Mermaids given £500,000 by National Lottery (Sunday Times)

[crsacre]

A transgender charity that campaigns for children to be given prohibited sex-change treatment has been awarded £500,000 by the national lottery.

The payment to Mermaids has angered MPs, feminists and women’s organisations, who accuse the charity of bullying doctors, promoting falsehoods and using “emotional blackmail” to pressure parents to support life-changing medical interventions for their children. Mermaids will use the money to create a network of 45 groups nationwide.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/child-sex-change-charity-handed-500-000-by-national-lottery-dvbt7t2kb?shareToken=cd8d6faad97cd9dd3fe3f16eb3810f45

Wow, Twitter is going nuts about the ‘shit house terfs from Mumsnet.’

I always smile wryly at the language the TRAs and MRAs use to describe us women over here.

I suppose 'women who feel safeguarding ought to guide everything done with regard to children and young people' doesn't have quite the same misogynistic ring to it.

Is the recommendation for Dr Weberley on their website? If so, better screen shot it....

If Mermaids can show that they are not sterilising kids, then surely the review will go well, no?

Anyone asking for funding should be open to due diligence and be open and honest about their safeguarding...if there is not problem then there will be no problem.

Show us your workings Mermaids and open up to honest critique and debate.

Or flounce around shouting how evil MN is for questioning you...

It's your call.

Sorry, very late to this but thanks to all who pointed this out. Important development.

It behoves any charity or its supporters not to shout cuss, abuse and foam at the mouth on social media such as twitter. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Especially when looking for funding.

Because it’s a children’s charity it should be immune from any kind of investigation apparently

Yes, and things turned out so well for Kids Company when they decided to go their own sweet way without being accountable to anyone, didn't it?

I do hope this investigation by the BLF represents a turning point. I must admit there have been lots of occasions that I've hoped would represent a turning point, but surely they have the resources to look into Mermaids properly.

It's gone Apollo! It was definitely there quite recently though. Surely there's an archive somewhere?!

I found this thread earlier: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3164244-AIBU-to-think-this-is-child-abuse-trans-related Webberley via Mermaids prescribing blockers and T to a child she'd never even met. Then the child decided they weren't trans at all but were actually non-binary so stopped the T.

ErrolTheDragon - don’t get me wrong, the grant should be withdrawn, but the BLF are going to look VERY foolish when it transpires that they coughed up half a million quid without carrying out some very basic checks into Mermaids’ work. Not to mention the outcry from TRAs, handmaids and the terminally woke about bowing to TERFs, wrong side of history, literal violence yadda yadda.

Well every cloud has a silver lining, the media will not be reporting on this thread

‘What is the point of having a proper grant decision-making process if you simply get pushed around by e-mail campaigns? How can we have confidence in the independence and effectiveness of your decisions’

Wes streeting mp ilford north- is he often involved in this kind of thing? He’s getting some love.

‘What is the point of having a proper grant decision-making process if you simply get pushed around by e-mail campaigns? How can we have confidence in the independence and effectiveness of your decisions’

Ah, but how "proper" was the decision-making process is the question, isn't it?

And what we're doing is saying we don't currently have "confidence in the independence and effectiveness" of the BLF's decisions.

Wes streeting mp ilford north- is he often involved in this kind of thing? He’s getting some love

Stephen Doughty MP's early day motion:

Tabled 10 October 2017
2017-19 Session
That this House agrees that the recommendations of the Women and Equalities Committee report on transgender equality needs to be implemented in full; believes that gender identity includes those who do not identify as either male or female, identify as both, a third gender or are fluid in their identity; notes that long waiting times for gender identity treatment can do harm to patients who should not have to wait longer than the targets for specialist referral; recognises that verbal, physical and sexual assaults towards those with a non-cis gender identity is the highest of all minority hate-crime, with over half of transgender women reporting they have been sexually or physically assaulted; calls on the Government to update the protected characteristic in the Equalities Act 2010 from gender reassignment to gender identity with a statutory code that includes non-binary identities; recommends that specialist GPs should be trained so that they can provide bridging hormones while patients wait to see specialist centres; and further recommends bringing LGBT hate crimes into line with hate crimes based on race and faith by making them aggravated offences.

edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/50820

'The first 6 Members who have signed to support the motion are the sponsors. The primary sponsor is generally the person who tabled the motion and has responsibility for it'

Holding people to the same standards of protection is the very opposite of discrimination. We are discriminating against trans kids if we DON'T ask questions about safeguarding of the charities that profess to support them as they would have a lower threshold of safeguarding if we failed to.

