woman loses residency of son she was raising as daughter

[BombadierFritz]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3859618/You-caused-son-great-harm-insisting-raising-girl-Boy-seven-sent-live-father-mother-raised-daughter.html

hmmm. ok so its daily mail reporting but I am conflicted
perhaps good if child was being pushed into something he wasnt
but wtf with the boringly stereotypical insistance on the type of toys played with

[Xenophile]

Elsa, thank you for posting. I'm sorry you have been worried about doing that because of the unfounded idea that FWR posters are "transphobic". I hope you feel you can continue to post and become part of the FWR family.

You sound like the perfect mother of a child with GID. Giving them time and space to explore who they are and who they want to be.

[comehomemax]

I'm really astonished at some responses to this judgement. This has been published in the Huffington post www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/fox-fisher/trans-child-court-case-mother_b_12597718.html

It's an open letter from a trans campaigner to the child. This section in particular sends up huge red flags: You were headstrong and five years old. I bet you can’t bear having to live your life as a boy, the gender you were assigned at birth.. Adults telling a child how they how they should feel! It's very bizarre. Have they not read the full judgement?? They are doing exactly what they are criticising the judge for doing.

[MrsJamin]

Yeah that article is very disturbing and revealing connections to the family may reveal their identities which the judge ruled should not happen. Trans people are insisting on having the last word in this, it's just ridiculous that they think they know better than a judge! How blinkered and cult like does transactivism have to be to be happier that a child is abused than turns out not to be trans after all? Do they want all people to be trans?! How do they know the kid was really trans?!

[ageingrunner]

Even if the kid was really trans there was other abuse taking place. Do transactivists not care about that?

[Atenco]

I don't think most of us on FWR are transphobic- despite the slurs. We just have very real concerns about (as the judge put it) the prevailing orthodoxy

I agree.

There is another mother, whose user name I can't remember in a similar situation to yours who has posted a few times on these types of threads. If anyone can remember who she is, it might be helpful for you to be in touch with her.

[ageingrunner]

I'm not transphobic either. I don't hate trans people. Just wanted to say that.

[Prawnofthepatriarchy]

This blog describes Mermaids CEO Susan Green as "a mother who flew her gay son to the US at age 12 to medically retard his reproductive system, then to Thailand at the age of 16 to have him surgically castrated," a claim so damning that if it weren't true Mermaids or Susan Green herself would have been able to get it removed like a shot. So I can only assume that it is true.

The blog also links to very disturbing claims made by Mermaids. These claims have since been removed from Google searches. Fortunately for us, another blog Transgender Trend has preserved and reposted them, with this comment:

“When you can’t answer questions, call people ignorant and prejudiced” seems to be the favoured bullying tactic of transactivists everywhere as a means of stifling debate.

Is this the level of professionalism we are happy to accept in a group purporting to support children and young people? Mermaids’ by-line on their website is ‘Embrace Empower Educate.’ Maybe it should be ‘Don’t Ask Questions.’

Mermaids' Tweets in response to the ruling make it clear how blinkered and cultlike they are. I think, as iPost said, that this isn't the last nail in the coffin of transing children, but the ruling is definitely one nail and should give pause to professionals who mindlessly parrot transactivist rhetoric. The response by Mermaids may provide a second nail: they look as bonkers as they are, leading increasing numbers of people to question their agenda.

Interestingly, although the story is covered by the gay site, Pink News, with a transactivist slant, some of the comments are very critical of child transition. Gay men and lesbians are beginning to see past the propaganda to the blatant homophobia of trans ideology.

[MrsJamin]

Prawnofthepatriarchy that is very damning indeed. How are they the ones that the NHS signpost to here?

[IBelieveTheEarthIsFlat]

V interesting links prawn thanks

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

On the judge's ruling my DD would be taken from me.  But my DD identifies as female, she just likes to follow interests in things that some in society see as "male".

As others have said , you clearly can't have read the judgement fully or properly to come to that bizarre conclusion.

[aginghippy]

Helen Lewis has written an interesting article about this case medium.com/@helenlewis/the-boy-made-to-live-as-a-girl-or-the-girl-made-to-live-as-a-boy-e76221bb50c#.d5tcrd7fy.

She makes a lot of the same points that have come up on this thread, including the way debate is stifled and how transing of children takes place in 'an evidence vacuum'.

[IBelieveTheEarthIsFlat]

RE the links Prawn, it appears that Fox Fisher in the video calls LGB people 'deviant'. See also @theFoxFisher

[Atenco]

That video was so sad, his/her family didn't accept him/her being a tomboy, so instead of realising that the family were fucked up...

[iPost]

How are they the ones that the NHS signpost to here?

I can't speak for trans specifically, but you'd be amazed at how easy it is to set yourself up as one of the key support/guidance points in a niche area and then get indirectly promoted via links from official bodies. And/or become the go to person for the media.

