Apologies for the length, but if anyone wants my thoughts on some of the things Milli Hill said then here they are (after the quotes from Milli in italics).
If you can't be bothered to read the summary is "Milli, please try to have conversations with people you believe you disagree with. To a very large extent I am increasingly realizing that there are two types of people - extremists in echo chambers and moderates out there having conversations with friends, allies and those that they disagree with."
I don’t think their declaring themselves as such should entitle them to be perceived as female in every situation
Why do you feel men should be perceived as female in any situation? Why do you support the right of men to try to hide their sex and trick women into thinking they are not around men?
I understand that if you "need" a surrogate you need a woman not a man. I understand that if you are at a bar and you wish to purchase a drink you don't need a man and you don't need a woman - you need either, it matters not a jot which. What I don't understand is what circumstances you might need a man and not a woman, but it doesn't matter if the man is a woman pretending to be man not a real man. Can you explain how and why sometimes one needs a woman but they can be a man woman?
I find the idea that ‘woman’ is a costume you can put on a bit insulting, so while I support everyone’s right to dress however they like, I don’t support the idea that wearing a dress and lipstick magically makes you female.
Why don't find womanface VERY insulting? Do you really support the right of men to perform obscene or close to obscene, porn inspired parodies of women, whilst promoting the most misogynistic ideology in history?
"Because of this, I’m aware I have one area upon which, if I sat down for a beer with Trump, the late Charlie Kirk, or maybe even Tommy Robinson, we would agree on. Just one."
Why on earth do you not think you might not have loads in common? I strongly suggest you speak to people you disafgree with much more often, to understand them and to try to find shared ground. In doing so you can increase unity and reduce division in our society, which is to fight extremism.
"In fact, if they said anything like that to me, I would remind them that, not that long before they were born, women were told being a doctor or going to university was ‘only for boys’, so it was probably better if we didn’t think about things in that restrictive way any more. I very much doubt that the men of the extreme right would agree with me on any of that."
Had you considered having conversations with people you have pre-judged in order to see what their views are, rather than just write them off as extremists?
"Their reasons for reinforcing the reality of biological sex are, I suspect, mostly to do with their deeply conservative, and often religious ideas about the family, heterosexuality, and the kind of binary gender roles - ‘men adventuring out in the world’, ‘women in the home’ - that feminism has sought to challenge."
Why not sit down and ask them rather than criticise due to suspicion? I find it incredibly bigoted of you to make such sweeping assumptions, and you are crazy if you think Kirk and Robinson are particularly similar.
"Trans ideology - the extreme version - reinforces the exact same regressive ideas about gender that the far right adores"
But you can't even identify far right people accurately, so how can we trust that you understand what the far right think? What makes Robinson far right and can you point to me where he supports pushing old fashioned regressive sex-stereotype roles for men and women? (Pointing out that on average women are better at caring and nuturing and men are better and fighting in wars is not pushing old fashioned regressive sex-stereotype roles, by the way).
"If you spoke to any of those men they would probably have something to say about trans people and they would agree that you can’t change sex. Would they also want to smash patriarchy and dismantle gender? That, I would say, is less likely. "
Please, for god's sake - try conversation. Ask these men (and women, there were lots of women there) what they think? You never know, speaking to people you clearly try to avoid because you think that they are extremists and nasty or stupid, might just open your mind to different perspectives and cause you to re-appraise and refine some of your views.
Kelly Jay Keen - a woman who I have stuck up for here on WHAT ABOUT WOMEN - was not only at Robinson’s rally but was shown in one of his tweets to be part of his inner circle.
Please tell us more abotu this "inner circle"? How did KJK become and member, what are the rules and what does KJK get out of it?
Other high profile gender critical women, like ‘The Famous Artist Birdy Rose’ and ‘Aja the Empress’, seem to be going down the same route, their social media feeds full of Union Jacks and support of Robinson and the right.
Union Jacks? The country of the flag we live in? Whatever next? I mean Birdy and Aja are literally one step away from being personally responsible for the deaths of 6 m Jews with such egregious behaviour. That was sarcasm by the way. I think that it's extremist to think that the country's flag proves a support of the hard right. It is not extremist to be proud of opne's country, not least when it's TERF island
My heart sank yesterday when I read what seems to be accurate news that there is a trans connection to Charlie Kirk’s killer. It sank because I know this will only stoke yet more division, hatred and intolerance and give all of this extremism a further boost.
My heart did not sink. I was reassured that the cause of Kirk's death appears to be related to a well known, extremist / terrorist cult - gender ideology - and not some entirely new form of extremism that is new to the West.
To understand the concept of ‘gender critical’ you need to have a basic grip of feminist history - this is probably why many gender critical women are over 40. You need to either know or remember that, in many countries in the 1960s and 70s, including the UK, women could not open a bank account or apply for credit without their father or husband’s signature, and were pushed out of their jobs when they got married or had children. You need to remember how few career opportunities women had, just a few decades ago, when divorce was also much more socially frowned upon and women got paid drastically less without question. You need to understand how openly sexist, racist and homophobic the world was, not that long ago at all, and how hard women have worked for decades to bring about justice and positive change.
This is just wrong. To understand the concept of "gender critical" you need to understand that humans cannot change sex, and that sex is real and matters, not least because women and women's rights matter, and women don't have rights if men can be women. Gender critical means one is critical of the idea that a wrong-sex gender identity trumps sex in a sex-based world. One can be a regressive and conservative gender critical person, or you can be more progressive, just like huge swathes of the right.
In just the same way, women who march alongside Tommy Robinson seem to have forgotten their history. Nothing good has ever come from the extreme nationalism, racism and xenophobia embodied on the streets of London on Saturday. Instead, truly terrible things, the darkest episodes of history, have happened as a result. Such extremism has always been framed as reasonable concerns about immigration or as national pride. This is how it happens.
What extreme nationalism, racism and xenophobia happened on the streets of London last Saturday? Are you making stuff up?
All of this ought to go without saying, but I have written this piece because over the years, I have learnt that nothing goes without saying. I have also learnt that every voice counts and that when you say nothing, those who are speaking are the ones who will be heard and their voices will shape the zeitgeist.
You could not be more wrong. Please, speak to people you think you disagree with.
So here is my one small voice. I am gender critical, but that is where my common ground with these extremists ends. Hatred, intolerance, racism, incitement to violence - no matter if you see yourself on the left or the right, they should never be supported. Look to history. None of this has ever ended well.
I did not see any hatred, intolerance, racism, incitement to violence in the large amount of citizen journalist content I watched, other than from the antrifa side who are repellent (and like you despise conversation with anyone they perceive as having a different opinion).