Mermaids and the evolving understanding of gender identity.

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

Given recent events, I thought it would be interesting to trawl the Wayback Machine and see how the organisation has developed over time with regards to diagnosing children as transgender.

What is Gender Dysphoria?

2009
Gender Identity Disorders in infancy, childhood and adolescence are complex and have varied causes: in the majority of cases the eventual outcome will be homosexuality or bisexuality, but often there will be a heterosexual outcome as some gender issues can be caused by a bereavement, a dysfunctional family life, or (rarely) by abuse. Only a small proportion of cases will result in a transsexual outcome
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090307015630/www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/gidca.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20090307015630/www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/gidca.html

2010
Gender dyphoria, also known as Gender Identity Disorder, applies to someone who is unhappy with their biological sex and who wishes to belong to the other one.

Gender Identity is the sense of belief that "I am male" or "I am female". A child becomes aware of its gender identity before or around the age of five years, in many cases as early as 2 or 3 years of age. In most people their gender identity is the same as their sex, i.e. a woman or girl feels she is female and a man or boy feels he is male, but in a few people their gender identity and their sex do not match, and this can cause problems.

Gender Identity Issues vary considerably, some may be transient in nature, and some may not. They may arise when a child exhibits cross-gender behaviour to some degree or other. Some may be boys who prefer to take the female role or vice versa; others may have a compulsion to play with toys mostly used by the other sex (for instance, a boy who predominantly plays with dolls or a girl who always plays with action men and 'army toys'). Some children may only feel comfortable when playing with peers of the other physical sex, or may cross-dress from time to time.

Some children may be unhappy about their own biological sex and either wish to belong to the other one, or feel that they actually do; some adolescents may experience a crisis over a problem of gender identity or sexual orientation, or both. These situations can lead to considerable concern and distress for all those involved.
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100718215911/www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/New%20Mermaids/whatisgid.htm" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20100718215911/www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/New%20Mermaids/whatisgid.htm

2012
For example, your daughter may say that she wants to be a boy, or your son may identify himself as a girl. Or perhaps you are worried about your child's cross gender behaviour, but they won't discuss it with you, and instead are isolated and withdrawn.

Or it may be you, as a young person, and you feel that your body is wrong, and that you should have been a girl if you were born a boy, or a boy if you were born a girl.
(Added to 2010 description)
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20121109215055/mermaidsuk.org.uk/index.php/what-is-gender-dysphoria" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20121109215055/mermaidsuk.org.uk/index.php/what-is-gender-dysphoria

They seem to have removed their page about gender dysphoria sometime after 2016. However, we can glean some information about how to diagnose children from their parent testimonials

2019
"Kelly"
“From the age of two we started to notice that Evie didn’t quite fit in. I thought that my son was going to be gay, but it became apparent that there was something more than that.

“Evie always wanted to play with dolls, and never had any interest in traditional boys toys, like cars or dinosaurs. We had an older son and the two could not have been more different.

“Evie loved bracelets and constantly wanted to wear one, and when I bought the children Guess Who? to play she unclipped all the female faces and put them in a handbag to carry around with her.

“Evie would look longingly at other little girls who were wearing dresses or skirts, and every time I picked her up from the childminder she would be have raided the dressing up box for a princess costume. She would come to the door to meet me in a sparkly pink dress and a tiara with a big smile on her face.

“At other children’s houses she would love putting on the princess outfits, and would have a meltdown when she had to take them off as it was time to leave.
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190301090129/www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/parents-voices.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20190301090129/www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/parents-voices.html

"Denise"
“We didn’t notice Sally having any particular problems or issues as she was growing up, but her primary school was very small and the classes were mixed together in infants, so there was no real distinction between boys and girls or age groups.

“But looking back I can see there were pointers. Sally always wanted to play with the dressing up box, and she always wanted to be a princess. She always wanted long hair too.
<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190301090129/www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/parents-voices.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">web.archive.org/web/20190301090129/www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/parents-voices.html

Why and how did it go so off the rails

Same reason as always.

People get cocky and over confident and greedy.

