As someone transsexual since childhood who has experienced many issues growing up I was very interested to listen to this.
The first part I felt was valid in that not everyone nearly fits into stereotypically male or female. It was actually a bloody good argument over why we SHOULDNT label children as transgender and the importance of removing gender stereotypes.
As the training progressed their conclusions just became ridiculous and confusing. By all means have an organisation of qualified professionals to support dysphoric children but to actively go out and train people to find problems out of nothingness is disgusting.
The erase of transexualism and dysphoria as medical conditions was equally concerning.
Imagine if I said that clinical depression was an outdated term and from now on you just had to use the term "sad"....and anyone that ever felt even slightly sad came under the label. Instead of the x thousand people diagnosed with depression we now have x million people under the new sad umbrella. What happens to those with genuine clinical depression ?
You don't have to erase Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity Disorder and Transexualism when all you are trying to say is that not everyone conforms to gender stereotypes.
Their veiled criticism of CAMHS was greatly concerning. If a child does experience issues with gender identity what you don't do is immediately go to an organisation that slaps a TG label on and fails to identify and address other comorbidities. Trauma, Abuse, BPD are all factors. Most worrying of all is that certain indicators for child sexual abuse are now being swallowed up and dismissed by a TG label.
Never in a million years would I give Mermaids 1p for this nonsense.