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

From what I can make out Mermaids are now saying that "born in the wrong body" is an umbrella term. Which is rather ironic.

I don't understand how you can be "transgender and non-binary"

Dual meanings of "trans".

Under the cis/trans binary model of gender identity, either you have an identity that matches your sex, or you have an identity that matches the opposite sex.

Trouble with that is that shitloads of people accepted the premise, analysed their own experiences through that lens, and came to the conclusion that they were neither female women (cis) nor female men (trans).

So they invented 'non-binary' to describe themselves in relation to the dominant genderist ideology - which is mostly too caught up in affirming everyone's right to self-definition to consider the logical implications, and anyway isn't currently too threatened by enbyism because it's verboten to express enbyism in clear language that deconstructs the validity of the cis/trans binary.

Someone's obviously caught on though, because they've subsumed it into the wider category of 'trans' - the umbrella term for "anyone who isn't cis".

They're trans because they're under the umbrella, not because they have a cross-sex identity, basically.

@BovaryX

What is 'gender euphoria?'

I don't know if there is a consensus definition, but I have read it being defended as an alternative reason for transitioning, i.e., a person doesn't have to feel dysphoric before transition to transition. Feeling euphoric after transitioning is sufficient.

@TyroBurningDownTheCloset

I don't understand how you can be "transgender and non-binary"

Dual meanings of "trans".

Under the cis/trans binary model of gender identity, either you have an identity that matches your sex, or you have an identity that matches the opposite sex.

Trouble with that is that shitloads of people accepted the premise, analysed their own experiences through that lens, and came to the conclusion that they were neither female women (cis) nor female men (trans).

So they invented 'non-binary' to describe themselves in relation to the dominant genderist ideology - which is mostly too caught up in affirming everyone's right to self-definition to consider the logical implications, and anyway isn't currently too threatened by enbyism because it's verboten to express enbyism in clear language that deconstructs the validity of the cis/trans binary.

Someone's obviously caught on though, because they've subsumed it into the wider category of 'trans' - the umbrella term for "anyone who isn't cis".

They're trans because they're under the umbrella, not because they have a cross-sex identity, basically.

To add to the confusion, in some contexts I have seen terms such as 'nonbinary women,' while in other contexts you cannot be both a woman and nonbinary.

@TyroBurningDownTheCloset

I don't understand how you can be "transgender and non-binary"

Dual meanings of "trans".

Under the cis/trans binary model of gender identity, either you have an identity that matches your sex, or you have an identity that matches the opposite sex.

Trouble with that is that shitloads of people accepted the premise, analysed their own experiences through that lens, and came to the conclusion that they were neither female women (cis) nor female men (trans).

So they invented 'non-binary' to describe themselves in relation to the dominant genderist ideology - which is mostly too caught up in affirming everyone's right to self-definition to consider the logical implications, and anyway isn't currently too threatened by enbyism because it's verboten to express enbyism in clear language that deconstructs the validity of the cis/trans binary.

Someone's obviously caught on though, because they've subsumed it into the wider category of 'trans' - the umbrella term for "anyone who isn't cis".

They're trans because they're under the umbrella, not because they have a cross-sex identity, basically.

Thanks, it’s all so confusing but I got there in the end! I once asked an enby who described themselves as gay, to ask them how that worked. I’m not surprised there’s a lot of confused souls

What is 'gender euphoria?'

Feeling good (and all that entails) when you put the lacey underwear on.

@BovaryX

What is 'gender euphoria?'

My understanding is that there are many men who thoroughly enjoy being trans. It's not a question of a negative feeling about their bodies, they feel very positive about them, genitals n all.

@NewlyGranny

Echoes of Kimmy (of Kath & Kim)

"Who sayed that? I never sayed that!"

It’s noice, it’s different, it’s unyewsual 😂

Mermaids, for the avoidance of doubt, have absolutely been telling the world for a number of years that trans people are literally, not metaphorically born in the wrong body.

They’ve said this to children, who are their target support group, and cannot be reasonably expected to understand this as a metaphor.

They have leveraged people with disorders of sexual development as “proof” that sex is on a spectrum, and people’s brain and body’s genders can be incongruent, as people’s genital and chromosomal makeup can be.

They have leveraged small und unreliable studies looking at the brains of trans people, and lobbied hard on the supposition that female brains can literally be seen in male bodies on MRI.

