Susie Green’s Ted Talk

[Thanksforthatamazingpost]

Just watched this with great interest.

It is callled “transgender:a mother’s story”

I found it sad and thought provoking

I don’t think Mermaids should have such influence. No mother who has made these kind of decisions could ever hope to be objective about other people’s children. It’s not appropriate for Susie Green to have such a voice.

I also suspect that Susie Green did not see the “fashion” for young -people- identifying -as -trans coming. To be fair to her, it was probably the last thing she expected :(

I’m not treading carefully.

my opinion of SG is irrelevant. It’s just guessing.

What matters is that Mermaids’ role has been inappropriate. They are a lobby group and should be recognised as such. Well intentioned people do harm if given inappropriate influence.

More research is needed urgently and Mermaids should be supporting this,

I agree one hundred percent that Mermaids should not have the stranglehold that it appears to have on the police force and schools. They are advocating misapplication of equality law that organizations are too afraid to go against for fear of a backlash. And as a result the exemptions that should be protecting children are being ignored in favour of a belief system that can damage both the children it claims to protect, and their peers.
The collateral damage advocated by Mermaids and their ilk is huge.

I have the same amount of sympathy for SG that I have for Jazz Jennings mother. I have sympathy for their position, and have no doubt that they truly believed they were doing the right thing for their own children. But they should not be in a position where they can impose the same long term damaging ‘treatments’ on others.
As a small parent support outfit, Mermaids was fit for purpose. (I used to recommend it myself, back in the day). But it is now part of a creeping ideology that is being imposed on society, to the detriment of all.
SG is not prepared to discuss any position other than her own - she uses the same block tactics employed by others to prevent debate around children and transition. I understand this - as others have said, she can’t afford to allow herself to question whether she has done the right thing by her child, to protect her own mental health. So she seeks validation that she has done the right thing at s subconscious level by recommending others do the same. She is unable to see that other routes (wait and see) may be equally successful for the long term well-being of children and youth.
I feel very sorry for SG. But she should not be creating effective public policy by the back door - lobbying the police and schools to comply.

Great post Marmaryllis

I have exactly the same problem as SG when it comes to autism. I made some choices on behalf of my child that I can never undo. Every time a parent tells me they are considering making the opposite choice, there is a little voice inside me that doubts them.

And that is all to do with me, not them.

And that is why I could never be asked to train teachers or parents about autism: I have an emotional horse in that race.

People who need to prevent me from having influence over autism policy should be able to object to me on a clear and simple basis. They have no need for complicated hypotheses about my character..

RedHoodGirl
While I agree that many trans adults knew they were trans early in life, and that not all young people who suffer dysphoria may continue to be trans adults, we can not pre-suppose what Susie Green’s intentions are in the running of Mermaids.

You're quite right. I should have said: It is possible that she wants affirmation that she did the right thing for her own child.

Of course I cannot presume to know what is going on in someone else's head, but I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate that this might be the case. Certainly, if I had taken such a drastic route with my child I would be perpetually asking myself if I had done the right thing, because you can never know how things might have turned out if you had done things differently.

I can sense everyone treading extremely carefully in this thread, it is chilling.

Happy to put personal views!

I think childhood transition outwith medical supervision from UK regulated health providers is a child protection issue and that statutory services should have intervened and made a determination on whether or not Susie Green's child should have had medical procedures not permitted in the UK - in a similar way that the state mediates many other cases of contested medical procedures on minors. Such cases are often in the news. That said, I do not wish to speculate what the court would have decided for Susie Green's child, had this happened.

I also think Posie Parker commenting on this in non-euphemistic terms is a free speech issue. I support her crowdfunder in this regard. Using non-euphemistic but accurate terms for something should not be a crime obviously, nor regarded as abuse on social media. That said, in general terms not regarding Posie, depending on context, blunt speech can be rude and/or tasteless.

