Recording of Mermaids training

[Imherefornow]

twitter.com/MichaelConroy68/status/1074723989308801026?s=19

Apologies if this has already been posted. Did a quick search and didn't find anything.

Michael Conroy attended and recorded a mermaids training session. It's hair raising listening.

I believe that someone is working on transcribing this, which will hopefully make it easier to analyse. But wanted to post it to make sure it hadn't been missed.

I heard it

What they frightened of
If it’s fine then they have no need to pull it
But then I heard it

Yeps it bern pulled

Are you sure? The link I posted above still works for me.

Boy oh boy. I'd have just eaten the jelly babies

The link works for me too (i got to the end of session 2 and it automatically moved onto 1). I logged in using that link

I've transcribed lots of it now and a master copy exists. The emperor has been exposed.

I kept the link up for ages earlier by not closing the window on my phone.

Yeps link 👆working

The end of session two has Jan stating:

So toilets, changing rooms, sports, residential. The Equality act is unambiguous its crystal clear. Unisex and gender neutral facilities are absolutely fine, but that’s not a disabled toilet with a sticker on.

But you can’t prevent anyone from using the facilities of the gender with which they identify and are living as. If someone complains, you provide an alternative to the person complaining. THAT IS THE LAW.

If you get a what if? which you will, just replace one protected characteristic with another and ask yourself the question again. So what would happen if you said ‘you can’t use those toilets because you’re Jewish?

Usually if you’ve got a ‘what if?’ just do that and it will quite often just give you the answer and then you can go ‘OK, I can deal with this. It’ll be fine. So that’s for primary schools...

Looking forward to someone who's got the time to do a full transcript, but just a little highlight from when I went back to check what I was hearing was really what I heard:

we're all made the same way, the sperm meets egg...bubble, bubble, bubble, we're all female, bubble bubble bubble, and out we go onto this, this spectrum, and some people go on to more towards Joe and some people go on Barbie, yeh, you know, there are plenty of men who are petite, and plenty of women who are a bit broad, and it's just about the human race on that spectrum and where we are divided

a) bubble, bubble, bubble, how the fuck did anyone on this spectrum know which sperm and which egg went together.
b) if you're a 'man', whatever that means in Jan's world, who's a bit 'petite', or a 'woman' who's a bit 'broad', that's it, in Jan's world, you move along the Barbie - GI Joe spectrum?

Sure Jan

Petite men...shift yourself along that spectrum. Don't like football? Shift yourself a little further. A-bit-broad women, don't like sparkles? You'll probably be meeting Mr Petite in the middle if you're not careful.

This would all be funny, if it wasn't being pitched for use with children.

Well there is that bit in the recording when trainer is asked should I use safeguarding by a teacher
Trainer says no

Big chunks at the end of this thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3453738-Mermaids-review

looking forward to the transcript

This is unbelievable claptrap.

And the makers of Barbie should be suing for misappropriation of their brand.

Why is it Barrie and GI Joe? Why not Ken? What wrong with Ken?

Barbie not Barrie obvs - though auto correct is not happy.

What wrong with Ken? Is Ken not number 6, with the sticky-out arms?

And the makers of Barbie should be suing for misappropriation of their brand. Yes, that's odd. They really didn't like that song,.... quite a few years ago now....

OK, after minimal googling I now understand more about Jan the trainer now.

And can understand her drive to 'educate the world' to her world view, negate safeguarding, shut down questions from the audience, and convince us all that humans are like clownfish and can change sex.

Whilst I'm sure Jan is a supportive and caring parent, it seems Jan has an experience somewhat like Susie. And Jan needs all of us to affirm that her parenting decisions are OK. No matter what the implications for other children.

The muddled, wandering and lecturing-style of the training session makes much more sense with that context as to who is delivering it and potentially why. But that doesn't give it legitimacy.

Fuck this is just insane. How and why are they allowed anywhere near other people’s children with this utter nonsense?

Where would barbie robotics engineer be on the mermaid gender spectrum?

https://barbie.mattel.com/shop/en-us/ba/career-dolls/barbie-robotics-engineer-doll-frm09

Also the trainer telling when challenged on the appalling stereotypes that he needs "to take a step down academically".

This is the whole gist, this trainer is asking people to take a massive gullible step and swallow up any critical thinking.

No room for science, facts and proper research.

Damaging for children. Safeguarding thrown out the window.

I can't believe this is peddled to police and primary aged children.

As someone transsexual since childhood who has experienced many issues growing up I was very interested to listen to this.

The first part I felt was valid in that not everyone nearly fits into stereotypically male or female. It was actually a bloody good argument over why we SHOULDNT label children as transgender and the importance of removing gender stereotypes.

As the training progressed their conclusions just became ridiculous and confusing. By all means have an organisation of qualified professionals to support dysphoric children but to actively go out and train people to find problems out of nothingness is disgusting.

The erase of transexualism and dysphoria as medical conditions was equally concerning.
Imagine if I said that clinical depression was an outdated term and from now on you just had to use the term "sad"....and anyone that ever felt even slightly sad came under the label. Instead of the x thousand people diagnosed with depression we now have x million people under the new sad umbrella. What happens to those with genuine clinical depression ?

You don't have to erase Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity Disorder and Transexualism when all you are trying to say is that not everyone conforms to gender stereotypes.

Their veiled criticism of CAMHS was greatly concerning. If a child does experience issues with gender identity what you don't do is immediately go to an organisation that slaps a TG label on and fails to identify and address other comorbidities. Trauma, Abuse, BPD are all factors. Most worrying of all is that certain indicators for child sexual abuse are now being swallowed up and dismissed by a TG label.

Never in a million years would I give Mermaids 1p for this nonsense.

The guy does a really good job of questioning the training only to be told to take it down a level and it would be dealt with later on. Lots of equivalence in there and it is so illogical with lots of holes in it - just on the jelly bit at the moment. The trainer can’t answer his questions. I wonder what the other people in the room thought it sounds like a couple were going along with it. The questioning approach is fab though.

The thing is in training sessions that many people will conform in the group - it doesn't mean that they go along with it.

I think the trainer made it clear she would not welcome objections so that would deter others from critical questioning.

It is dangerous that this shit could be peddled to children.

I hope Michael was attending as an undercover feelance journalist and manages to sell the story to a broadsheet

The thing is in training sessions that many people will conform in the group - it doesn't mean that they go along with it.

A couple of people clearly had drunk the kool aid. There was a bit where GC guy was challenging the trainer over the bit where they were supposed to plot themselves on the jelly baby chart, IIRC he pointed out that what it means to be a man is culturally determined so what point of reference should he use? And others piped in that it's all highly individual and personal (or words to that effect).

How do you identify into a category when there are no determining features for being in that category?