Police interviewing Caroline Farrow under caution and threatening to arrest her for "misgendering"

[Pimmsnlemonade]

twitter.com/CF_Farrow/status/1107787009614065664

And, as she says in the thread:

"Meanwhile a group of people have terrified and harassed my family. Doxed my children, made violent and sexual threats, signed me up to porn accounts, did the same to my husband, threatened to visit here. And tumbleweed..."

It's standard now - re-write it online and it's as if it never happened, unless someone screenshotted it in the first place.
That's so strange. It's the first time I've ever come across it in a newspaper with no note or anything to say the content has changed, so apologies for the derail.

What's Susie's problem with the word castration? Were her child's testicles physically removed in an operation she sought-out and organised?

spectator.us/misgendering-child-british-journalist/

James Kirkup has updated his article in light of SG's appearance on VD

It's "emotive" "loaded" and "inflammatory" is what I've learnt on twitter.

Same for mutilation.

Yes, CEO is a paid position. Mermaids is a registered charity so its accounts are online. The last set there are for the year to 31.3.18 and show seven trustees. The Charities Commission website currently shows three trustees, two from last year and one new one. The new one has no information showing on the Mermaids website.

SG is not a trustee but used to be according to the Mermaids website, before she became the first CEO three years ago. Salaries last year were £107,261. (Pensions etc are on top of that.) Unless I'm missing it I can't see anything in the report as published to show how many staff were employed or CEO's salary, but the Mermaids website says this:

In January 2016 we took on our first member of paid staff when we employed a CEO. This was followed in September 2016 with the addition of 2 part time Helpline posts, having being awarded a grant by Children in Need to develop and strengthen our core services, the helpline and email support provision. We have now made both these posts full time, and added a full time trainer to grow our training provision to organisations nationwide. Part of this post is funded by a Department of Education grant to deliver training into 36 schools by 2019. In May 2018 we added a Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded post of a Volunteer and Events Manager to grow the number of annual events and supporting volunteers, and in July 2018, following a successful bid to the Tudor Trust, we have added a legal post to improve our service delivery.

In August, to cope with the ever expanding growth in numbers of enquiries and the development of the charity, we employed a Chief Operating Officer, and in September, also a new post, a Moderation Support worker. These posts are integral to make sure that we are prepared for both the short and long term delivery of services, supporting transgender children, young people and their families. In October, we welcomed a fundraiser to our ever growing team, and watch this space for other future hires, as we are hopeful that we will be in a position to add further to our team over the next year.

That seems to indicate that in the year to 31.3.18 there were four full-time staff, SG + two helpline posts + a trainer. So the figure above is split between four full-time salaries. Not mega but enough to live on, I assume. I suppose she might have some media income as well.

The second article in The Times by Lucy Bannerman only allows pre-moderated comments.

The first Times article was free to comment. There are over 600 comments.

Why the change?

Pop because Green has a history of phoning up her firends in the Police, they are worried about free speech.

Possibly worried about libel. I suspect given free rein many Times readers would be a good deal blunter in their language than Caroline was.

I've seen it written here that Jackie was 15 when their mum flew them out to Thailand and they had their birthday (and surgery) almost instantly they were 16. I wish the papers would report that. Gives an extra layer to this. That's how fixated this woman was.

This is after flying them to America for blockers and cross sex hormones at 12? Right?

Was she well off? I'm guessing she must be?

She seems astonishingly arrogant to go against all the doctors here in the UK. She found the places that would treat Jackie as early as possible, all round the world. Treated Jackie for profit, I may well add.

I really hope Jackie is happy. No one (including them) will know if this was the right thing to do. It happened too young. Jackie may have grown out of the gender incongruence, as so many kids do. Jackie might not have.

I dispise Susie Green. Her choices were her own, yet she has been so successful lobbying for her choices to become mainstream. She acts like an expert. She's treated like an expert. She's a lobbyist.

I was fascinated to see the archived version of the old mermaids webpage. It read like transgender trend, advocating watchful, supportive waiting, with therapy. Within 18 years, Susie green has helped take that COMPLETELY SENSIBLE VIEW and change it to the FUCKING INSANITY we see now before us.

I don't think I could actually bring myself to even look at this woman if I met her in real life.

GabrielleNelson

Thanks for that info. Presumably expenses can be claimed as well.

Interesting to see if the Lottery money 💰 will mean a pay rise all round.

I don't see how she can be wealthy. She used to work in IT, and not at senior management level. I don't know anything about her ex-husband. Maybe he was bankrolling it, or other family members. Otherwise I surmise it was funded by re-mortgaging or similar. She was clearly determined to get what she'd decided was best for her child, even though it was in direct opposition to the consensus view in the NHS here at the time.

I'm amazed she's treated as an expert. She has no medical or psychology background. Why isn't that taken into account? Of course parents can become very expert on their children's medical issues, but there's an obvious problem with lack of objectivity.

It's "emotive" "loaded" and "inflammatory" is what I've learnt on twitter.
Despite the connotations of the word, it isn't technically wrong. It's interesting to me that at least two women have gotten into trouble with the police for criticizing Susie and both used the word castration. AFAIK, nobody has been criticizing Jackie. It's the mother who made the decisions who is under scrutiny, and who called the police because she was upset by language that bluntly describes the removal of the testes, the accusation that she has wrongly irrevocably changed the body of her child, and possibly the reminder that the child has no chance of fertility as a direct consequence of her actions. The armchair psychologist in me wonders whether somewhere, deep-down, Susie is very insecure about her decisions, which would explain why she lashes out like this at other mothers especially. Calling the police to protect your feelings is just not an action of someone who is confident in what they've done.