How can they not understand this?

Some people don't agree with child transition. Some people think child transition is a good thing.

But even if you are in the latter group, you should be against any charity with safeguarding failures because it's bad for the children you're advocating for.

It's not rocket science.

Ahh, that explains it...

There are 36 supporters of the early day motion above, most Labour, some SNP, Liberal Democrats and Caroline Lucas, Green Party

Wed 17-Oct-18 14:38:49
Stephen Whittle's response to challenges on this board about his use of predicting suicide in Guardian article:

"I agree. In hindsight I should not have said that - but the Samaritan's guidelines never cross my mind. The problem is the media is always in a rush. If I had insisted upon the time to think, I would have much preferred it if I had said the following:

If the reforms are derailed, past experiences have shown us that many trans people will become depressed. There might be a small public demonstration, but I doubt it, as people will be at a low ebb.
In the end we will pull ourselves together and continue the campaigning – as we have always done. We know we have Labour behind this one, so will simply do our best to get them elected. As I tell the community “we have always lost more battles than we have won, but we only ever need to win the big one”.

I hope that clarifies matters."

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3397010-Guardian-article-on-MPs-concern-with-GRA?messages=100&pg=1

Mermaids statement here (that I can’t copy for some reason)

m.facebook.com/192046384225479/posts/1946903135406453/

I suspect the majority of twitterari hiinf with indignation don’t actially have children. Like the wee face covered bairns that harass women outside of meetings. It’s just a lovely fluffy rainbow-covered bandwagon to them.

I can’t understand why harrop retweets all the hate? It’s bizarre behaviour for a gp.
Have they not investigated him yet?

The thing with grants to charities is that trusts and grant-giving organisations rely heavily on previous grant-givers having done decent due diligence. So a charity which can demonstrate a growing number of legit grants of increasing value will already tick a lot of boxes.

Mermaids statement:

Mermaids welcomes all levels of scrutiny into the charity and the services that we deliver to families and young people, and are determined to continue to support trans children to achieve a better future. We want to reassure all parents that access our support that we will continue to be there for you and your children.

We are very proud of the work that we do, and would like to thank our supporters, including our individual donors and funders who have made this enormously important work possible.

Whilst we are disappointed that this is necessary, Mermaids understands that the volume of correspondence, both positive and negative, received by Big Lottery has necessitated a review of the grant that we were notified of last week.

It is unfortunate that transgender children and young people continue to be a largely misunderstood population, and we understand that misinformation about the reality for trans kids is at the heart of this. Perhaps this review will reveal more about the very real challenges faced daily by families and young people, and help to foster understanding and acceptance.

We look forward to the outcome of this review and will work with Big Lottery to provide them with any additional information they require, as and when needed.

The Big Lottery Fund Statement: www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/news/press-releases/2018-12-17/big-lottery-fund-statement-on-proposed-grant-to-mermaids

Statement

"Mermaids welcomes all levels of scrutiny into the charity and the services that we deliver to families and young people, and are determined to continue to support trans children to achieve a better future. We want to reassure all parents that access our support that we will continue to be there for you and your children.

We are very proud of the work that we do, and would like to thank our supporters, including our individual donors and funders who have made this enormously important work possible.

Whilst we are disappointed that this is necessary, Mermaids understands that the volume of correspondence, both positive and negative, received by Big Lottery has necessitated a review of the grant that we were notified of last week.

It is unfortunate that transgender children and young people continue to be a largely misunderstood population, and we understand that misinformation about the reality for trans kids is at the heart of this. Perhaps this review will reveal more about the very real challenges faced daily by families and young people, and help to foster understanding and acceptance.

We look forward to the outcome of this review and will work with Big Lottery to provide them with any additional information they require, as and when needed."

apologies, for cross post

Recent FB post by Mermaids Charity
(Facebook UK age limit 13 years+)

Is the recommendation for Dr Weberley on their website? If so, better screen shot it....

There's still a link to 'GenderGP', Dr Webberley's site. Helen Webberley is still touting for business there, despite currently being banned from practising as a doctor in the UK.

Make sure you/we screenshot links to GenderGP etc. as they might mysteriously disappear.