Mermaids response to piece in Mail tomorrow

[EweSurname]

Looking forward to seeing what drops

www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/press-enquiry-from-the-mail-on-sunday-25th-may-2019.html

We are very proud of the training we offer to schools and we have a proven record of helping teachers to support vulnerable children who simply want to get along with their lessons like any of their classmates.

We are disappointed to find that a school governor has made a covert recording of our training because our presentations are not held in secret and all of the scientific and legal information we offer is publicly available and well-tested.

We are surprised to see that a Church of England rector is complaining about our training when we are included in the CoE guidance on support for transgender people, which can be found here.

Part of the work of Mermaids is giving training talks to schools. These talks are well received and are an important part of how we promote an inclusive and informed approach to trans children and those who support them.

We have been contacted by the Mail on Sunday who are doing an article about one such talk. This post is our response, in accordance with our policy of posting our replies to media queries for the benefit of anyone interested in our activities.

crlncxn
Can you explain what you think is meant by a 'gender identity'? Because I have never seen a definition which isn't based on stereotypes.

crlncxn has presumably been told not to go near Transgender Trend's website let alone read anything on it.

Imagine a worker ant being able to break formation.

So not like turning a woman into a man? Or is that magic (I blame the Harry Potter generation).

crlncxn has presumably been told not to go near Transgender Trend's website let alone read anything on it.

Whereas we have read what Mermaids, GIRES, Stonewall and others have to say, in order to understand their position and criticise what they actually say.

What's the definition of bigot again?

I had never heard it before and had to look it up. Is this what this thread is then? A TERF thread? Solely for "trans-exclusionary radical feminists"?

You speak so strongly in support of adults encouraging children to believe the fantasy that they can change sex, yet have never heard of TERF. Aye right! You knew enough to not accuse posters outright of being TERFs outright, but still managed to get the insult in. slow hand clap 👏🏼

I read this on twitter and the psychologist's tweets are included in this article with the associated videos.

Re gender identity and child development.

This key aspect is routinely missed in discussions about "trans kids."

No such thing as a trans kid if you understand developmental psychology.

Very key here is how children with asd potentially are delayed in this and so this link to a higher number of people with GD have autism.

However, if children are given clear guidelines about the difference between sex and gender, they are happy to be themselves and enjoy the things stereotypically associated with their opposite sex.

youreteachingourchildrenwhat.org/2019/04/appearance-vs-reality-why-transing-toddlers-is-dangerous/

There ARE children who have gender dysphoria, who are transgender, intersex or non-binary

You're referring to children who have gender dysphoria, children who don't have gender dysphoria, children who are not transgender, and children who are gender non-conforming. The fact that you group them together shows how blinded by ideology you are.

Hoping crlncxn will have a wee read.

I've always thought of conversion therapy as a brutal intervention used to change someone who is perfectly fine as they are into something else for ideological reasons.

Oh, like telling a boy who likes to play with dolls and wear skirts, that because he likes dolls and dressing up he has to be a girl?

Because apparently if children don't fit into their gender boxes they are not the sex they were born?

This is conversion therapy right?

Also, transition and affirmative care is NOT the only route of support and treatment for children with gender dysphoria.

The causes can be wide and specifically often include abuse. This can trigger GD and need appropriate treatment.

No child is non-binary.
Its a Queer theory construct & if a child is wishing to adopt it as an identity this speaks of adult influence.

Children are male or female (kmown as boys or girls)

There ARE children who have gender dysphoria, who are transgender, intersex or non-binary - NOT coerced into it by bullying or over PC parents, though I can see that this might happen on occasions

How do you bully a child into being intersex?

Trying to change your child’s gender identity – either by denial, punishment, reparative therapy or any other tactic – is not only ineffective; it is dangerous and can do permanent damage to your child’s mental health

This is precisely what Mrs. Green and her husband did with Jackie. They wouldn't let him play with the toys he liked because they considered them to be girls toys. The only way they could square the circle of having a non-gender conforming boy was to decide that he was actually a girl.

crlncxn
We are mothers
We are grandmothers
We are teachers
We are women and
We are worried

We are not monsters, we are not te*fs

Ro and others have pointed you to some excellent resources. Do you trust the British Medical Journal? Look at what the Professor of Evidence Based Medicine has to say about whether pubity blockers and sex change hormones are safe.

Safeguarding is all about being worried and acting on that to prevent risk. Read what we say. You may not agree but most people do. I think you may be out of the loop on this. The people that are telling you we are t*rfs don't want you to understand what's going on.

There ARE children who have gender dysphoria, who are transgender, intersex or non-binary - NOT coerced into it by bullying or over PC parents, though I can see that this might happen on occasions. They deserve respect and fair treatment, not some sort of suppression of their identity.

Wow, you aren't very bright are you? Do you even know what intersex is? How does a child get bullied or coerced into being born with a genetic disorder then?
You're right though, people with intersex disorders should be treated with respect. Which is why people like you should stop bringing their condition up in trans related conversations that have nothing to do with intersex.
If you really are/were a special needs teacher what do you think about the fact so many autistic kids are identfying as trans?

crlncxn has presumably been told not to go near Transgender Trend's website let alone read anything on it.

Whereas we have read what Mermaids, GIRES, Stonewall and others have to say, in order to understand their position and criticise what they actually say.

Precisely, OldCrone.

Harsh, JanMeyer. Some astonishingly bright people have bought into the ideology- at least at first. I’m sorry to say that I nodded along to it and read media accounts of how awful it was to be trans with initial extreme sympathy and very little critical thought about whether it really meant anything.