I still do suspect that the actual problem the police are/were investigating is the misgendering. That's the thing that can be construed as directly transphobic, the rest is criticizing a parent who is NOT trans. The language around the misgendering is just providing context, to say the use of son instead of daughter, or he instead of she, was deliberate.

Except Susie Green has been caught on national media, and the public absolutely ridicules the concept of going to jail for misgendering. So I believe she is now trying to spin it, and was given the platform to do so by the BBC.

I agree with the poster who said twee terms like 'bottom surgery' sanitise the reality. I follow someone on YouTube who has just had 'top surgery'. Lots of congratulations and gushing about how amazing it is, I wonder if 'I've just had a double mastectomy' would get the same response. Nothing about Caroline's tweets were inaccurate, TRAs just don't like realistic language used because they can't dress up castration and sterilisation with sparkles and rainbows.

It’s a bit childish though. Why not be grown up about it?

The Barbara Hewson piece is a pretty good summing up. Going on what Green herself has said about the tweets, she should have launched a libel suit, not made a complaint to the police. Legislation on malicious communications is there to deal with the kind of harassment that doesn't strictly fall under the definition of libel - so poison pen letters would have been a good example in the old days. But libel suits are cumbersome and expensive, so one can see the temptation to use the police as one's own personal attack dog - particularly if the police come running at your bidding, as seems to be the case with Green.

Front page on today's Daily Telegraph.

"Police question second woman in trans row."
"A second woman has been investigated by police following allegations of transphobic comments.
Kelly-Jay Keen-Minshull, a woman's rights campaigner, was interviewed after being accused of committing hate crime by Susie Green who runs a charity helping transgender children.
It came after Caroline Farrow, a Catholic commentator, was asked to attend a police interview for allegedly using the wrong pronoun to refer to Ms Greens transgender daughter."

I've seen it written here that Jackie was 15 when their mum flew them out to Thailand and they had their birthday (and surgery) almost instantly they were 16. I wish the papers would report that. Gives an extra layer to this. That's how fixated this woman was.

This is after flying them to America for blockers and cross sex hormones at 12? Right?

Was she well off? I'm guessing she must be?

Its worth watching Jackie Green's documentary 'Transsexual Teen, Beauty Queen'. which gives some answers and insight. Jackie Green was 18 when this was recorded.

src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/WkWv9cbda4" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen>c

From those 3 tweets, just looks like person A calling the police on person B, because person B posted online in blunt and critical (but factual) terms to criticise their parenting.

If that’s illegal... then the whole of Mumsnet is fucked and we’re headed for a national prisons capacity crisis.

As for ‘misgendering’ a child without a GRA, or an adult without a GRA... maybe it’s not polite or nice to do so but it’s not illegal. That child or non GRA-holding adult, remains of their legal birth sex like anyone else who has not been through the GRA process in order to change their legal documentation. Regardless of how they identify. All else is a matter of optional courtesy.

I say this as someone who suspects I might have very little else politically in common with Caroline. But this is a universal attack on women and she is standing up for all of us.

I don't know what to say about this. Just absolutely gobsmacked.

Yes it appears that meltdown hour is indeed underway.

There was nothing illegal in those tweets,

Don't underestimate the scope of Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003:

(2) A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he—

(a)sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false,

(b)causes such a message to be sent; or

(c) persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.

Am I correct in thinking that the papers, and SG herself say the complaint has been withdrawn, but the police have not taken a retraction statement so the investigation is ongoing?

Presumably it can’t continue now anyway as SG has been on the telly discussing a live investigation, and because the police told Caro that the offence was misgendering which SG has been on national television and denied. Do the police even know what it is SG is/was complaining about in that case?

The whole affair comes across as utterly farcical and an embarrassment for both SG and the police. If I was Caro I’d be looking to sue the arse off both.

Yes, the irony is I doubt any posters here actually feel any "hate" towards Jackie Green and want to commit hate crime against Jackie. I genuinely wish Jackie all the best and feel sympathy for them, as I do think as they get older, they may regret some of the decisions made by their parent when they were legally a child, which were implemented against medical and legal advice and have lifelong effects such as sterility.

We are stating facts about the actions of Susie Green relating to a child (as Jackie was at the time). These are facts - the puberty blockers and the medication etc. Susie Green herself has put these facts into the public domain. Parents are aware their behaviours towards their child face scrutiny and agencies like social services will investigate if they believe a child is being abused, for example.

I also believe the general public are entitled to express views about the behaviours of others. I genuinely believe the decisions and actions implemented by Susie Green were illegal in the U.K. and therefore should be considered illegal, and yes, exploitative and abusive. Their DC was a child.

The only person I see who has committed crimes here is Susie Green as had her actions been carried out in the U.K. she, and the medical practitioners involved, would have faced investigation by social services and the police. She has pushed her decisions and actions into the public domain and now is not happy that the public are forming their own opinions on her behaviour towards a vulnerable child in her care.

Don't underestimate the scope of Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003:

Agree. That, the Public Order Act and the Protection from Harassment Act are a useful catch all for this, although of course are rarely deployed when there is no protected hate crime characteristic involved... i.e. when women receive violent threats and misogynistic abuse from male activists.

Wait. The Communications Act can be interpreted to just mean causing "annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety" over electronic platforms?!
That would mean pretty much all of Twitter could be arrested!!!

What the fuck are AH and SH up to?

Surely that is a very public threat? For which there could be consequences?