Mermaids has hit the headlines.

[Triliteration]

Reports in both Daily Mail and Telegraph regarding a member of Mermaids calling the police over a midgendered pupil.

Surely the tide will begin to turn on this organisation. They are involved with schools and all kinds of organisations including the NHS, but I think their irrationality and bias is about to hit the mainstream.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/02/23/teacher-accused-misgendering-child-told-police-committed-hate/

I also find it extremely alarming that organisations like Mermaids are trying to use the police and the law to force people to think and speak things which are untrue and have no basis in fact.

That's exactly what they're doing. And not the only time.

Mermaids also apparently got the police involved when they were mildly criticised online by Lily Maynard etc, I think over the child J court case or similar.

Plus the situation Doobigetta mentioned.

How anyone can take Mermaids seriously anymore is beyond me. And that Susie Green is a disgrace, her poor son.

I don’t believe it. I think that it is anecdotal at best and complete lies at worst. If the Daily Mail had a proper story with actual sources from Mermaids, the paper would be plastered with sad-faces.

The purpose is to scare women into silence.

ScreamingNotWaving what’s so unbelievable about it?

There was a male teacher suspended last year for doing similar.

Since it is Mermaids who teach the police departments about transgender rights it is no surprise that they use them for enforcement.
I wonder how long before the police figure out they have been conned.
I read recently that a police officer has taken his cross dressing fetish to work on the basis of it now being called gender fluid.

Of course the teacher was in the wrong if she actually laughed "in a pupil's face" (what does that mean? how far away from someone's face do you have to be, to be considered laughing in it?)

But I doubt very much that the teacher did that, because Mermaids.

It looks as though Mermaids have taken a decision to try and intimidate everyone into shutting up, by involving the police and the police are either in cahoots with them in some instances (God knows why) or they don't realise they're being used to further a sinister agenda of ensuring that people are no longer allowed to say things which are demonstrably true.

Whoever called the police to deal with this incident, should be given a warning for wasting police time IMO. And anyone who is bothered by the police demanding that they account for their tweets or their opinions, should make a formal complaint to the IPCC. Police numbers are being cut back, budgets being slashed, pensions being attacked and yet they're using tax-payer funded resources, to try and intimidate the public into not pointing out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes?

It won't work.

We will not comply with the lunatics' demands that we accept their reality and make it our own.

If an adult has a penis, he's a man. If a child has a penis, he's a boy. If the police are going to use our hard-earned taxes to investigate people saying or implying those things as a hate crime, then real crime is going to soar, because the resources to focus on chicken-shit like this and to actually do what they're supposed to be there for, you know, fighting crime, simply aren't there.

I understand that SG has been good friends with someone influential in the police for years.

The charity is so attention-hungry if it was more than a general anecdote, the people involved would have been splashed all over the papers. There was no hesitation in naming and shaming the male teacher. It’s his name and case that’s mentioned in detail at the bottom of the Mail report.

The fact that the school supported the teacher and that no police action was taken tells us all we need to know.

The family were in contact with Mermaids. It was Zmermaids who called the police. SG stated ‘we had to involve the police’ as though they are some sort of heroic swat team, swooping in where trembling, spineless head teachers fear to tread.

In fact, ‘we had to involve the police’ tell me that the complaints procedure found no complaint to be upheld, or that the complaint procedure are never used.

I went right through my schools complaints procedure regarding my SEN child which was whitewashed. And they actually did breach the law (EA2010 and SEN Act). It was resolved eventually as I ended up going through Ofsted, who sorted it.

At no point did it occur to me to call the Police. Because that would have been mad.

Blimey, that post was typo city!

Laughing in a child's face is wrong.
If that happened.

Refusing to misgender a child in the way they request is not wrong. There should be zero tolerance for lying or colluding with a lie that adds to the likelihood a child might transition.

Every person who addresses a child with validation of their false belief is culpable in maintaining a false belief that will damage them.

Support doesn't mean I agree with you.
Respect doesn't mean I will do what you demand.
Tolerance doesn't mean you are right and I am wrong.
A child who is upset because an adult won't validate their belief is not being bullied.
Better a child be upset over pronouns at 15 than discover in 5 years after surgery that adults colluded in their false belief that gender transition was a valid harmless choice.