‘Some male people find their male bodies unbearable’ makes sense.
‘Some female people find feminine roles and expectations unbearable’ makes sense.
‘Transwomen are women, transgender are men’ makes absolutely bugger all sense and is no basis for law or separation of the sexes.

Well that would have made more sense if my autocorrect hadn’t replaced transmen by transgender.

Harsh, JanMeyer. Some astonishingly bright people have bought into the ideology- at least at first. I’m sorry to say that I nodded along to it and read media accounts of how awful it was to be trans with initial extreme sympathy and very little critical thought about whether it really meant anything.

No, I stand by what I said. If people are stupid enough to list things or use them in their argument whilst not having a clue what they're actually talking about, then they aren't very bright.
And if a person is stupid enough to think a child can be bullied into being born with a genetic disorder, well let's just say that saying they aren't very bright is the polite version of my response.

Just because a person is a teacher or has a degree doesn't make them bright or intelligent, if there's one thing school taught me it's that.
When thinking about teachers and how arrogant they can be with their "I know best attitude" I always remember my science teacher arguing with a parent of an autistic child that they were all clued up on autism and knew more than them because I quote "I went on a two day course."

Question for you, you say you just "nodded along with it" at first, so did you have the same unthinking reaction to trans people repeatedly conflating intersex with trans? Or did your brain recognise they were separate things that had nothing to do with each other?
That's a real question by the way, I'm genuinely curious because it was the intersex appropriation (along with the autism issue) that got me interested in all this.

Whereas we have read what Mermaids, GIRES, Stonewall and others have to say, in order to understand their position and criticise what they actually say.

This is true, and instead of making us doubt our positions, being confronted with the full force of the idiocy we oppose made our arguments stronger.

That’s a good question and something I’m not sure I accurately remember.

I’d known of intersex conditions for a good while and had sympathy with the shock it must be to someone finding they were internally male with an apparently female external body. I’d followed the struggles in the media of one particular ambiguously sexed child (Joel, I think?) to be allowed to change his documents to male after he had literally been ‘assigned’ female.

The other half of the sympathy oddly came from having an autistic and mentally unwell child myself. I got sick of the dismissive ‘they all do that’ or ‘all on the spectrum somewhere’. It left me unwilling to dismiss anyone’s struggles as being ‘all in the mind’, given that our mind is so much of what we are. Also unwilling to accept that dysphoria was as trivial as ‘just’ misery at societal roles, any more than my child’s struggles were ‘just’ fussiness.

I still sympathise but am no longer prepared to pretend males are really female.

Sorry, accidentally wrote an essay.

Wrote an essay and still didn’t answer the question! The missing bit is that I assumed that some people were - for inborn genetic reasons, as for autism - so psychologically crippled by their actual sex clashing with their mental image of themselves that transition was the only viable option for a reasonably healthy life.

I am concerned to speak out for those children who, it seems, have no voice.

crlncxn I am also speaking out for children with no voice and so I speak out for the very, many sexually abused girls who can't. I speak out as much as I can because I was a girl who was groomed, abused and raped by a male relative for many years. I was also subjected to inappropriate sexual behaviour by two ten year old boy class mates, at the home of one of them.

I speak out because I know how extremely important single-sex spaces are in enabling a girl to navigate her way through society in the aftermath of the abuse. I know how important single-sex spaces are to her attempts to recover from the abuse.

I speak out because I know how important it is for such a girl to be able to develop boundaries and to be able to have the confidence to assert them.

I speak out because I know how important it is for an abused girl to be able to recognise that males continue to pose a risk to her and to feel confident enough to remove herself from situations where she feels uncomfortable or at risk from a male.

I speak out because it is not actually possible for any girl to determine on the basis of demeanour, appearance, position in society, job or anything else which male poses a risk to her and therefore it is perfectly normal and acceptable to react to all males as though they may a risk.

I speak out because no abused girl should ever be made to feel as though her emerging and fragile boundaries are wrong or bigoted. Nor should she be left feeling that her trauma-responses to males, including those that identify as girls/women, are offensive or transphobic.

I speak out because sexually abused girls are usually incredibly afraid to tell anyone that they are being abused and therefore they look carefully for any reason why it might not be safe to do so. If teachers are telling girls that some males can be entirely regarded as females if that is how the male identifies, then the abused girl who is reacting instinctively to males as though they are males, will believe that she is not safe to speak up. After all she is the only one who knows the truth about her abuser and she is now also the only one who is seeing males as though they are males. The adult world is not to be trusted, as it does not see the truth as she sees it.

Finally, I also speak out because sexually abused girls are now being excluded even more from society. A girl who is struggling to use mixed-sex spaces now has no female-only groups such as Guides to go to. Furthermore, whilst at school she may fear, or react to changing in changing rooms with males or using a toilet cubicle next to a male. Most sexually abused girls do not feel able to speak up and so she will be suffering silently. She may well start to exclude herself from situations that concern or upset her. This could even include excluding herself from school.

Mermaids are incorrectly training schools that the Equality Act 2010 states that transgender children must be allowed to use use whichever toilet or changing room they want to. They are also teaching schools to tell children that males can become females and and that 'misgendering' can be considered a hate crime. If schools implement what Mermaids advise then they will be completely failing to adequately safeguard the wellbeing of sexually abused girls and they may also contribute to a situation where a girl feels unable to speak up and is therefore abused for longer. Mermaids also teaches that it is important to implement their advice for reasons of inclusion, however there is no consideration for the many sexually abused girls who are now being excluded.

Great post chicken. I’m just sorry you have keep explaining this to all the unthinking “inclusive” woke ploppers who pitch up on these threads castigating us without taking the trouble to read around FWR and see why we are raising concerns.