I would respectfully suggest that there is likely to be more to the Police case than any of us are aware of. It is not news that SG took her daughter abroad for SRS at age 16 - as has been highlighted elsewhere, she has done interviews and talks about it. I can’t believe that the person being investigated by the police was the first time someone had talked critically about her doing that, so I can only assume that there was more to it than meets the eye?

In the same way that a child being caught red-handed doing something wrong, might ‘admit’ to a ‘lesser crime’, or ‘confess’ to it in a much more ‘palatable’ way, I wonder whether the abuse and harassment of SG was more extreme than has been let on?

If so, I find it worrying that so many people have essentially ‘got behind’ someone being investigated by the police for malicious communications, with some even looking to repeat the offence. I don’t see this as a case of ‘free speech’, but one of targeted harassment of a ‘controversial’ woman, who has been in a situation than none of us have been in.

Regardless of whether people agree with SG’s actions in taking her daughter abroad for surgery, or whether she’s a ‘public figure’, surely there’s a level of common decency involved, where people don’t go around abusing others online, even if they disagree with them? I can’t even imagine how Susie Green must feel, not only reading all of the ‘day to day’ comments, judgements and criticisms about her by people who don’t even know her, but on the one occasion that the nasty comments escalate and she reports them to the police, that the person who started them coralls people into repeating them.

As a feminist, I find it upsetting seeing women attack and judge other women like that. It reminds me of a bygone era when rape victims were told by other women that they were ‘asking for it’ because of what they wore. While obviously not the same thing, the notion of judging another female victim seems eerily similar.

I would like to see a return to compassion and consideration of each other as living, breathing human beings that can be hurt by others deeds and words - as I’m sure Susie Green has been hurt by the many accusations targeted against her - even as we sit behind our keyboards, we should not forget that!

wild speculation and even wilder analogies redhoodgirl.

I've met Posie Parker, I know her on other social media and I take her word that's what happened. You are speculating just as much as anyone.

I am totally with everyone on the conflict of interest issue when a personally invested, maverick (I'm being delicate) individual assumes the position of objective and impartial advisor of policy to public orgs such as NHS, the police and education.

But I dispute the notion I am making 'complicated hypotheses about character'.
I am hypothesising about SG's underlying beliefs from what I observed in the TED talk: She buys into sex stereotypes, she doesn't think it is important to be truthful about reproduction and sex with children (in an age appropiate manner), she believes in dualism - that the mind and body are two separate things and is possibly uncomfortable with homosexuality.

I think these beliefs are as relevant when considering her advisory role as her personal investment.

Interesting post Lang. is it known why this didn’t happen?

If I were in SG’s shoes I would almost have preferred to be questioned, so that I could have a right of reply and get things on the record.

“I think childhood transition outwith medical supervision from UK regulated health providers is a child protection issue and that statutory services should have intervened and made a determination on whether or not Susie Green's child should have had medical procedures not permitted in the UK - in a similar way that the state mediates many other cases of contested medical procedures on minors. Such cases are often in the news. That said, I do not wish to speculate what the court would have decided for Susie Green's child, had this happened.”

Just took a look at the other thread and it is more what I'm looking for.

I was expecting to watch her story and hear a clear example of gender dysmorphia and a child saying he was the opposite sex since he was tiny. But this was a child who like things stereotypically of the opposite sex, his father would not tolerate this and his mother and father took all this prized possessions away from him. It seems that this wasn't a child who hated his body but one who realised the only way he would be accepted and could behave the way he wanted was to wish to be the opposite sex. This does not make a strong case for offering hormones or surgery to children.

Interesting post Lang. is it known why this didn’t happen?

I assume that Green's child wasn't under any NHS gender specialist services by the time Green went to the US for hormones and Thailand for surgery? So there was nobody to actually contest the planned treatments via the courts? Just a guess.

The notorious cases of contested treatment that get adjudicated by the courts (eg Charlie Gard) where the parents want to go abroad for treatment but the doctors don't believe it's in the child's best interests would usually involve the child being actually under NHS care at the time.

It does seem to me to be a hole in our safeguarding procedures.