So don’t come the raw prawn and pretend this didn’t happen, Mermaids. It did.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

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.

You can't possibly know what interventions were attempted. Jackie may well have been referred to CAMHS, or the parents may have been offered a referral and refused. If parents won't engage when children have mental health needs, teachers and GPs have very few options, unless the situation is dire enough to require SS intervention - and I imagine there was zero chance of SS involvement in this case. MN has a lot of magical thinking around HVs, social services and other professionals involved in safeguarding - on the one hand, everyone is outraged if any MNetter ever gets so much as a welfare call from them, on the other hand, they are seen as some sort of deus ex machine, able to solve any family problem. SS do not get involved because a child's father won't let it play with dolls.

I am highly critical of professionals who collude with the 'born in the wrong body' narrative, but we have no idea what visibility professionals had of what was happening in the Green household, or of what interventions were offered. The only people who are clearly to blame for what happened are the parents.

It's not a question of a negative feeling about their bodies, they feel very positive about them, genitals n all.

If only there were a handy shorthand term for this, maybe a three letter abbreviation...

Part of the reason it's so confusing is because language is constantly evolving, and with the advent of the internet in your pocket twenty four seven, the rate at which this happens has gone through the roof.

I think a lot of people round here are baffled by the idea of non-binary because we're using language in a different way. Someone says "I'm not a woman or a man" and we think "that's daft, of course you are a woman, you're female" - but they aren't using the sex-class definitions of "man" and "woman". They're not allowed to. They're using them as labels for internal subjective identities.

God knows who a self-identified gay enby actually fancies though. Under traditional, material-reality-acknowledging definitions, it'd be people of their sex. Under genderism, they're not allowed to use "gay" to mean "same-sex attracted" - that's old-fashioned and bigoted now, and gay means "same-gender attracted".

Which means logically, a gay enby would be someone who is only attracted to other enbies, and a straight enby would be someone who is only attracted to people who have an identity that's particularly associated with a sex.

It only makes sense if you've installed the horribly sexist dictionary updates in your brain.

nepeta and Datun

Thank you for the explanations.

It's not a question of a negative feeling about their bodies, they feel very positive about them, genitals n all

That's er paradoxical. Or something.

*HPFA I am sorry to say I laughed out loud at. *The only clothes xie has to wear apart from what she brought with xir is a wardrobe of ballgowns from xir childhood.

What sort of childhood involves a wardrobe full of ballgowns? In fairness one that would probably leave you wanting to live a life free from gender stereotypes.

Thank you for this thread and for the HEROIC women who are trying to decode the utter bollox that is being presented as serious fact.

The fact, too, that lawyers are sharpening their expensive knives gives me a lot of hope. Let’s hope the children who have been victims of this experiment can get some legal recourse

The mermaids blog about 'born in the wrong body' was taken down then put back up. The version that's there now is different from the one pasted in by OP.

Ha! So their damage limitation of claiming that they've never said people can be born in the wrong body isn't flying so well because the TRA tiger is going to eat them for saying it. Facing both ways at once, eh? Who could have predicted that outcome?

Can I ask a question of all of you who know a lot about the theory around gender (and others)?

My understanding is that a lot of development theory on identity (especially those who are inspired by Erikson) view adolescence as a period where you are faced with a period of change and where you in some interaction with your environment find (hopefully) some stability in your identity?

If so, if there is a massive focus on gender identity, isn’t there a risk that a lot of other aspects not are dealt with? And that some inner conflicts wrongly are attributed to gender confusion?

Sorry for the theoretical question, genuinely interested. Not only in the theory (although am very interested in that), but in people’s thoughts on this.

@Manderleyagain

The mermaids blog about 'born in the wrong body' was taken down then put back up. The version that's there now is different from the one pasted in by OP.

I didn't C&P the whole thing - just excerpts. The archived version is linked to though, to check for later changes

The version that's there now is different from the one pasted in by OP.

Mr MacLachlan did a compare and contrast:

www.diffchecker.com/UXiv5PCg

Absolutely, CoffeeTeaChocolate.

You give kids a linguistic and analytical framework, tell them it's literal truth that applies to everyone, they're going to use that framework as a lens through which to analyse and understand their own experiences.

Tell kids that any internal disquiet about their sexed body, or the gender stereotypes directed at them, or the gender expectations placed upon them as a result of their sexed bodies, are a sign of "gender incongruence" and "being trans", and just watch the number of kids identifying as trans go through the roof.

