverty, and there are no federal laws protecting us from discrimination in housing and employment. Thus, we are one of the populations more likely to need an abortion at some point in our lives, because trans people can and do get pregnant."

So you can see that in the US, because trans men don't have the health or legal protections they have in the UK, it's possible that they might be more likely to require an abortion. Personally I think other things might weigh against that, eg a lot of trans men will be in relationships with women, and a lot will be infertile. But I can see where they're coming from in a US context.

A lot of these people are hard of thinking.

If you look at the kind of milieu in which Milli Hill operates, a lot of those women have bought into a world view in which birth has been dominated by a male-centred, over-medicalised approach, while women can be empowered by giving birth naturally, discovering their own inner strength.

But to adopt that view really means accepting that there are two classes of people, one of which, men, has power over the other, women. Once you start pretending that men can give birth and eradicating the word "woman" from discussions of birth, then their entire world view collapses in a heap.

First chance I've had to check back on facebook, no hate received for stating the truth - I think I've got off lightly. So much bile on there, though. Hundreds of comments from people seemingly happy to let the world know they don't understand biology, the meaning of basic words, where babies come from... They really need Milli's book!

Just threw in my two pence and then read a ridiculous comment from some woman saying when talking about women we have to include TW.
Depressing.

The TRA's love the word transphobic.

When did 'female' get redefined to include males? I missed that totally. Found those comments shocking and upsetting. I'm glad I'm through all that and have no more need of those services. I couldn't have coped with all that dehumanising language on top of the general horrendousness of being pregnant. This really needs to be stopped and reversed. Women women women.

I assume its partly because they don't want to use hormonal contraception, which are generally more reliable than barrier methods.

I can't remember where I saw it, and can't reference any stats but a brief mention about "inclusive" health services said something about trans men having a disproportionate need for abortion services.
Can it be that these biology deniers are so deep in their denial they have no understanding about the basics of the sexual act and the need for contraception?

I can’t get over the women who think you don’t have to be female to give birth. That female is a gender and a choice. They have literally no way to describe their physiology other than yes I have a uterus but oh no I’m not female. jfc.

I'm also interested in the question of how many trans men are giving birth - no one seems to be collecting the figures. In the UK there are 650,000 births a year. Trans people, according to Stonewall's figures - constitute one percent of the population. If trans men are giving birth in the same proportion as women, that would be about 6,500 births to trans men each year.

However, that seems highly unlikely, given that there are far more trans women than trans men, and that a lot of trans men can't give birth because of hormone treatment, or don't want to give birth because it would invalidate their sense of themselves as men. I think it must be a very small minority of trans men who want to get pregnant and give birth, because it would surely trigger their dysphoria.

I think what I find scariest is that midwives saying things like males give birth. It is just so fundamentally wrong.

Ooh dear. I'm not really up with YouTube influencers but am I right in thinking Zoella is one? Looks like she's had a baby and is promoting Milli's book....

I hope she doesn't have to spend her postnatal days fighting a pile on.

twitter.com/millihill/status/1432754107287281669?s=21

I refuse to use Facebook but if anyone is commenting it may be worth pointing out that the PROFESSIONAL organisations concerned with maternity care use the words WOMEN and MOTHER.
RCM, RCOG, NICE, MBRRACE

We are all lost when those organisations fall and I have my suspicions about the RCM but as yet this is the language used on all those organisations' websites.

They just like bullying individual women and are far too lazy to write meaningful letters to the organisations in charge.

It feels so depressing that we have to defend our use of the word “woman”. Apart it feeling almost dystopian, it is just plain sad to lose something that is so central to our personal experiences. And I can’t believe we are having it erased.

What struck me, reading Milli’s article and then the comments, was how ubiquitous and insistent the demands are now. There’s no room at all for live and let live. If some people want to use this language, then best of luck to them. That would be fine if it was done in a proportionate way. I have no truck with people or companies who provide a separate page or area for those who are distressed. But those who wish to continue to centre women and use language accordingly should not be hounded continually to change.

It’s so strange because when my husband and I chose to try to conceive our children, we never discussed which one of us would become pregnant, spend ten months growing and carrying the babies and all the discomfort that entails, or which one of us would have to endure childbirth.
If I’d have known it was just a state of mind and I could have opted out and got my husband to do it, I would have.
I’ve been had!

There are people on that thread saying being female is a state of mind and males can give birth.
They’re fucking lunatics.

I've read through the Facebook comments now and actually feel sick from them. Women being so vile and unsupportive of a woman who has dedicated her work to improving birth. I've messaged Milli to offer my support.

The comments are terrible. I follow her on Twitter and Instagram and she seems to get more support in these platforms. On Twitter, for example, there is one very positive comment compared to 219 on Facebook. I love Milli Hill and have got her period book for my 9 year old which I highly recommend.

I rarely go on Facebook.

However, I've been taking antenatal classes. They're run by a private company, not NHS or NCT. In the last written communication I received, I noticed that where they normally use the word 'mum', they had changed it to 'birthing parent'.

I'm due to give feedback on the course shortly, and I won't hold back, but it was very disappointing (and actually upsetting) to see this language used in the course literature.

Milli Hill is absolutely right to push back against this nonsense.

Words enter dictionary by common adoption in the population e.g. to google, catfish or gaslight.

But the words woman and female seem to be on the way out of the dictionary despite current abundant use with one specific meaning.

So it isn't a question of majority adoption. Word definitions rely on adoption by a specific demographic.

Sounds like outreach to young white males aged 16 - 20 in California is the only way to get the word woman to mean woman and for the word transwoman to be validating and fulfilling all by itself.

I hope I'm wrong...