RedHoodGirl

Firstly, I very much doubt if there is anything Posie Parker has done or said in private that she hasn't done or said in public. Like her or loathe her, what you see is what you get with Posie. Personally, I like her.

Secondly, given the Mermaids connections with the police generally, the specific connection with that particular police force, and the overall transactivist tactic of doxxing GC women and reporting them to their employers for perceived transphobia, I would say that the balance of probabilities on the possibility of targeted harassment in this case would be going in the opposite direction.

How do we know that Mermaids is not just a forum where parents who are in similar situations support each other?

We have had parents on here who were involved with mermaids. Mermaids staff came onto MN to 'out' the poster too, giving their personal details to the world. Very professional this pressure group are.

Oh I see....

I can, fwiw,, imagine doing what SG did given the background. But she needs to step aside from the public aspect of things asap.

It’s all really sad.

To 'out' one of the posters that should be. There has been more than one poster involved with them.

Vicky can you evidence that?

Given the posts in question were deleted, no. However MN will still have record of them, if they are anything like the forum I used to moderate. Deleted posts showed to staff members but not to members as we had to keep record of all posts just incase we needed them at a later date, I am sure MN has a similar mechanism in place.

Ok

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2761712-woman-loses-residency-of-son-she-was-raising-as-daughter?msgid=64463557

User was Hugh089. You can read part of it here, the bits that are left of it all anyway. User was tubasinthemoonlight. Seems it was actually her childs name they published from looking back..memory is pretty bad

Outing user was Hugh089. You can read part of it here, the bits that are left of it all anyway. Outed user was tubasinthemoonlight. Seems it was actually her childs name they published from looking back..memory is pretty bad

Even

RedHoodGirl

Despite the question marks you appear to know rather a lot about SG and Mermaids.

Although women probably have made assumptions about a victim of rape based on what they were wearing, the problem was victims were asked by the police and it was an acceptable line of questioning during rape trials. But as a feminist you probably know that already.

And regarding your earlier comment, this really isn't the place to be speculating about alleged suicide attempts of a child.

Parker was interviewed under caution for a specific tweet or series of tweets that were critical but factual. You can go and read the thread - language such as ‘castration’ was used in the context of the removal of the external genitalia of a male born child for example...there is no ‘more to it.’ She was interviewed on the basis of those public tweets alone. In effect for voicing disapproval of surgery which is illegal in the uk and for having a gender stance.

Whether there was any objection at the time to someone taking a 16 year old for surgery that’s illegal in the uk I don’t know. However there was no prosecution on return to the uk. And I would be very interested to understand why. Why was this not investigated?

To make the analogy to fgm again - if someone was to take their 16 year old abroad for fgm, the law exists to prosecute them on their return.

There are extremely disturbing implications to this - if medically irreversible procedures being conducted, pushed etc to vulnerable children then that is a huge deal. Where is the ethical oversight? I cannot think of any other circumstances where this would be allowed without outcry.

Whether SG is hurt by verbal discussion of the ethics of taking a child abroad for surgery that is illegal in the uk is minor compared to both the potential effects on vulnerable children and the wider negative effects this is causing in society (rigid enforcement of gender roles.) it’s interesting that you are very focussed on her feelings because actually I think that’s a key part of this entire debate - we have a group of people insisting their feelings trump objective observeable reality, scientific knowledge and medical ethics.
While I would never set out to deliberately provoke or upset SG, or indeed anyone associated with mermaids, I will NOT kowtow to peoples feelings when there are real, vulnerable children at risk. Or when women’s rights are under threat, although that’s a whole different threat.

Hurt feelings are subjective. Someone could (and indeed people have) been quite vocally unpleasant regarding my feminist views. I regard my views as actually fairly moderate, and I accept other people have different views to me and occasionally I might be offended. People have a right to offend me. They do not have a right to do me physical, or financial or reputations damage, nor break the law of the land.

I can sense everyone treading extremely carefully in this thread, it is chilling.

I don't blame them tbh.