The ideology falls down because it doesn't account for things like trauma, homosexuality, and the hypersexualised nature of socially-constructed womanhood under neoliberal capitalism. All issues are reduced to "identity issues" with no analysis of the underlying societal structures and environments within which identity-formation takes place.

Plain English: our culture tells kids that woman = a) the degraded and degradable sex object and at the same time b) an identity. Any female who doesn't wish to be identified as the inherently degradable thing promptly starts questioning whether she "identifies as a girl."

Doesn't work as an accurate description of reality, because our being reduced to the cheerfully compliant site of violation and dick-pandering has nothing to do with our own internal identities and everything to do with our being observably female-sexed and treated accordingly by patriarchal society. But kids raised under genderism are denied access to the language to express that.

@AbsintheFriends

Shon 'enjoy ur erasure' Faye has tweeted 'The pathological obsession some people have with Mermaids is bizarre.'

Thank Christ the rest of the world is starting to wake up to the safeguarding nightmare behind the mythical creatures and rainbow glitter.

Dodgiest "nothing to see here folks" comment ever.

Glinner and jkr get the same 'it's weird how much you care about this" treatment. Dismantling child safeguarding.....yaaaawn.

@Siablue

*HPFA I am sorry to say I laughed out loud at. *The only clothes xie has to wear apart from what she brought with xir is a wardrobe of ballgowns from xir childhood.

What sort of childhood involves a wardrobe full of ballgowns? In fairness one that would probably leave you wanting to live a life free from gender stereotypes.

I didn't know whether to laugh or be irritated or immensely sad for xie. How could you make real friends when potential friends would be thinking how exhausting it would be to have to remember all these pronouns all the time. And why couldn't xie just be an individual? Xie clearly has no idea of her own identity or individuality at all as xie is constantly dependent on other people to validate it.

@CoffeeTeaChocolate

Can I ask a question of all of you who know a lot about the theory around gender (and others)?

My understanding is that a lot of development theory on identity (especially those who are inspired by Erikson) view adolescence as a period where you are faced with a period of change and where you in some interaction with your environment find (hopefully) some stability in your identity?

If so, if there is a massive focus on gender identity, isn’t there a risk that a lot of other aspects not are dealt with? And that some inner conflicts wrongly are attributed to gender confusion?

Sorry for the theoretical question, genuinely interested. Not only in the theory (although am very interested in that), but in people’s thoughts on this.

You might enjoy this. She's a great writer and takes a very calm dispassionate approach which is rare.

gdworkinggroup.org/2018/11/12/how-i-work-with-rogd-teens/

What is 'gender euphoria?

I don't know if this is the same thing but Mermaids did an instagram chat with someone called Mia Violet earlier today. I didn't listen but heard Mia speak to GenderGP a few days ago.

Their story is briefly is that they were born a boy, were never stereotypical girly growing up, never distressed about their body, or depressed, but just fancied transitioning. They complain about having to fit the descriptors of gender dysphoria in order to access 'healthcare' on the NHS, which means they are forced to be dishonest. Helen Webberley sympathetically agrees how wrong it is. I stopped listening at that point.

I can't see how stories like this fit with the narrative, "most marginalised community" and "research shows that 50% of trans people...."

or

How 'trans healthcare' in this situation is any different to cosmetic surgery?

The whole thing gets dafter and dafter every day.

@Thingybob

What is 'gender euphoria?

I don't know if this is the same thing but Mermaids did an instagram chat with someone called Mia Violet earlier today. I didn't listen but heard Mia speak to GenderGP a few days ago.

Their story is briefly is that they were born a boy, were never stereotypical girly growing up, never distressed about their body, or depressed, but just fancied transitioning. They complain about having to fit the descriptors of gender dysphoria in order to access 'healthcare' on the NHS, which means they are forced to be dishonest. Helen Webberley sympathetically agrees how wrong it is. I stopped listening at that point.

I can't see how stories like this fit with the narrative, "most marginalised community" and "research shows that 50% of trans people...."

or

How 'trans healthcare' in this situation is any different to cosmetic surgery?

The whole thing gets dafter and dafter every day.

Indeed. It just gets more enlightening.

No dysphoria. No distress. Irritated at being asked. Just wants cosmetic surgery.

Because ...??