Trustee of Mermaids quits after speech to paedophile aid group Times article

Very good point.

I suppose any criticism would come from the apparent dearth of opposing views from within his own department.

Without wishing to contradict @NecessaryScene who is pretty much spot on I'm sure, I would also like to remind everyone that gender ideology is part of queer theory and that dismantling child safeguarding is pretty much no. 1 on their list of aims. Criticizing mermaids for a lack of child safeguarding is like criticizing a swimming teacher for failing to keep the kids dry.

They (all those still going into bat for mermaids in anyway) don't care about vulnerable trans children, they don't care about children or safeguarding at all. They care about protecting an ideology.

As Victoria Smith said in the Critic - they think the kids are there to protect them, not the other way around.

It was entirely predictable that the adults would hide behind the children. As soon as it became clear that Mermaids — the charity that claims to support “gender-diverse youth” — would at last be subject to some degree of formal scrutiny, out came the familiar hashtag: #ProtectTransKids.

[...]

You will note that the people being investigated here are not children themselves. Being desperately unhappy with your body and confused about your identity are not crimes, whereas exploiting vulnerable young people who feel this way really ought to be.

Nonetheless, Mermaids and its supporters — including Stonewall CEO Nancy Kelly — have chosen to misrepresent the situation in the same way they always do. It’s not them, the adults, who are being asked to justify their actions. Oh, no, kids — it’s you who are under attack.

[...] You might think of this as covering your own backs. I think of it as terrorising vulnerable children for political gain.

It’s a tactic familiar to anyone who has studied domestic abuse and coercive control.

they don't care about children or safeguarding at all. They care about protecting an ideology.

yes. And it makes me incredibly sad and incredibly furious.

These people have been allowed to write policies for OUR SCHOOLS.

Quite.

They (all those still going into bat for mermaids in anyway) don't care about vulnerable trans children, they don't care about children or safeguarding at all. They care about protecting an ideology.

I don’t get why BC/PN have an issue with the fact that the newspaper got evidence for their story by posing as a 14 year old and accessing the chat.

They're angry that someone has exposed the massive issues with their processes, is all.

'10. The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad.'

Adapt this slightly for children.

I'm so sorry to hear that, alishy. That's appalling! I think there's nothing to stop you making a formal complaint now.

*complained to the school

Mermaids has been ignoring their safeguarding responsibilities for years. In approx 2019 my child used their forums on advice from their school pastoral team as they were part of a group of teens for which gender identity was the only topic of conversation.
At the time my child was 14 so I was still monitoring their phone use, a user of the forum that was verified as an adult gave my child advice on how to hide self harm scars from parents, how to report parents to doctors for mental abuse and how to obtain a binder. My child had not indicated in their post that they had any issue with us although had mentioned self harm which we until then had not known about (we have a really close relationship and we would NEVER abuse them, we just did not want to jump with both feet into the gender affirmative parenting club).
We complained to as a result of this and they stopped advising young people to use mermaids. I was too stressed and focused on my own child at the time to make an official complaint and I regret this fully.
Just wanted to add to the pile of examples of Mermaids failing the young people they claim to support.

There is already so much reverse ferreting going on and whilst I really, truly understand the importance of golden bridges, I really want these people to be forced to acknowledge what they've been supporting.

I have come to the conclusion that BC isn't that bright.

I don’t get why BC/PN have an issue with the fact that the newspaper got evidence for their story by posing as a 14 year old and accessing the chat.

Isn’t that how these things work? Journalist suspects something is going on so poses or gets someone to pose as someone else to access what they are investigating. Over the years we have seen people go work for sports direct, Atos/Capita, Amazon and many more, wearing a microphone and camera to get evidence. It even happens to individuals, Who are suspected of doing something dodgy. Does he have a problem with that as well.

Plus, it should be a huge concern to Meemaids and BC (as a supporter) that adults are able to gain access and present as child in their online support forums. Instead it’s being used more in a ‘doesn’t matter what that article says, the person wasn’t a real child’ as though it’s a get out jail free card.

Has anyone reported Mermaids to the police for this I wonder? I'm assuming shutting down their phone lines is because they've realised they've failed with their safeguarding checks and may have more dodgy adults directly accessing children?
It really needs a deep dive into their hard drives to see precisely what's going on.

Fucking hell.

That's all I'm saying, for now

BC's husband is a GP so they have a lot more to lose than OJ.

All Jacob Breslow's friends and associates need looking at. I'm wondering if he and his husband/wife (uses both pronouns) have fled back to the US?

