FFS Mermaids acting like amateurs again

My era is showing. I meant corrective rapes.

As a concerned parent I'd fall for this. It had never crossed my mind to think what an lgbtqia+ child could be. I just think "young teenage girl who might be a lesbian is in trouble" and my white Knight appears.

For people like me who lived through the forced rape era it's very effective!

Massive investigation needed into these bunch of charlatans asap.

This.

“tortured”…”offered conversion practices”

I do hope the children have the good sense to decline being tortured when the offer is made.

Mermaids are a joke, but not a funny one.

Maybe they’ve done it on purpose so they can count the same 6 thousand people twice?

They're two different ones. This one has 6102 sigs: https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/ban-conversiontherapy/

And this one has 6091: https://actions.mermaidsuk.org.uk/a/conversion-therapy?utmsource=facebook&utmmmedium=paid&utmcampaign=c1aA2&fbclid=IwAR22m1eTvO1et9gumkUl1UQvtElzHC1BCvm8EJm1TV4Xlq0l-U6UYJI3fsE

God they really are utterly incompetent

If actual torture is occurring in the UK, surely it’s a police (& social services matter if the victim is a child or a vulnerable adult)?

I really hope victims of torture have more to turn to than a help line staffed with non-expert volunteers who may not have been DBS checked.

I want arrests and victim support services involved.

Yes, but seems to have the same # of sigs? Really odd. They can't be putting people's names to a new wording, surely?

I wouldn't put it past them.

Trying to make sense of mermaids word salad is torture

Where is their evidence of torture? So crass and insensitive when there is real torture and abuse going on all over the world.

What do they mean by " instilling fear" ?

People have worn hand me downs from their brothers and sisters fir generations. Girls have had short hair and worn trousers fir years. Most rick bands saw many a man with long hair wearing leather /pvc trousers.

Occasionally kids got questions from.class mates but for the most part of someone ( a girl or boy) had a transformers lunch box they'd all sit and talk about transformers. No one really cared.

The only fear being instilled is at the hands of mermaids and their ilk who now send them down rabbit holes of fearing their parents reactions to excuse keeping secrets and making children panic their bodies are wrong and they need fixing with surgery because they play with the " wrong" toys.

Like minded friends have all commented on the proliferation of Mermaids and Stonewall sponsored content in recent weeks. We are all happy to be on the receiving end with an eye roll and moving on, rather than it going somewhere else.

Nuance and complexity gets lost in these arguments. There has been and probably remains an issue of abhorrent conversion therapy practices in the UK for trans people. That doesn't mean that its widespread, caused by gender critical beliefs or that affirmative care is the only way or necessarily a reasonable way forward.

That is a misuse of the very interesting National LGBTQ+ survey data they link to.

Reading that data, respondents had to be 16 or over. 6% of respondents were trans (I'm sorry, I'm simply not counting NB respondents in this as the phenomenon is so recent). The older age group were much more likely to have experienced conversion therapy. So things are getting better. There's also a strong link with religion, particularly Islam but also Christianity, and a strong link as you'd therefore expect with some ethnic minorities. I'd imagine there is conversion therapy in Judaism too but numbers in the UK may be too small to show up much. All fits exactly with Louie's story above - a troubled young adult who found a 'family' in extreme religion became vulnerable to organised religious homophobia. We know, unfortunately, that pressures from homophobic groups in the Anglican communion has meant the Archbishop of Canterbury has jumped to reiterating that homosexuality is wrong, so those risks to gay young people remain.

There is a surely deliberate lack of detail on what conversion therapy on trans people of different ages looks like now. A recent very moving article about ECT/aversion therapy in the Guardian written by a trans woman turned out to be about the early 60s. Are there really trans conversion camps out there, separate from homophobic ones? Who runs them? Who goes or gets sent on them?

We must always remember Mermaids themselves advocated watchful waiting c.2011.
There is an archive of their website.

Did they "torture" children ten years ago?

These people provide zero data to back up their claims & this emotive, hyperbolic language is a smokescreen.

If they are labelling these kids as LGBTQIA+etc then what percentage of the youth who seek treatment go on the T train?

Would think if all these kids of different groups who fall under this acronym are going to Mermaids, then only a fraction of these kids should, in theory end up being diagnosed as transgender?

What decent person is going to support 'conversion' therapy for any child.

It sounds absolutely horrific.

Although what you and I would think if 'conversion' therapy is not really what is happening when parents seek help and counselling for their children who have mental health issues.

It is complete hyperbole. I don't think any of us would support any cruel treatment against children or anyone else for that matter.

But therapy in the UK is not like that at all. It is not torture to try and explore why a child thinks they are trans and ensure that transitioning is right for them and not masking other issues.

I won't sign anything that charity does. These children need help and there needs to be charities that support them. This charity is not it. Safeguarding is the most important thing a children's charity can do.

This story of conversion therapy on their site reads very much like a lesbian being subjected to conversion therapy by her church and ending up as a transman.

mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/conversion-therapy-louies-story/

Louie didn't have conversion therapy because Louie was trans, but because Louie was in a same-sex relationship before transition.

I have been getting Mermaids and Stonewall petition ads on my Facebook for weeks now.

Yes, super hyperbolic language.

Yes, but seems to have the same # of sigs? Really odd. They can't be putting people's names to a new wording, surely?

Bloody hell! That is utterly coercive

What is transition, but conversion therapy?

Here it is on Mermaids' site.

mermaidsuk.org.uk/ban-conversiontherapy/

Talks about Truss, so fairly recent.