Trying to include things that contradict what you originally stand fir always results in confusion to the point of its impossible to write anything that makes sense that applies to everything. It will never work

@highame

I think this sort of organisation is needed.

Change of principles, non political, change of leadership, open and transparent, good strong safeguarding in place and great oversite. This could work for lots of children and parents.

Yep.

It's a massive shame susie green wasn't on MN ... We went to couple's counseling, and what they said to us as parents that we had to agree, no matter what it was that we agreed upon we had to agree. At that point, Tim decided that I must agree with him, apparently, and then all the "girl toys" or "girly toys" as such were taken away and put away,

She'd have been advised here to ditch that counsellor, and quite possibly to LTB. And pointed to Let Toys be Toys (or if it didn't yet exist, be told to keep her kids toys by the sorts of women who'd create it).

When did it go off the rails? ..... 2015?

TBF it probably slid off the rails over the last 5 years but 2015 was (I think) is when Stonewall replaced sex with gender and Mermaids appearing more in stories like....

article from 2015.

Tom, five, likes Batman and football. Julia, eight, likes pink and princesses.

and

They learned a lot about gender dysphoria from Mermaids. The whole family has taken part in the organisation’s residential get-togethers, where families meet and share information.

They learned a lot about gender dysphoria from Mermaids. The whole family has taken part in the organisation’s residential get-togethers, where families meet and share information

Thing is gender dysphoria is no longer a requirement to be trans so I really cannot understand why such emphasis is placed on distress whilst they simultaneously believe that no dx is even needed.

Oh Mermaids, if you think people are going to have collective amnesia while you reverse ferret this, you are sorely mistaken. We know what you’ve been up to. If you decide (rightly, imho) to go back to your 2009 model, which we can all agree is sensible and helpful, then let’s talk, but first you’re going to have to come clean about how wrong you got it in the interim.

Poor, poor Jack, later Jackie. It breaks my heart what was done to that poor wee child thanks to their fathers homophobia and their mothers...well, if I go into too much detail there, I’m on course for a deletion, so I will stop.

Given how many families they say they've "helped" over the years, it will be interesting who comes forward now regarding what they've been told.

My guess would be that most parents will be going through the same mental gymnastics SG did to justify what she did to her child. How could you admit to having got something so so wrong?

what they said to us as parents that we had to agree, no matter what it was that we agreed upon we had to agree.

Completely misunderstanding that the counsellor presumably meant they had to find common ground to parent effectively together. Not that the dad could decide something and his wife must agree.

I place a lot of the blame on the medical, teaching and psychological professions and on lack of decent support for new parents.

SG and her ex-husband had their first child in the early 90s. They should have had regular check-ups from a health visitor, who could have signposted/referred them to support where necessary. My HV at the same time was pretty useless, I'm afraid, so possibly they had a similar experience. They did, however, see their GP. It's clear that Jackie became extremely distressed at a very early age, partly as a result of the parents' asinine decision to take away favourite toys and the constant criticism of Jackie's personality and likes/dislikes, partly because the parents were having major marital problems. Children pick up on this kind of thing. Children also pick up on what they perceive as favouritism from parents. We know from the TED talk and countless interviews that SG's younger children, all boys, all behaved in the expected way, and my surmise is that their Dad's approval of them and disapproval/concern/bafflement over Jackie would have been obvious.

The GP should have referred them to CAMHS or family therapy. If only an intelligent and empathetic professional had managed to persuade the Greens that Jackie's behaviour was perfectly normal and acceptable for a boy and that it was the parents who needed to re-think and adjust their behaviour accordingly.

But that didn't happen. I don't know what support the NHS and social services gave the family. It may well have been a case where they tried to help and came up against a lack of co-operation. It may have been a failure of co-ordination or lack of resources. But whatever may or may not have happened, driven by terrible fear for her suicidal child (because it is clear that by the early teens Jackie was in a very bad way, bullying at school having not been sorted out) SG took matters into her own hands, did her own 'research', found a solution which to her, a non-medic, seemed to make sense, and took her child abroad for irreversible medical treatment which would not have been given in the UK to a child of that age (at that time), with nobody in authority in the UK appearing to know or act in the child's interests.

