Why is it not called Merpersons?

[toocuriousnottoask]

I don't know if this has been asked before, but I couldn't seem to find it. This forum seemed like the right place to ask.

Why exactly is the transgender charity that assists children called Mermaids? Is this naming in itself not exclusion? For example, I would have thought it would be something more like Merpersons since there were I though the idea of Mermen.

I get that the founder created the charity after having a son that identified more as a daughter and so it may have history in regards to that, but I would've thought as it assists transition both ways around, it would be much more appropriate to be named Merpersons.

I ask this question as I am quite curious about the idea of misogyny in this movement. I see that the rates of girls transitioning in the NHS

chocolate oh no, poor young you!
Though I appreciate the honesty of that movie blurb that Hamster posted:

‘A mermaid falls in love with a human prince, which leads to tragedy.’

Thanks so much for the follow up to this. It’s truly informative. I didn’t in fact even realise that the Little Mermaid was a story beyond the Disney film I’m ashamed to say. I presume a lot of people that are using mermaids as a representation may not as well.

Also interesting there is a more fitting mythical creature!

It seems like a classic case of how the word “men” can include women (this probably applies better in a language like Spanish). Seems like a similar idea, but given the topic, questionable to do so.

I also didn’t realise the person I attribute to founding the charity is not indeed the actual founder!

I am indeed afraid to ask this question to anyone in my real life. I would not want to come off as transphobic as I truly don’t feel like I am. I am more just curious about the implications of society not having decided to extend identifying traits and instead aim to conflate sex and gender.

There was an advert on the radio the other day which exemplified this. It asks for men to think about donating plasma. The reason being that they don’t want women on the off chance a pregnancy has affected them as this can be dangerous to the person receiving the plasma. Trying to run that same advert being more sensitive to the way we as a society have currently chosen to try to identify sex & gender is a minefield.

I think of that advert for men's plasma too and thought the same thing! I got a covid vaccine recently, and the leaflet highlighted advice for "women of childbearing age"... I can't imagine how they'd do that in newspeak.

Interesting mermaid facts that I didn't know about above!

There was an advert on the radio the other day which exemplified this. It asks for men to think about donating plasma. The reason being that they don’t want women on the off chance a pregnancy has affected them as this can be dangerous to the person receiving the plasma.

Posted to soon, it's not just pregnancy - you also need to have enough blood to donate plasma safely. Your sex, height and weight influence how much blood you have. So I applied to donate plasma because I've previously tested positive for Covid, but when they applied the above criteria they said I didn't have enough blood, because of my weight and height and sex to donate and they said men are better donors because they're bigger and can donate more blood.