YogabirthUK cancel event after Freddy McConnell flounce

[WinterTrees]

Saw this on twitter this morning but can't see a thread here.

Milli Hill was supposed to be appearing at an event run by YogabirthUK entitled 'Gender and Birth: A space to listen.' Milli was lined up to appear alongside Freddy McConnell and another speaker, but Freddy pulled out after the event was announced, on the grounds that Freddy could not appear 'alongside/after/in the same remote vicinity' as a birth specialist who recognises biological sex.

Full tantrum available here. twitter.com/millihill/status/1498060037536714752

The YogabirthUK Instagram link is worth looking at too. Lots of support for Milli Hill and regret about the cancellation of an event that was literally supposed to be providing 'space to listen', but the TRA input is interesting and very telling. (Spoiler alert: TRA claims MH is a disgusting transphobe for being exclusionary to transwomen when - crucially - Freddy is a transman. And excluded Freddyself.)

I am having one of those days when my patience with all this feels very thin. Very thin indeed.

[quote vivariumvivariumsvivaria]@WinterTrees - this person is a journalist, though?

I assume that means some sort of journalistic training was undertaken?

I mean, surely you don't get a job in the Guardian by identifying as a journo? Despite which, yes, totally agree.

Baffling.[/quote]
Sadly I think 'journalist' is one of those words that has been re-defined.

Certainly has - any monkey with a keyboard is a ‘journalist’ these days.

@WinterTrees

I've just read Freddie's statement again, because 24 hours on this is still mightily pissing me off.

Freddie says 'I won't speak alongside/after/in the same remote vicinity of anyone who takes such a discriminatory and disingenuous position on trans people.'

Discriminatory? Milli Hill wasn't being discriminatory. If she had refused to share a platform with Freddie, that would have been discriminatory, but in fact the opposite happened.

Disingenuous? Let's look at the dictionary definition, shall we? "Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does." Milli Hill certainly isn't doing any of that. She is courageously candid in voicing her sincerely held, reality-based views. It is the fact that she's not willing to pretend to know less than she does that is the problem for Freddie.

I am just so sick of this Alice in Wonderland world where words can mean anything and the truth is a amorphous, shifting concept that means people like Freddie can adopt a tone of self-righteous indignation and have people yield to their utterly bullshit claims.

(I can't even begin to unpick 'in the same remote vicinity', though sinister associations with infection/vermin etc come to mind. And I'm not going to comment on Freddie's grammar because that would be petty.)

Hear, hear Winter.

It's episodes like these that really show how meaningless the term 'trans exclusionary' has become, where previously it would be the worst thing one could possibly be accused of.

Women need women-only spaces, as this incident shows.

This makes me so angry and my patience is very thin for this kind of stuff at the moment. I cannot believe an event was cancelled due to FM flouncing off. I’m also very confused that if FM has body/gender dysphoria how pregnancy/giving birth isn’t a hugely distressing experience.

It’s really sad that people lose out, all because someone has had what appears to be a tantrum. And it seems Milli Hill was asked to speak on another delay thereby being marginalised to accommodate FM.

Is Freddie the seahorse person who did the film a few years ago?

@DobbyTheHouseElk

Is Freddie the seahorse person who did the film a few years ago?

Yes.

@Lookingforatimeslip

This makes me so angry and my patience is very thin for this kind of stuff at the moment. I cannot believe an event was cancelled due to FM flouncing off. I’m also very confused that if FM has body/gender dysphoria how pregnancy/giving birth isn’t a hugely distressing experience.

It’s really sad that people lose out, all because someone has had what appears to be a tantrum. And it seems Milli Hill was asked to speak on another delay thereby being marginalised to accommodate FM.

According to his Instagram he found it highly distressing being misgendered by the medical professionals delivering his baby. Like they didn't have more important things to deal with.

I would have preferred to hear from them but if they won't turn up we can have the conversation without them.

Indeed we can. And are.

Their refusal to make a case for their outrageous demands is being increasingly noted.

If they've got nothin', then they can't expect to force people into accommodating it.

I thought I recognised the behaviour.

Freddy seems to live in transreality, where nothing is at it seems. Remember that Freddy made a documentary about giving birth, then tried to sue for invasion of privacy.

As for the flounce what can I say? Freddy needs to man up.

'According to his Instagram he found it highly distressing being misgendered by the medical professionals delivering his baby. Like they didn't have more important things to deal with.'

Jesus actual Christ. 'Misgendered' after doing one of the most biologically female things you could possibly do 🙄

FM has form for being rather economical with the truth.

Has Freddie said what they're going to do with all the money they crowdfunded to go to Sweden?