I'd rather be accused of 'intolerance' by a child I wont validate, than be asked by a detransitioner 'why did you play along? I believed you'

"I understand that SG has been good friends with someone influential in the police for years"

Well that would explain why she wasn't prosecuted for taking her child abroad for surgery and medication as a child that wouldn't be allowed here. After all, if her child is female as she claims, she admits to taking them to Thailand for what could be considered FGM....

Was that legal? Taking the kid abroad to get around UK law? I'm honestly not sure. Seems like it shouldn't be.

I assume that if the child had a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, that would make it legal to access treatment abroad not offered on the NHS? Unlike FGM, which has no diagnosis beyond being female?

That woman is unhinged though. Her personal social media behaviour should disqualify her charity from any public funding whatsoever, let alone what the charity is actually doing.

I don't get how she got away with going abroad to have that operation completed on a child. Seriously, I can't understand why she wasn't arrested on return. And how she's now lauded for being brave and a great mother. Seriously, WTF?

Even if it's not technically illegal (which I'm honestly not sure on), there would have been some questioning, surely? Just to check? Safeguarding questioning from child services? And how involved were the Tavistock etc, if she didn't agree with their treatment plan?

I think it says a lot that Thailand have now raised the age for SRS to 18 as well.

Look at the questioning the family who took their child abroad for cancer treatment were subjected to. Even if there was no prosecution in the end - why does there appear to be no come-back at all for SG?

One would have thought a child protection issue, yes.

She had to take her child out of the country because cross sex hormones are not allowed under the age of 16, I believe.

And surgery under the age of 18.

So she flouted NHS guidelines in this country. Deliberately going against expert advice.

And is now in a position of authority to advise and educate other parents?

Why does no one see this for the absolute scandal it is?

And if it's not scandalous, and everyone agrees, why aren't the NHS and the Tavistock promoting it?

There is such a disconnect.

Yy datun

Obviously we don't know the facts of this particular case, and if a teacher is bullying a pupil, that is unacceptable and I hope the school will deal with it appropriately.

But why is anyone listening to Mermaids?

Remember the case reported in 2016 where the mother appeared to be acting out some sort of Munchausens by proxy and insisting her son was transgender?
Re J (a minor) [2016] EWHC 2430 (Fam) Full text here
The mother in this case was supported by Mermaids, and coincidentally made repeated complaints of hate crime to the police.

Despite many, many reports of concern about the child from his schools, neighbours and a raft of other agencies, the social work department responsible for his welfare took advice from Mermaids, and as a result failed to act in the child's best interest and properly protect him. That department was quite rightly criticised by the judge for this failure.

The judge also apparently prohibited Mermaids contacting the child.

Mermaids was originally set up as a support network for parents of transgender and gender-questioning children, but in recent years they have departed from this and seem to have set themselves up as the self-appointed experts on all matters trans, despite no relevant professional credentials or qualifications. And bizarrely, we find professionals such as social workers, teachers and doctors taking advice from them - rather than taking advice from actual experts such as the Tavistock GIDS.

Mermaids are not professionals. Some of their advice is questionable to say the least.

And as Datun says above, the actions of their CEO first in taking her then 14 year old son out of the country to put him on cross-sex hormones, then in taking him to Thailand to have gender reassignment surgery on his 16th birthday, in both cases in contravention of NHS and WPATH guidance, suggest poor judgement at best - child abuse at worst.
(Due in part to outrage at this case, Thailand tightened up its rules on gender-reassignment surgery, raising the minimum age to 18 in line with the rest of the world).

It is truly horrifying that someone who has done this to their child is allowed to work with parents and vulnerable children, let alone be hailed as some sort of authority on the matter and allowed to be involved with schools.

I really do hope that their child, now an adult, never comes to regret the irreversible choices that were made for them when they were only a child. But, if they do, not only do they have one hell of a case against their mother, but against all the agencies working with their family (mental health services, police) who failed to safeguard them and prevent their mother taking them overseas for unauthorised and unethical medical treatment.