Mermaids sending free binders to teen girls

[rogdmum]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/09/25/exclusive-trans-charity-mermaids-giving-breast-binders-children/

Can also be found in the usual place.

“A transgender children’s charity is giving potentially dangerous chest-flattening devices to 14-year-olds against their parents’ wishes, an investigation by The Telegraph has found

Mermaids, which receives funding from the taxpayer and runs training for schools and the NHS, offered to send a breast binder discreetly to a girl they believed was only 14, even after they were told that she was not allowed to use one by her mother.

Evidence obtained by The Telegraph shows that the charity’s staff have offered binders to children as young as 13 who say that their parents oppose the practice.”

We sometime get the odd poster here denying Mermaids does this (or saying there is no evidence that it happens) despite people with direct experience stating that it does. And yes, it does happen.

Don’t forget the recent FDA warning!

www.fda.gov/media/159663/download

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has added a warning about the risk of pseudotumor cerebri (idiopathic intracranial hypertension) to the labeling for gonadotropin- releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists that are approved for the treatment of central precocious puberty in pediatric patients. These products include Lupron Depot-Ped (leuprolide acetate), Fensolvi (leuprolide acetate), Synarel (nafarelin), Supprelin LA (histrelin) and Triptodur (triptorelin).

www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/pseudotumor-cerebri

If the verdict comes back as " no harm done" which contradicts the stats of the 97 percent of girls who suffer side effects to from binding then we will know once and for all just how far gone they really are.

From the link to the Crown Prosecution Service:

“Although this abuse often occurs in a family setting, the CPS is clear that a crime is committed when actual harm is caused to a girl - regardless of consent. It is not possible to consent to serious assault.

“We hope this new guidance will give victims, police and prosecutors the confidence they need to bring perpetrators of this cruelty to justice.”

It is possible that as the Charity Commission have been dragged into court by Mermaids and their toxic friends as they try to bully the LGBA out of existence, that they may not feel kindly disposed to this charity. Especially as these allegations expose alleged perjury committed during said case - "we are not medical experts", yet we offer medical advice to children who are too young to recognise it for the dangerous unevidenced nonsense that it is.
Just a thought.

It will be interesting to see if they actually do anything this time after dismissing the 2020 complaints. It really shouldn’t take national exposure to finally trigger a review for safeguarding failures which have been going on (with full CC awareness) for years.

The National Lottery should be investing as well, not ignoring evidenced complaints, given their grant was dependent on Mermaids cleaning up their act. All Mermaids did was clean up their public face while letting their closed Youth Forum run wild.,

Not sure I've ever seen the Charity Commission engage directly like this on Twitter before about groups we often discuss on these boards:

twitter.com/chtycommission/status/1574309341515194368?s=46&t=udR5LUcBk3qhcqCgZsYrFg

Whether it leads to anything, we shall see.

Looks like this is the end for Mermaids, surely. No comment from all those companies that teamed up with them. They will no doubt be watching and withdrawing all connections in due course.

Have't read the full thread but it's all encouraging - especially that the journalists reporting to the Telegraph have gone to the lengths of posing as a 14 year old on the mermaids forum to find out what the charity forum is actually saying. If I was an investigative journalist - nothing as exciting as that, I'm afraid -I would wonder what other similar charities and organisations are promoting. It's a bit like opening Pandora's box - what will you find next time.

adults pretending to be children on the mermaids forum

Surely a massive safeguarding issue in itself?

In any case that doesn't change the fact that mermaids are sending out binders to people they believe are children.

Anonymous forums really aren't places that should be presenting themselves as a resource to help vulnerable children.

Trans activists argue that the difference is that one (breast flattening) is done without the consent of the child, and that the other (binders) is chosen by the child - and that the consent of the parents doesn't matter, because the child has the right to make choices about its own body.

I wonder in what other areas they think that children might have the right to make decisions about their own body? I feel as if I'm starting to see the end game here.

They hold camps for trans children too. Mixed ages, etc.

I do think children have the right to decide what happens to their own body, to privacy, to all those things. There are situations where the child's decision has to be overridden but that's a very serious matter.

