Police investigate online abuse against Mermaids charity

[HandmaidsNightmare]

Did anyone see this in the Guardian yesterday?

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/27/police-investigate-online-abuse-charity-transgender-children-mermaids?CMP=share_btn_tw

I was disappointed by The Guardian's shoddy journalism. Seems a bit of a non-story. Folks on Twitter are saying they've been blocked by Mermaids when they have never interacted with them. Is this some sort of backlash from Mermaids?

How do they stop you viewing? I can see it from my computer and don't do twitter - it seems to be open - or is there something I am not understanding?
twitter.com/mimmymum?lang=en

If you have a twitter account you can ban who you like. It's interesting that I have been banned from viewing an account I didn't even know about until the handle was just posted upthread at my request.

If I log out of twitter I will be able to see it terry. They have banned my specific account. How did they get my handle, when I had never heard of them? I must be a Big Fat TERF

They have you marked . Can't see the logic in banning users from something that is public domain anyway. I suspect it is normal logic in twitter world though

Terf list is here:

blocktogether.org/show-blocks/obradPTOJX7keukhwgHFwkKUTj_afTt5uEMo-HU-

Kind of scary that folk who choose to use that list choose to insulate themselves in their own wee bubble of like-minded people, not willing to even engage with any criticism of their viewpoint.

If you block someone, it means you can't see their tweets in your timeline. I find it useful sometimes, so I don't have to see tweets that annoy me.

Mermaids saying they are "forced to" block people is just hyperbole. They have decided to block people, that's all. If you block someone, it means you can't see their tweets in your timeline. I find it useful sometimes, so I don't have to see tweets that annoy me.

Mermaids saying they are "forced to" block people is just hyperbole. They have decided to block people. They are not forced to do anything, they are just using a feature of the software.

Sorry about the garbled post

As you can see from that list, there are many accounts that have few followers and/or/tweets and are unlikely to be gaining attention from anyone. You really have to question the motives for compiling such a list. And despite folowing a great number of GC accounts, I have not seen abuse of Mermaids or Susie Green. Critical, certainly, and rightly so. But I guess that's not allowed now is it?

I agree Assigned, I have not seen anything abusive or theatening.
Calling Mermaids a "cult" is no worse than calling me a TERF. It's not nice, I may not like it, but it's not abusive or criminal.

A member of the public made a report and the police said it is being investigated. That 's all. Just because the police look into it, doesn't mean a crime has been committed.

Wouldn't it be lovely if the police looked into Mermaids thoroughly and decided that no crime hd been committed exceot by Mermaids grooming children

ItsAllGoingToBeFine

I'm nkt at all confident that the police would do much. They'd be petrified of appearing bigoted.

That account tweeted saying someone should hack into Lily Maynard's gender critical account. So no they don't exactly have the moral high ground.

And looking at her account I see that she's retweeted someone blaming mumsnetters for the "abuse" disagreement and challenge Mermaids has received.

Look at the little echo chamber she has going on. No dissent whatsoever. Because anyone not 100% supportive has been blocked. It's not healthy.

But the problem is, what is her alternative? If Green allowed herself to properly think about things, how could she possibly deal with all that she had done? She is in so far now that she cannot possibly ever back down or change her mind.

It's not healthy.

It's also pretty stupid. The people on her side will be on her side no matter what. But anyone questioning will get blocked. It just sends out a ridiculous message.

You can't say you've been abused and harassed and when someone asks where, block them.

It makes you look like you've made the whole thing up.

Ooh I'm also blocked from that account and I've never heard of them either. Fucking hell, that's really quite sinister

JigglyTuff

I agree. But also very telling.

I am so tired of people committing real harm describing discussion of that harm as "abuse".

Mermaids ought to be ashamed of themselves - for their deeply damaging gender essentialism, for their creepy attempts to get children to talk to them without their parents' knowledge, and for their homophobia, as well as everything else.

You think Mermaids is watching this thread and following posters online? I wouldn't be surprised.

Assignedperfect-
The quote was taken directly from black lives matter website under principles section- Soros funded organisation- doesn't seem to represent what people think it's about reading the principles.
Soros website "open society foundations" talks about funding of trans activism:

www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/giving-trans-activism-support-it-deserves

And an article about the "dangerous" movement against it.

www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/gender-ideology-fiction-could-do-real-harm

There's a lot of money being put into this project , and from what I've been reading Soros and co have significant influence over the media.

Oh I'm sure they are @CeeBeeBee. Their way (and indeed the way of transactivism in general) is to shut discussion down. I suspect that this is because any challenge of their status will also draw attention to their objectives from the Charity Commission. I would argue actually that they are not entitled to charitable status.

The government rules around public benefit for charities are:

• a purpose must be beneficial - this must be in a way that identifiable and capable of being proved by evidence where necessary and which is not based on personal views

• any detriment or harm that results from the purpose (to people, property or the environment) must not outweigh the benefit - this is also based on evidence and not on personal views.

I think they fall very badly foul of those rules and I'm going to report them to the Charity Commission for breaching them. In addition to the concerns outlined above, the fact that a judge explicitly demanded they have no more involvement in a child's life in a recent ruling demonstrates to me that they are not acting in accordance with legislation.

Can I sound a note of caution on the demonisation of Soros? The "black lives matter movement wants to brainwash children by separating tgem from their parents and Soros is funding it" story sounds like something straight out of the Daily Stormer (so extreme even the Russians won't host their website). I have never seen anything in the mainstream media to suggest black lives matter is anything other than a mainstream civil rights movement dedicated to drawing attention to racially motivated police violence. The "funded by Soros" trope is an ongoing anti-semitic slur used by the alt-right.

If anyone has any legitimate sources (including sane right of centre sources like the Telegraph) I'd be interested to see them. But in these days of propaganda on both sides I like to see them fact checked (likewise if there are lurking Guardian journos on this thread, fact checkingapplies yyou guys totoo - especially with reference to the dodgy suicide stats and the "puberty blockers are harmless" myth when lupron's off label use for endometriosis is now the subject of a massive class action law suit).

My phone is all over the place - hopefully you can decipher that last bit.

Prickly ball- the quote I sourced is directly from BLM website- check it out, says nothing on principles about the rights of black men, and police brutality- like they claim on the tv.
Open society foundation is his website and he makes no secret of funding trans activism