Change of CEO at mermaids…

I think LOJ would make a better Igor, he's more a follower than a leader.

In my remake of the Witchfinder General I'm just not seeing LOJ as Mathew Hopkins.

Could Joanne Harris play the title role with LOJ as her 'Igor' type assistant?

The LGB Alliance are in the middle of a court case with Mermaids. It's inappropriate for them to comment.

Tbh even if they weren't, if they want to be seen as pro lgb rather than anti trans it would be preferable to just get on doing their own thing and ignore the drama at Mermaids as it doesn't necessarily play well for them in pr.

I think the phrase 'never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake' isn't quite right for the situation but I think the sentiment is close enough.

Let Mermaids get the attention they deserve without dragging your own name into the cluster fuck.

Good point, thanks Joan. Also less obsessed with Mermaids than SG etc. believed.

LGB Alliance are v cautious with their Twitter after breaching Twitter rules and getting reprimanded in their early days. They'd be mad to say anything about an organisation which they're involved in legal proceedings against.

LGB Alliance don't seem to have tweeted about SG's departure - not sure whether to read anything into that (decision imminent on Mermaids v CC and LGBA?) or not.

With the discussion on religion and the desire to belong I found the Heterodorx episode with Colette Colfer was fascinating podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/heterodorx/id1602842758?i=1000569311871

It occurs to me that the person who might spill the beans on what happened is Darren Mew, with his "What goes around comes around" tweet response to SG's announced departure.

The Lib Dems are a strange lot aren't they, @RedToothBrush? I read the Helena Morrissey report and watched the subsequent goings on, and gave up hope.

Yet Belinda Bell said in evidence that Mermaids didn't give medical advice?

As SG certainly helped to formulate standards at WPATH....

(I'm not sure if I actually believe there's a link here but..) could there be any link to WPATH finally accepting that England are taking a completely different path, as well as disagreeing with England, has any baring on why SG has left?

twitter.com/segm_ebm/status/1596576825656119296?s=46&t=sioGIICy7iyeIg5k17u03w

I'm struck that this thread seems to show a level of sudden realisation within WPATH that there's a v different side of history beginning here, given the respect the nhs and Brit medical research has?

You're right -

www.hachette.co.uk/titles/victoria-smith/hags/9780349726953/

Interestingly published by Hatchette, which hasn't been without its own TRA issues!

I'm a bit disappointed that there isn't something coming out in the Sunday papers. Felt sure there would be.

I was wondering if this means it’s about the court case judgement. If saw it on Friday would that mean it will be publicly available on Monday? 🤞🤞 I seem to remember with Maya’s case the judgement was embargoed less than 24 hours but that wasn’t over a weekend.

I think it's by Victoria Smith @glosswitch

There's a book coming out next year called Hags on this topic. I forget who by, it popped up on my algorithms, which says something (flattering) about me!

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/the-crucible

The Crucible, 26th January next year. We should have a live watch-a-long on the Mumsnet boards.

So true Nils

I watched Lucy Worsley Investigates (iPlayer, bbc2 I think) and couldn't help noting the parallels between the witch finder hysteria and the persecution of women in modern times. It was a very interesting episode.

The LDs are not a professional organisation in the way you'd believe. It has very few paid staff and is largely run from sheds and spare bedrooms. Only constituencies with a LD MP actually have a formal LD office.

The small number who run the organisation on a day to day basis on a voluntary basis via sub committees and federalised organisations are people who generally do not have many other commitments (like a family) or being able to delegate responsibilities to others.

Its extremely cliquey and inward looking and also extremely narrow in terms of socio-economic representation. The LDs for all the progressive talk are actually more white, male, middle class than any of the other parties which is perhaps surprising.

It had a report which found it had a problem with bullying and it said it had / was taking steps to rectify it. Then shortly after too the semi official position to tell gender critical women it wasn't the party for them. The irony of it was astonishing.

So yeah, don't expect professionalism from the LDs because that's not how they are set up or operate.

Those lines of thought would be exactly where an objective view would go in seeking to limit damage.

However I'm not sure I believe at this point that anyone is left in any of the big organisations that is able to have that kind of objectivity. They believe implicitly that what SG has said and done is right. I'm sure none of them have read the Cass report as was said at the court case, and would all dismiss it as nothing to do with them, and just transphobic ignorance anyway.

I will be very interested to see what caused the fall out between the org as a whole and SG. I don't think it was differences in values and beliefs. I'm not convinced they see any more than SG does that anything has happened that is wrong or would be prepared to compromise on in the face of difficult questions - as we've seen in several court cases.

I wonder whether they were advised to do as SW did and abandon the case, and SG pushed it through, and they are angry with her at having focused a lot of inconvenient scrutiny that's led to stupid people talking about stupid things like safeguarding and messing up their work.

More mundane could merely be something along the lines of the charity commission asking what safeguarding reviews Mermaids had done based on the publication of the Cass Review and what measures they employ to try to identify and protect children under pressure from homophobic parents rather than assuming a blanket affirmative approach.

Susie Green if asked a question directly about this, as part of an investigation is liable to either answer particularly badly or start going on about transphobia which then doesn't address the safeguarding issue that's been asked.

Because she is one of the best examples of the exact problem the Cass Review highlighted and the LGB Alliance are concerned about.

And she also cannot legitimately say that she's made efforts to ensure knowledge of the contents of the Cass Review within the organisation and its representatives. Cos she had two under oath admit they knew nothing of it. And she's co-authored a document which doesn't acknowledge this problem.

Thats mundane because we know it's nothing new and just joining the dots of what's out there already. And stating that's not OK.

Yes, me too.

Ah, well you can't tell much from occasional twitter posts and none recent, JG seems to prefer privacy and that is for the best. I hope there is the possibility of resolution and peace.

FannyCann without going into detail, as I agree JG deserves privacy, 'quite happy' sadly doesn't seem to be the case at all from things I saw on social media a couple of years back (that was swiftly removed). Serious trauma. I hope it can be resolved, somehow.

It was like watching someone caught up momentarily in a religious ecstasy.

This decade is really proving that many humans really need religion and gangs to belong to, and others to be better than, and excuses to bully and oppress, and ways to signal superiority and status. New religion and zealotry is having to be invented to permit it, but nothing whatsoever has changed about the basic human behaviours and psychology beneath it.

Witchfinders and Salem hysteria meet Dickins' Murdstones and Mr Brocklehurst''s cold and zealotic God Is Love cruelty (all for your own good), along with Margot Leadbetter and Hyacinth Bucket in their 'so much better than those nasty oiks', and desperate seeking of status and recognition.