Mermaids being investigated by the Charity Commission - thread 2

[ResisterRex]

The first thread, towards the end of which there was a discussion about having a second thread but it wasn't added:

Mermaids being investigated by the charity commission
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4644323-mermaids-being-investigated-by-the-charity-commissionn_

There's been a new development so maybe a second thread would be useful:

Lottery pauses trans charity cash during investigation

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c959a286-44e4-11ed-8885-043c27446b97?shareToken=6d482edb1a386656502f33453da5c230

Also a DBS will only highlight criminal activity and there is no suggestion that this person has a criminal history. Just dubious opinions in relation to paedophiles. There would be nothing to stop someone like JB working with children if they kept a lower profile.

And let's remind ourselves, Rubberwankman and Munroe aside, just how impartial and unbiased the NSPCC Board was/is.

During the NSPCC scandal re James (above) clever MNetters discovered why the BBC and Guardian refuses to report on the seedy dealings of certain children's charities.

How is that devastating? In what normal world is a charity that targets children, being investigated, devastating?

I rewatched the SG TED talk recently.

Something that stood out for me, apart from the obvious homophobia, was the operation.

Apparently, at the age of 6, the child asked when he could have the operation to make him a girl. SG was so upset to tell him he would have to wait until he was grown up.

This is the crux of it for me - children need to be told there is no operation that can make a boy in to a girl.

To an older boy or adult man it can be explained there are surgeries which will make them look more like a girl or woman. They also need to be advised of all the risks and downsides.

Even if, at 16 that child still wanted to go ahead it would not be informed consent if it was sold as a sex change.

Lying to vulnerable kids and promising the impossible is another safeguarding red flag.

Also why is it called gender reassignment surgery when the gender is innate, has nothing to do with what’s in our pants, how we look and does not change through body modifications?

Pretending there’s a magic wand is so cruel and is going to lead to a lifetime of disappointment.

Same with The Family Sex show which can you believe was only 6 months ago! There was a BBC journalist linked with the production. All names have been scrubbed off the site now so I can’t look up.
They likened people quoting the exact words they used on their website to abuse and hate too.

@MrsOvertonsWindow they not only run residentials at which (I believe) 14 yr olds could attend unchaperoned, they also also for volunteers to help run them who I think need to be over 18 (it's on the website somewhere.) these will be 18 yr olds heavily invested in the idea that transitioning is a good idea.

Now I remember the days of being 16 and venture scouts and the older ones who would still help out being over 18. If boundaries could be crossed they were.

What concerns me is how a six year old knew there was an operation that they thought would turn a boy into a girl? Who had been filling thisboys head with this stuff??

Apparently, at the age of 6, the child asked when he could have the operation to make him a girl. SG was so upset to tell him he would have to wait until he was grown up.

This is the crux of it for me - children need to be told there is no operation that can make a boy in to a girl.

Absolutely. Things began to fall apart for a gender non conforming pupil with asd in an MLD school I taught in as soon the idea that operations were possible and he had a woman inside his head. This was via a tv documentary that an older sibling's friend saw and told him about.

Prior to that we'd been managing it by smashing the rigid stereotyped ideas he had and allowing a lot of dressing up time. His parents also did this. Luckily, the Tavi handled it well and as it should have been (you're just into fashion) but it was over a decade ago. Knowing that there was, to his mind, a 'simple operation' triggered a lot of extra frustration.

Who had been filling thisboys head with this stuff??

Sensationalist documentaries and a drip feed of crappy science filters through to the population

That is, to the parents

What does it mean? List it. Give me the actual bloody words

Oh we’ll get words. But they’ll be of “verbal ectoplasm” variety.

It’s going to be 2015 again. But much, much, much worse, because of the degree of harm caused.

@RUFISRUF I don’t know whether others would shout me down but to me it seems like a form of grooming.

Adults misrepresenting things to kids and making them believe something that is wrong is right.

Dressing like a girl at home and a boy in public is our little secret.

That’s what it seemed like to me. This child didn’t just think of these things. No child if that age does. It is drip feeding by the parents. They are the ones in control. The fact the father was a homophobe who didn’t like his son playing with toys he deemed ‘girlish’ and the mother was a weak idiot who then saw the opportunity to get attention and asspats for having a ‘trans’ child means this poor kid never stood a chance. ’

There is nothing like trying to bury stuff in a forced disclosure, I suspect.

Looks like my next client is running late so I might get the chance to wade through the massive data dump tomorrow.

No, a woman. I don't want to name her on here but it's fairly easy to find both names.

I'm currently working on DBS renewals. We still require a fresh one if they want to volunteer - just in case whoever verified initially made a mistake.

I just posted this on the other thread about the Mermaids trustee

Someone on Twitter has found Jacob's old blog.
twitter.com/Scottish_Women/status/1578099272469295104

This post is especially illuminating
twitter.com/twells_twit/status/1578116351297822722

I'm a little uncomfortable with screenshots of text that don't include the surrounding details (date stamp, account details, etc.) Not because I don't believe them, necessarily, but because it makes them hard to verify.

I just saw the stuff about the blog. I assume it's been authenticated. If it was easily tracked down, yet again Mermaids is shown to have fallen down on the job of vetting potential trustees.

I feel rather as I did the day David Challenor was sentenced. I wasn't working that day and was idly flitting between Twitter and MN. Somebody tweeted that they had just seen a news report that a man called Challenor had been found guilty of raping a 10-year-old girl in Coventry - could this person be related to Aimee, then a very well known transactivist in the senior echelons of the Green Party, believed to live in Coventry? And within a few minutes people started sharing information, any amount of it, found by simple Google searches, about this incredibly dysfunctional family, the children's care history, the male family members' assorted paraphilias, and the relationship to the Green Party, most notably Aimee appointing DC as election agent while DC was awaiting trial, and subsequently claiming not to have known how serious it all was, hence not informing anyone at party HQ about this PR disaster in the offing. It had all been there in plain sight all the time, but even after it was all over Twitter most of the senior people in the Green Party continued to stick their heads in the sand and pretend there was no safeguarding problem coming to light here and it was all just hateful transphobia.

Here we go again.

Remember Mermaids have left behind gender expression as an indicator of being trans. They are explicit that gender identity is not gender expression (hair, clothes). I think they made this move because of the GI Joe to Barbie scale and all the criticism they got because if their sexist sterotypes. In a way it is worse. Your gender identity is inside you and only you know about it, there is no outside reference to compare yourself too. If only you know then noone can question your gender identity.

Have just seen that on the other thread. It's grim.

In a way it is worse. Your gender identity is inside you and only you know about it, there is no outside reference to compare yourself too. If only you know then noone can question your gender identity.

Yup, there's nothing like moving the goalposts, FemaleAndLearning.

They've closed down their chat and phone lines to drive outrage as outrage will drive donations. They'll need them without the lottery funding.

The comment about taking their volunteers off the service is very odd. Surely if staff are being harassed and struggling it’s a time having volunteers step up and share the burden is important.

It has been suggested elsewhere they need to take their volunteers off as they have not been vetted, DBS checked or been through adequate safeguarding training.

Somebody else has suggested the volunteers themselves have quit. If this is the case let’s hope it’s because they are genuinely concerned about recent revelations rather than leaving because they don’t want to be personally held up to public scrutiny.

Yes. Remember the Donkey Kong marathon videogame fundraiser?

Ah, DK draped in the blue, white and pink flag. How progressive of him. Wonder if Donkey Kong Jr was part of the charity's youth programme?