Not yet @Clymene...

Interesting, isn't it?

Was F going to Sweden because they've thrown in the towel and said that a transman who gives birth can be registered as a father?

My patience with this stuff is almost exhausted today. Every day I hear and see real journalists in action in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, risking their lives to report on other brave people genuinely fighting for the right to exist in freedom. And then I read this out and out narcissistic nonsense. FFS.

@WinterTrees

I've just realised that you need to scroll up to see all of that twitter thread on the link I posted.

MH has now revealed that FM absolutely did know the line up in advance of agreeing, so FM's claim that they were unaware is not true.

I just can't get my head around anyone wanting to be such an obstacle to other women accessing information and support. No one would criticise FM for deciding what's best for them and withdrawing without drama.

Appalling. Freddie and Freddie's supporters are toxic. Imagine ruining an event for women to appease your own ego issues.

Take a look at yourself, you selfish person. Idk what choices you make; to screw things up for women who need the help and support of other women in probably the most important time of their lives is just unforgivable.

Yes, that's exactly right, @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g.

Planned travel to a foreign country at a late stage of pregnancy during a pandemic, and crowdsourced money to pay for it.

Did not, I expect, think through the "what ifs?". Like, emergency c-section, PPH, retained placenta, baby needing SCBU, travel challenges and a war. Though, to be fair, a European conflict was not on many people's birth plans.

The rest though, it's just stupidity.

I am sure that those children are loved and well cared for. But, that bat shit selfishness from a lone parent? I'm glad Grandma's around keeping an eye on things.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Was F going to Sweden because they've thrown in the towel and said that a transman who gives birth can be registered as a father?

My patience with this stuff is almost exhausted today. Every day I hear and see real journalists in action in Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, risking their lives to report on other brave people genuinely fighting for the right to exist in freedom. And then I read this out and out narcissistic nonsense. FFS.

Exactly.

Would it be cruel to say flouncing doesn't look very manly ?

The organisers of this event should be ashamed of themselves. There's no reason why it couldn't have gone ahead minus a panellist. Sure, had it been all about Freddie and Freddie's "lived experience", it would have been impossible to hold without Freddie. But it wasn't. The people at fault here re the organisers (women?) who cancelled it. Freddie is insignificant to women's experiences of giving birth. After all, Freddie isn't a woman, right?

@Youmadeyourbed

I wonder how Freddie's fellow Guardian journalists, camped out at various war zones around the world, feel about Freddie's risk level at the hands of Milli Hill?

This ^^

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

I'm so pleased that baby was delivered safely and had the good sense to come early and be born in the UK. Perhaps Freddie is sad about not being registered as the "father" on the birth certificate but, better than trying to travel back to Blighty with a tiny baby, during a pandemic and a war.

F's lack of curiosity about WHY the infant had stopped growing is fascinating. I'm not an obstetrician but I can't imagine that cross sex hormones are that good for a uterus.

The baby had stopped growing?

This person feels “unsafe” - hasn’t this person been watching the news since last Thursday and realised the reality of being unsafe??

What a tantrumming dickhead.

Poor children, having this person as your mother.

@FrancescaContini - according to FM's insta, yes.

36 weeks concerns about growth retardation, then the placenta found to be failed, therefore induction.

As an aside, women who fall pregnant while menopausal also often land up with interventions about 36 weeks for IUGR. If they get that far in pregnancy, of course.

Testosterone puts a female body into an artificial menopausal state. And yet, we seem to ignore the awkward evidence we have on risk of pregnancy to older mothers and their infants. Doesn't mean mums >40 CAN'T have successful pregnancies and healthy babies, just that they need a bit of extra care.

Unwisely, I just had a look at F's Instagram feed. I rarely use Instagram so find it hard to follow but happened on a mention of F using breastmilk donated by altruistic women to feed the baby. I don't imagine this is quite the scenario many of them had in mind when they chose to donate. F opted to have a double mastectomy and now blames clinicians for not pointing out the blindingly obvious fact that F is now unable to breastfeed a baby.

Where would you even start to unpick that? 'I identify as male, I have a male name now, you should use he/him pronouns for me, I am on testosterone, I am applying for a GRC, I need a double mastectomy because my body is causing me severe dysphoria'. Would you seriously expect a clinician to deduce that the first thing F would do after getting the GRC would be to hotfoot it to the fertility clinic to get pregnant, and would then expect to feed the baby from the breasts that were causing such dysphoria that they needed to be surgically removed?

@vivariumvivariumsvivaria

Ah well, what’s a bit of placental failure in the scheme of things??