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.

'Six year olds think that if you change your clothes you change sex'

They aren't getting it wrong, this is what Mermaids wants, This is what they are teaching.

They aren't getting it wrong, this is what Mermaids wants, This is what they are teaching.

Thinking about it, someone can have a pink skirt or a gold lame purse or a pair of heels or a ballgown & tiara and that's meant to signify that they're a woman.

Imagine if kids stopped recognising those as markers of what sex someone is. If a long-haired bloke in a skirt & heels was as unremarkable as a woman with a shaved head in trousers & boots...

That wouldn't suit Mermaids at all would it?

When I was a kid it was the 1970s. Who’d be known that just about every man under 50 was trans huh? And almost every single woman ever in the whole world was just a boring old cis woman.

Captain kirks. What did you think about the whole article, rather than the single sentence I pulled out?

It's actually brilliant, even without getting the videos to load it's a very good read, there is certainly nothing i can argue about because it's all true.
In context i agree even more with the quote.

I'm glad she's written it up properly; I think I've linked it somewhere as a series of tweets. It highlights how extremely vulnerable to influence - coercion - young children are.

Now the sussexes are supporting them on instagram they'll be crowing. I give up

Now the sussexes are supporting them on instagram they'll be crowing. I give up

You think they'd have a small army of people doing background research for them.

I assume the split from William and Kate in terms of offices, charity etc and the rapid turnover in staff, relates to the Sussexs wanting to take their own advice and do their own thing. With eyes on a world, rather than British stage.

Old harry putting those two grade E a levels to good use I see

Now more generosity the coffers filling up again.

www.microsoft.com/en-us/pride/products

Well thank you very much. Now I have The Rage. Who the fuck decide to do that?

Well thats the royal bloody endorsement working there isn’t it? Those 2 royal airheads are going to paint the world a rainbow then are they? How very nice for them. I can’t see them being bothered with using a public loon or changing facility. Ever needing access to rape counselling or a refuge. Ever going anywhere outside their little bubble.

@needmoresleep not a world stage a US stage. only 3 of the charities supported this month are british the rest american someone said.

I can now see why the Cambridges were in such a hurry to separate everything. I thought William a bit churlish now I can see he could spot clouds rolling in over the horizon.

I am so mad I defended them against the people who said she was no good, saying it was not fair. Well they were smarter than me, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck.

I don't think it makes any difference to say something that contests the agenda most of you seem to support here.

Reading mumsnet and others, it would look like trans people are a new invention (a trend). Transpeople have always existed in every culture, no matter how discriminated or criminalised. This is not an 'ideology'. It is a bout a small minority of the society who deserves fair treatment and listening to.

I hope at least young trans are protected from this kind of hateful speech against them. You can blame Mermaid or whatever you want to.

The feminist chat used to be a very informative place where women like me learnt a lot. It has become a group of radicalised women who have developed an intense obsession over a very small minority, over investing time in attacking them. And the dailyfail is also suddenly a source of information with sound legal analysis.

Pointless to tell you that’s not what’s happening. The concern over mermaids stems from the concern that they may pose harm to trans-identifying people ie from a desire to protect, not harm.
Some of us are parents of very vulnerable young people and we have a right to voice our concerns. And we will, despite royal airheads whose bullshit detectors aren’t working.

Oh, and FWR was always pretty radical, in the best sense, as you’d know if you were genuine.

Explain the galloping leap in numbers of (most likely gay) children presenting as trans - with the possibility of a lifetime of medicalisation ahead of them.

Explain the trans women mafia? How are they so influential?

Explain why a boy or girl who doesn’t follow the ‘gender norms’ is at risk of being told tat they are actually a girl and can change sex.

Explain why mediocre males in sport hey presto start competing with women and girls - with their male bodies intact - and this isn’t cheating or at the very least unfair on females?

Explain the phrase ‘woman penis’ and how in gods name can the phrase ‘she had an erect penis’ ever - EVER - be used with a straight face?

Explain how some dude with a beard can be shown on wanted posters as ‘she’?

So take your ‘hate speech’ and can it.

Ooh look it's another derailer.

Lot of them about this weekend, it's getting like a British Rail train shed around here. Anyway. Skirting around that,

Yes, unfortunately this is going to end being very embarrassing for the Sussexes. They clearly haven't had anyone do the research deep enough to spot the very obvious issues, and what they are inevitably going to end in. Probably because of being taken in by the emotive hype they're exposed to, by people assuring them that only hard bitten, sour old fleabags have a problem with disablism, racism, homophobia, sexism, misogyny, etc etc

'If I were genuine'... Not sure what kind of test I should pass honestly. And yes, radical feminist that were men exclusionary have always been around. The utter obsession with a minority of people who are marginalised was not.

Have never heard the phrase 'woman penis' except for some other women shouting whether a penis can be a female organ. I don't doubt it is used among the trans community. Have not heard of it though.

Picking up on a minority, investing time in finding information to discredit them, shouting loudly and using personal insults has always been a tactic used against minorities. There is nothing new there and it is extremely popular.

Trans women/men are a bit more visible in our society because they were allowed to. If you decriminalised homosexuality in Iran, I am sure many will be proven right about the 'contagious' effect and the galloping leaps in numbers.

The moment you need to attack a group, dehumanise them, ridicule them as stereotypes to defend your own rights, something is wrong.

Since a lot of this is happening in academia, there is also a clear explanation for the obsessive focus on the issue. When the consultation on the Gender Recognition Act was opened there was a massive interest to be involved because it is the easiest way to prove 'impact'. the REF is around the corner and many have had massive professional gains (while constantly complaining about being 'silenced') over it. The same academics who had never in their lives published a peer-reviewed paper on women's rights/feminist theory/transfeminist theory/transpeople became expert with a 'voice' in the debate.

I'd like chapter and verse on these apparently huge numbers of trans-identifying people who've always existed but without leaving any trace in written records, art or architecture.

It is undoubtedly true that very small numbers of people have always existed in highly gendered societies who struggled with the gender stereotypes for their biological sex and so ended up trying to live outside the gender box, either identifying as the opposite sex as nearly as possible, or living in some halfway category. A lot of those people were same-sex attracted as well as gender nonconforming in other ways. If there had been more tolerance of gender nonconformity they would have been able to live comfortably as their own sex.

In this country we only have to look back a generation to the 1960s, 70s, 80s, early 90s, to see men wearing makeup, long hair, non-traditional clothes and still being accepted as men. Women all through the 20th century cutting their hair short, wearing trousers, doing traditionally male jobs and still being accepted as women. Little girls wearing blue, brown, bright red and playing with standard (i.e. not pink) Lego, but still being accepted as girls. Harder to find examples of little boys dressing in pink, glittery clothes or playing with dolls and not being castigated as girly, effeminate, weak etc etc but tiny steps were being made.

What went wrong?

The moment you need to attack a group, dehumanise them, ridicule them as stereotypes to defend your own rights, something is wrong.

This is what TRAs do to women. As you say, there is something very wrong with this. Why do you think they do this? And they're not even trying to defend their own rights, they're trying to take rights away from women.

Who is under attack? Look again because it’s women. Because of the actions of a minority of men, the backlash is coming for transsexuals.