Mick Hartley

More misogyny from the gender language police:

A childbirth campaigner says she was “cancelled” for suggesting violence in childbirth was committed against women rather than against “birthing people”.

Milli Hill, a bestselling author and the founder of the Positive Birth Movement, a grassroots network of support groups for pregnant women, said she experienced “extreme bullying” after making the comments on social media last year.

The flare-up began in November when she was “tagged”, or name-checked, by a stranger in a post on Instagram. The person wrote: “Birthing people are seen as ‘the fragile sex’ who need to be kept under patriarchal authority by doctors.”

Hill replied: “I would challenge the term ‘birthing person’ in this context though … It is women who are seen as the ‘fragile sex’ etc, and obstetric violence [medical interventions performed during childbirth without a woman’s consent] is violence against women.”

She was instantly subjected to a torrent of hate mail and demands for her books to be boycotted. One comment read: “Let’s just air it. Milli Hill. We shouldn’t be buying her books. We shouldn’t be gifting them. We shouldn’t be following her. We shouldn’t be quoting her. She had dangerous opinions, beliefs and views.”

What's wrong with these people? "Dangerous opinions, beliefs and views" for stating the truth?? Everyone who gives birth – even the Guardian's Freddy McConnell – is a biological women. They can call themselves men, and take the moustache hormones afterwards, but they're still women. It's lucky the doctors and midwives who help deliver the babies are aware of this, otherwise they'd be in real trouble.

Hill, who has three children, was then contacted by Amy Gibbs, the chief executive of Birthrights, a charity that campaigns for human rights during childbirth, an organisation she has worked alongside for years.

Gibbs wrote: “I was really concerned to see public comments you made today on Instagram about obstetric violence. Particularly the comment that “obstetric violence is violence against women” and challenging/disputing that it could happen to non-binary or trans people who give birth.

“As you know, obstetric violence is violence perpetuated in the maternity context, which means it can happen to birthing people who don’t identify as women … I’m afraid that Birthrights isn’t able to work with people who don’t share our inclusive values.”

And that's a pathetic response. Our inclusive values? Oh do fuck off. It's so priggish and smug. And cowardly.

Hill, who is also a psychotherapist, said she had had concerns about changing attitudes and language towards childbirth for some time. “The two new phrases I began to notice were ‘birthing people’ used alongside or instead of ‘women’ and ‘assigned male/female at birth’, suggesting something that is given or allocated to you by something or someone external, not something that is innate, as biological sex is.” She has found that there is an unwillingness to engage in discussion or debate.

Hill, who wrote about the experience on her blog, is the latest in a line of feminist childbirth campaigners to find themselves ostracised for airing their concerns. In 2015, the American midwife and bestselling author Ina May Gaskin was vilified for adding her name to a letter warning the Midwives Alliance of North America against removing the word “woman” from its guidelines.

In 2019, Lynsey McCarthy-Calvert, a birth coach and spokeswoman for Doula UK, was forced to resign after saying on Facebook that only women can have babies.

Hill, who is writing a handbook for teenage girls about periods, said: “I find it really troubling that women like me who raise these kinds of points are being bullied and silenced in these extreme ways. I fully support trans and non-binary people and acknowledge that they also give birth, but as a person whose work has been centred [on] female biology, I should not be attacked or have my livelihood threatened for asking for nuanced discussion, or worse still, for simply stating facts.”

In response to the criticism, she has decided to close the Positive Birth network, which had 400 groups internationally.

Birthrights said: “Equality and inclusion is core to our ethos, and our services are available to everyone who is pregnant … We regularly review all our partnerships to ensure they reflect our values.’

It's as if we had to rewrite text books to remove any reference to humans as being bipedal, in deference to those with Body Integrity Dysphoria who've had a leg amputated. In case, with just their one leg, they get offended…

Update: Milli Hill – I will not be silenced.