Telegraph Editorial pulls no punches

Or they knew about how bad Breslow is and have shit a brick because they know what's is going to come out (that blog for starters)

The fact BC didn't hesitate to condemn JB and was pretty strong about it and then has been very quite and THEN seemingly has run something admitting JKR was right is interesting.

Breslow is the indefensible face of this. Your choices are double down or reverse ferret if you supported mermaids.

OJ has chosen one route. BC seems to be taking the other. Others will be doing the same. Including those who work for mermaids as paid staff and volunteers. Obviously if you are a volunteer it's easier to just say I'm not doing it anymore.

That blog is very concerning. Who are Breslow's associates. If he was blogging who was reading? Who knew? And knew his academic field? This isn't remotely a secret...

I've just seen the post on Nutmeg about his tattoo and was struck by the similarity to Sam Smiths tattoo!

I‘m from science so I don‘t really know how ,academic freedom‘ is handled in humanities (or actually I do, looking at how radical feminists in academia are treated or scholars advocating for the Palestinean cause).

My point is, like freedom of speech, academic freedom is something worth protecting, no matter how appalling (whereby a line must obviously be drawn when you incite violence or the abuse of children…).
So, LSE might ‚struggle‘ (and I don’t doubt it is a selective ,struggle’, where Queer Theory gets the support others are missing) with the ‚academic freedom‘ angle.

LSE are in a bit of a bind.

They could feign surprise, admit a lack of intellectual curiosity over his work and get rid of him. That seems unlikely.

They could express faux shock over his attendance at the conference whilst avoiding the topic of whether they stand behind the views he expresses in his published works and encourage him to tender his resignation. I'd bet on this.

Or they could do the decent thing, throw open their doors and get an external organisation to investigate how their centre of learning was captured. Can't see this happening, sadly.

LoobiJee I wanted to make the same point, you beat me to it.

Pink News uses the Rowling Tweet in context of the alleged persecution of Mermaids and the wider Queer community by bigots like evil Rowley (paraphrasing here).
I think the tide is turning, but from my experience Pink News and similar media & orgs who are heavily invested in the transcult will only reckon with this once it is all ‚ancient’ history and a new generation has taken over. (Always easier to acknowledge the mistakes of others in the distant past than one‘s own current or very recent failing.)

I hadn’t seen Smileless’s screenshot from Breslow’s blog when I posted my previous comment.

I guess Hearth’s observation that he used to write for PN could explain their lack of criticism of him. They employed a man who openly advocates for PN’s “wider queer community” to support his “sexual object choice” preferred age range. Or as us pesky mothers might, oh so “predictably”, frame it - PN employed a man who has been open about his sexual interest in children. So, on this occasion, maybe taking a sideswipe at JKR is merely PN’s cynical way of distracting from their own “misstep”.

The article is quite odd. It’s mainly natural with just reporting of fact. A little bit of playing down the safe guarding issues.

But what’s interesting is that they included the tween from JKR, but didn’t attack it directly. Not sure anyone thinks it’s positive about JKR or completely damning to mermaid. But it’s a very different type of article.

I am happy to read that LSE are reporting that the JB isn’t currently working at LSE. Though I think suspension (pending investigation) not sabbatical, is more appropriate. Or is ‘sabbatical’ just a cover?

Not sure PN can be too damning on the JB issue, even if they wanted to, given he was a writer for them. There’s some back and forth on wether he was a staff writer or guest writer. BC is insisting he was listed as a staff writer by mistake after a platform move.

Unfortunately I think you are all mis-reading that PN article.

Their key message is that Mermaid’s “misstep” is being used as a pretext for criticism of the “wider queer community”. Their use of the word “predictably” in the para just above the screenshot of JKR’s tweet is the clue to their actual position.

Note that they haven’t criticised or condemned Mermaids in that article; what they have done is set out in full the excuse and justification Mermaids used in their public statement. Using the word “misstep” to describe what anyone else would see as an alarming safeguarding failure is intended to minimise Mermaid’s failure.

Note that there is no commentary in the PN article about the potential risks to young people from Mermaids failing to properly check out its adult volunteers; that appears to be of little interest to PN. No, based on this article, PN’s main concern appears to be about potential reputational damage for adults in the “queer community” arising from Mermaid’s “misstep”. Basically they are trying to imply that the commentators concerned about Mermaids safeguarding failures are motivated by homophobia not by concerns for children’s safety.

How come LSE are completely ignoring this issue?