October 2016 Feminist Current article by Julian Vigo ( 'scholar, film-maker, and human rights consultant')
'When lobby groups like Mermaids dictate policy and discourse around gender identity, kids lose'
(extract)
"Last week, The Guardian reported that “a seven-year-old boy who was “living life entirely as a girl” has been removed from his mother’s care after a ruling by a high court judge. At first read, it was unclear who the actors in this case were aside from, obviously, the mother (M), the father (F), and child (J). The judgment of this case, which includes a critique of the section 37 report prepared by Social Services, which Justice Hayden describes as “very disturbing reading,” though, begins to clarify things.
Justice Hayden writes that J’s mother caused “significant emotional harm” to her child and critiques the local authority social services staff responsible for the youngster’s welfare.
He goes on to detail the acts of a controlling mother towards her child, M’s personal diagnosis of J’s alleged gender dysphoria, and a system which failed this child. Together, these various failures demonstrate a pattern of abuse and a mother who, Hayden writes, “deprived [her son] of his fundamental right to exercise his autonomy in its most basic way.”
What the judgment shows is that reports made by the Local Authority’s Housing Department, J’s school, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), and Social Services gave M’s behaviour towards her child (including her approach to J’s “gender presentation”) a pass simply because she was receiving support from Mermaids, a UK-based charity that claims to support parents of children who identify as transgender. Observations like these show major conflicts of interest between Mermaids and the government agencies named in the judgement." (continues)
www.feministcurrent.com/2016/10/26/lobby-groups-like-mermaids-dictate-policy-discourse-around-gender-identity-kids-lose/