The problem here is adults deciding to give a very specific solution with physical consequences to a problem raised by a child, as part of an organisation with a very particular worldview, to children they have no responsibility for and in fact don't know anything about.

If binders are 'just underwear' that doesn't really help. Organisations of adults sending underwear to children they 'meet' online sounds even worse if anything. But binders are not just underwear. They are a self harm mechanism. An organisation sending out clean razors as 'harm minimisation' without parental knowledge to children they have no knowledge of who report cutting themselves surely wouldn't exist?

It's not just Mermaids. Gendered Intelligence have mixed age camps:

genderedintelligence.co.uk/camping.html

(Fully booked it seems)

Mixed age in person and online groups, and swimming for 8-25 year olds

genderedintelligence.co.uk/trans-youth/youth-group.html#calendar

Again, all these groups have I'm sure been the subject of us writing to MPs or to the Charity Commission or to many places where something should have been done. And yet here we are.

their grant was dependent on Mermaids cleaning up their act.

Cleaning up their act? But that is their act. Promoting transition without question to children and young people who have gender issues and to parents who think their children should transition. It's what they do.

Mermaids got established because for years this was a tiny minority issue and they were the only game in town. So they got recommended and listened to as more and more children and families needed help, not because they were any good, just because they were there.

When they started teenage girls weren't a thing, detransition wasn't a thing, buying drugs on the internet wasn't a thing. The world has changed and Mermaids haven't. As an organisation they still do that they always did, they still believe what they always believed, and they still tell everyone else to do the same.

Mermaids don't need to clean up their act they need a whole new act.

adults pretending to be children on the mermaids forum

They were identifying as children. Bigots! Do better.

The Guardian was definitely not sent the evidence of what was going on in the Youth Forum which the Telegraph used.

Good point, this was the Telegraph's own investigation and good on them for doing it. Journalists can hardly go digging into the backgrounds of the young people on the group or publishing what they say, so posing as a child is the most ethical way to gather evidence that they can quote and publish. And surely anyone running on online chat group must know that no-one has to be who they say they are and adults can pose as children - that's part of the point!

But I meant that over the years it could have been the Guardian asking the hard questions.

The police are not going to do anything about people sending breast binders to kids.

Last month they were dancing the macarena at Pride.

They fully endorse this.

I do think children have the right to decide what happens to their own body, to privacy, to all those things. There are situations where the child's decision has to be overridden but that's a very serious matter.

But of course we don't allow children to have tattoos, or to have sexual relationships. The principle, it seems to me, is that we should allow children to say No to having others interfere with their body, but that doesn't mean they should necessarily have the autonomy to say Yes.
.

Yes. Mermaids whole basis is formed on the claim that children have a gender identity.

It's a completely unevidenced ideological belief.

And separate to the psychological issue of gender dysphoria. They are not qualified to treat gender dysphoria.

And they muddy the waters by calling the issue both gender dysphoria when they want to legitimise it and transgender when they want to appeal to proponents of the ideology.

They can then say they are helping to cure a known medical condition, and also seamlessly switch to claiming an ideological basis for it.

They are not qualified to treat gender dysphoria. And there is no evidence that children have a transgender identity.

They really need to set out what they do, why and how. What is it based on, and what is their role?

All of what Datun said.

Cass is very careful never to use the phrase ‘transgender child’ - something Mermaids took exception to, iirc (off to look it up)

Daily Mail article just went up:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11251357/Trans-charity-Mermaids-faces-watchdog-probe-childrens-chest-flattening-binders.html

Yes. If they're going to claim a child is transgender, then they need to explain what that is and why it requires a chest binder with known harmful side effects, without a diagnosis.

And it involves a diagnosis of gender dysphoria over the phone or online, then they need to explain a) how they are qualified, and b) how they can do it anonymously over the phone.

A lot of TRAs on Twitter shrieking hysterically that BINDERS SAVE LIVES and that Mermaids are performing a heroic public service because if they weren't encouraging young girls to flatten their breasts and damage their health then those little girls would kill themselves. Frighteningly delusional.

Fortunately, women like Hilary Cass need evidence.

Delusional and very irresponsible.