Having made that decision, there's no way back from it. How could you live with yourself after doing that to your child, if you subsequently conclude it was the wrong thing?

I blame SG. But frankly, I blame the professionals more. Why didn't anybody speak up and say 'There is no evidence to support this medicalisation of a psychological problem' and 'This is not in the best interests of any child - we should not be giving irreversible medical treatment to young children who can't give informed consent' and 'Where is the evidence for these suicide statistics you keep mentioning?'

There has been a total lack of critical thinking and of backbone from most of the professional people who could have stopped this in its tracks a decade ago. It's a disgrace.

Fantastic thread - thanks OP

I hope Lang has been reading all of this (here somehow, on Twitter). She 'radicalised' me and so possibly 100s of others with her deep understanding of safeguarding - writing patiently and considerably how Mermaids et al flaunt child safeguarding rules.
On the back of that knowledge I've written one or 2 letters - I'd not have the words to do so otherwise.

I hope Mumsnet start to appreciate the importance of contributors such as her given this recent news and learn to stand up to the angry mob.

(Ps can someone archive this thread? Invaluable content)

Just for old times sake, let’s have this again, because above all, it’s not about stereotypes and never was!!

That Guardian link which FindTheTruth posted above - it's gone!! Was it there earlier? Is the Guardian trying to cover its tracks too?

'This is not in the best interests of any child - we should not be giving irreversible medical treatment to young children who can't give informed consent' and 'Where is the evidence for these suicide statistics you keep mentioning?

Weren't the blockers obtained online ?

I cant remember everything did the gp participate in the "treatment"

I haven't gone back and checked the TED talk and the many media articles, but as I recall in the mid 2000s when Jackie was about 12 SG found that a doctor in New York (Norman Spack is the name, I think) would prescribe puberty blockers and cross-hormones to under 16s. She took Jackie over there for a consultation, he wrote the prescription, she bought the drugs, don't know how but she was paying. The NHS wouldn't have done that then. Shamefully, they will now.

@iguanadonna

That Guardian link which FindTheTruth posted above - it's gone!! Was it there earlier? Is the Guardian trying to cover its tracks too?

Bad link. Here it is:

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/12/transgender-children-have-to-respect-who-he-is

and archive: archive.is/7owzG

@iguanadonna

That Guardian link which FindTheTruth posted above - it's gone!! Was it there earlier? Is the Guardian trying to cover its tracks too?

Link mistyped, try this

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/12/transgender-children-have-to-respect-who-he-is

Archived here just in case archive.li/7owzG

@Whatwouldscullydo

They learned a lot about gender dysphoria from Mermaids. The whole family has taken part in the organisation’s residential get-togethers, where families meet and share information

Thing is gender dysphoria is no longer a requirement to be trans so I really cannot understand why such emphasis is placed on distress whilst they simultaneously believe that no dx is even needed.

To be honest I'm now totally confused as to what being trans actually is!

If this "gender identity" is not feeling that your body ought to be a woman's and it's not "conforming to gender stereotypes" then what is it? Why is it called "woman"? Why could it not equally be called something else?

Aaah yes I remember now.

There was alot of money in this stuff back then.

Amazes me how peoplw never pay fir things like phone insurance or engine flushes as they see it as being ripped off. As people taking more money from them than is necessary. Yet will do things line this where they don't make the link to the financial gain

It's still there, iguanadonna, but the link doesn't work. This one should work.

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/12/transgender-children-have-to-respect-who-he-is

To be honest I'm now totally confused as to what being trans actually is!

It leaves 3 possibilities as to what it can be. But ill be deleted for saying them.

It really shows the homophobia that appears to be rampant within the TRA community.

I wonder what exactly Mr Green was worried about when his child was playing with dolls?

Thanks!

WOW that article is a useful answer to anyone who tries to say that this isn't about (very sexist) gender stereotypes

I wonder what Cassie and Tom are up to these days? Wonder if Tom persisted?