It's like a circle of constant reinforcement. Position yourself on the web as serious, established, expert mouthpiece. Person preparing "official-ish stance/lip service page" for their organisation's website skims your site. Adds a link cos they were told to find and add some helpful links. Somebody doing similar for another body sees the original link. Assumes it must be legit cos... another official-ish source linked to them. Adds the link themselves. Journalist looking for a quote sees the links on official-ish sites. Assumed legitimacy and checking out all done. Calls and turns the spokesperson into a talking head. Spokesperson does level best to keep promoting themselves as massive expert/best talking head. More links occur. Links have babies. More media calls. Baby links spawn more baby links. Establishment as Trusted Leading Expert well on the way to becoming reality. So far everybody is mosty relying on a vague "somebody else" to turn over rocks and check under floorboards (e.g. deeply dig around in their forum using history and see what they say when they think nobody is looking) for any lurking skeletons in the talking head's closet.

It's only when the shit starts to hit the fan that all the linkers and journalists start to wonder why "vague somebody else" didn't do any strenuous digging at all, back when it was just a website nobody had heard of.

8 years ago somebody explained to me how it worked, and told me she intended to use the strategy to become the national go to expert for our shared "parental choice" niche. She was a rank newbie at it. Had not actually even begun doing the niche thing when she declared her National Expert intentions.

Nonetheless she was an established media presence in two years. She talks for all of us. But in reality speaks for precious few of us. Unfortunately when the snowball has picked up speed in its rolling it is hard to stop it. By the time you realise the urgent need to make it stop before it does harm, it's too big, and just trundles massively and squishily over all your objections.

It's entirely possible that Mermaids got linked by the NHS under a similar sort of process.

[ageingrunner]

He describes himself as 'a clever child who just wanted to please people' and says how his family thought of him as the black sheep and a tomboy. It does make me think that the way his family were and his own personality must have had a lot to do with him seeing being the opposite sex as a solution to the problems he was having

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

The article by Helen Lewis is a very good summary of the full judgement.

The judgment gives a very different view: that the child has shown no interest in being a girl, but that the mother is controlling and manipulative, and has psychological issues — an “enmeshed relationship” — which prevent her from seeing the child as a separate being from herself

[Prawnofthepatriarchy]

It's extremely worrying, isn't it, MrsJamin? iPost has described the mechanism by which extremists morph into respected sources very clearly. The CEO of Mermaids shouldn't have anything to do with children, any children, if that's her track record.

One of the issues about transgenderism is that it's nearly always the extremists who get listened to, though there are a few outliers, like Jen Bob, a real sweetie, who has produced videos explaining why she doesn't approve of transitioning children. But we seldom hear from the gender dysphoric minority, those who empathize with women to the extent that they don't demand access to our showers and changing rooms. The loudest voices come from fetishists who demand sexual access to lesbians, who utter rape and death threats to any woman who gainsays them and who attack women's events, insisting that a vulva cupcake event is "transphobic" ffs.

[FloraFox]

The CEO of Mermaids has made. Number of homophobic statements including on MN. Transing kids is homophobic conversion therapy.

[Xenophile]

It is, sadly, Flora.

Some parents, rather than allow their children to be the gay man/lesbian they might end up being, feel it's a much better idea to put their children onto lifelong drug regimes. Drug regimes that are often deleterious to health and which always have fairly horrendous side effects.

Homophobia, and especially lesbophobia is alive and well.

[OneEpisode]

Mermaids is a registered charity. So maybe:
www.gov.uk/complain-about-charity
You'd have to give you your real name etc. and a sentence of evidence...

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

Maybe enough letters pointing out their ridiculous Twitter feed at the moment? And does anyone have screenshots in case they delete it?

And I gather they are funded with Lottery money too...

[iPost]

Mermaids are preparing a statement in response to the judgment. Given the high level of outrage (from them and their supporters) that they "the only ones with the right specialist knowledge, who knew the mother and child bestest of all!" were not asked to give evidence at the hearing.... I am not going to fall over in shock if they go for a Camila Batmanghelidjh style of self defence.

AKA - when in deep deep hole .... hire half a dozen of the most powerful diggers money can buy.

[YetAnotherSpartacus]

iPost - I look forward to reading it!

[ArcheryAnnie]

iPost I think you have hit the nail on the head. Mermaids may have started up as a mutual support circle, but they position themselves as the authority on trans children and teens. (Not that I think there is any such thing as a "trans child", because they aren't bloody fully-cooked yet and don't know what they will be. "Gender non-conforming child", sure, but not "trans child".)

And they have succeeded, so far. The Commons Select Committee, the NHS, the NSPCC, all kinds of other august bodies, all now accepting their bullshit claims to any sort of expertise on this, with no-one looking too closely at all.

I can't believe Fox "we don't want to be lumped in with those icky deviant gays" Fisher has managed to make such a name for themselves amongst supposedly progressive types, either. It's just amazing. Anyone else who came right out and said that on video would have been torn apart on social media by now.

[ageingrunner]

'Deviant' is such an old-fashioned, conservative thing to say about LGB isn't it? Just more proof that although trans ideology is painted as being very progressive and ahead of its time, in fact it is quite the opposite