Mermaids being investigated by the charity commission

[MajorieEks]

“hoisted by their own petard” never seemed more apt, if true

i’m not sure there’s an expletive that covers this

I can think of many.

Does the lse not have any oversight of their staff? I know very little of how higher education works, it might as well be on another planet, so this might seem naive or foolish. But this seems reminiscent of the guy associated with Manchester who wrote the paper about wanking to sexualised drawings of children. Obviously not so overt though.

I am so far from an expert but from what I can make out universities (especially particular departments) are stuffed full of people who think that "research" to push a narrative is legitimate, and indeed that there is no such thing as truth or reality other than ones own, and of course one's own reality cannot be challenged because to do so it to commit literal genocide.

Faced with this starting point you really can say anything, pushing any agenda and you are on the right side of history.

Like ImherewithBoudica I've lost the capacity to be surprised at this. From the early days of uncovering the sex offending nature of some of the adults invited to advise the government about the GRA, the extreme porn interests of others who advised them and organisations for girls, the NSPCC going into attack mode when confronted with a member of staff displaying their porn fetish at work, the fetishising of adult entertainment for the youngest of children - on and on goes the erosion of children's boundaries..

And now we're confronted by the grim reality of adult males like this being welcomed into a children's charity. And not one of these groups steeped in queer politics ever raises a concern. It's left to women.

I can think of loads - provided that they're all deployed at once...

What gets me though, is that I think most people are like me. Teach kids about biology, heterosexuality, and LGB relationships at an appropriate point in childhood - don't lie to children, don't try sexualize them, and keep your fetishes between consenting adults in private.

I mean we can have a debate about what age is appropriate for a biology chat or an LGB chat, we can debate whether talking about how there is nothing wrong with the odd harmless kink has any place or not in under 16 sex education... but the idea that we live in a society where lots of people mindlessly support a movement that is basically a case study in child-safeguarding red flags... just blows my mind.

Name change to avoid outing myself. LSE has a much smaller team dealing with research ethics than other Russell Group universities - one dedicated full-time member of staff and a part-time assistant (post currently vacant as far as I can tell).

LSE Gender Studies department comes unstuck again
don't know how to link threads but this on is over on the feminism chat thread.
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OK, but what about when he got his job? Didn't anybody look at his CV? Surely before he was offered an interview the panel members and/or HR must have looked at his list of publications and conference presentations etc. Surely they must have asked him to talk about these things at interview. Unless I'm going mad, wouldn't these things be regarded as potentially very damaging reputationally in most workplaces?

I suppose paedophilia is an area in which people do research, that is straightforward. So someone having written about paraphilias or paedophilia etc wouldn't be a red flag in itself. The problem - I would say - is when 'research' is actually activism, and/or seeking to push an agenda.

Which this seems to be.

Good points, but I have no knowledge of those parts of the admin processes I'm afraid.

Here you go: www.mumsnet.com/talk/feminism/4397999-LSE-Gender-Studies-department-comes-unstuck-again

And another thread: www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4306671-From-LSE-Gender-Studies-paper-via-Sex-Matters

I don't either, but I used to work in a university and nothing much would surprise me now about how they operate. Compared to the standard of management I'd been used to in the private sector decades earlier, it was woefully bad, especially the HR department. Whether this was because of lack of staff, or not employing suitably qualified staff, I couldn't say. They seemed to take next to no part in the recruitment process.

Christ on a cracker, that stuff about Jacob Breslow! He is a Mermaids trustee, what the fuuuuuuuck?

I wonder why Benjamin Cohens husband resigned from being trustee all those years ago (aka 2019?) Did he know things were going to go tits up and want to jump ship early (so that his husband could claim he hasn't been linked to Mermaids for 'many years'?)

The level of autonomy that LSE's departments have is unusual too in my (fairly limited) experience, though that shouldn't extend to recruitment. But perhaps the Gender Studies department might have pushed very hard within the process and no-one felt able to stand up to them? That would be pure speculation on my part, but we all know how intimidation on the GI issue works.

I see Jacob Breslow has now deleted his Twitter account (after locking it earlier today)

Oh rlly?

Good thing I did a little archiving around noon then, eh?

archive.ph/xmkQB

Ooooh, you are clever!

In the 2011 conference, Jacob Breslow (current Mermaids trustee and LSE prof) allegedly compared having sex with a child to having sex with a shoe.
twitter.com/Gender_GnRHa/status/1577006616742105088

The paper they are quoting from is here:
www.drjudithreisman.com/archives/Reisman.Strickland.pdf

Breslow's WordPress site has been archived, too:

A non sequitur is a bewildering statement that does not logically follow from a previous statement or question. Here, I theorise it as an intentionally disruptive grammatical and political tactic. When gender critical activists claim, for example, that they are allegedly being ‘harassed’ or ‘discriminated against’ simply because they have said that ‘sex is real’, this discursive sleight of hand operates as a non sequitur. Not only is it said without the speaker acknowledging their own histories of transphobic speech and actions beyond this claim, or without regard for the multiple transfeminist genealogies of thought that have given meaning to ’sex’; but it also bears no relation to what is at stake in forging a transfeminist future or present. In line with the logics of the non sequitur, this response breaks from the pertinent questions at hand.

web.archive.org/web/20221003162012/drjacobbreslow.wordpress.com/news/

Yeah, right...!

I noticed earlier that Breslow seems to have been omitted from the Mermaids trustee page.

I then noticed that the Mermaids trustee page with that omission has been archived multiple times.

Strangely, Breslow was appointed trustee in July, according to the Charity Commisson. But this was never announced by Mermaids (or Breslow), perhaps they just hadn't got around to it??

I assume that's just tardiness in updating the Mermaids' website. However, to bridge the gap:

archive.ph/W5JYq

One thing this confirms for me is how important it is for archiving websites, even ones which are unpleasant but legal, not to be driven off the web by Big Tech companies acting on behalf of powerful lobbying interests.