Mermaids closes chatlines

[Sparklybutold]

So... Mermaids closes chat lines owing to abusive phone calls. I can't help but think this is awful behaviour from those ringing.

There is a "sensitive applications" or sthg version of DBS targeted at trans people, it's nothing dramatic, it just keeps your former name confidential from your employer. In the guise of "not outing you as trans" I guess.

That's probably also why mermaids are vague about it as far from wanting to hide from Mermaids that they're trans, it's a selling point. The supposed trans-friendliness in this case has next to no benefit.

Your regular reminder: Susie Green is an IT consultant.

Don't tar IT consultants with that brush.

She isn't a IT consultant. She someone who identifies as an IT consultant and isn't good at that.

She was in charge of a children's charity that was at the heart of a massive data leak and was fined by the ICO and has volunteers encouraging minors to go on Discord as if its no biggy.

All the IT nerds I know would take a sharp intake of breathe through their teeth on the poor practice and being ignorant of the basics going on there.

She wouldn't last 5 minutes at any reputable firm of IT consultants before she was found out. She's unlikely to even get past the interview stage.

I’m trying to figure out why Mermaids have proven to be quite so spectacularly shit at, well, everything

Because Mermaids exist for a purpose and safeguarding gets in the way of that purpose. Promoting physical transition to children and young people who (say they) want to transition is what Mermaids are for. Safeguarding is a nuisance, something they begrudgingly do because they have to. They don't agree with this aspect of legal safeguarding and that affects their whole approach to it, it affects who they recruit and how they train them.

If you honestly believe that refusing binders to 13 year olds is oppressive and denies their true identity and their parents are transphobes then wouldn't you be tempted to send them out?

It's a contrast to organisations like BEAT. BEAT are based on the recognition that eating disorders are harmful. The use the word "disorder". Mermaids simply don't believe that physical transition is harmful or that wanting to physically change your sex is a disorder. And they get away with it because of the huge social movement to normalise even the most extreme gender dysphoria, a social movement which Mermaids themselves help to drive in the UK.

And when you get away with something for long enough, when nobody stops you, you think you can get away with it for ever. And you get ever more reckless.

Yes. And I will never get over the fact that the government has allowed them to bloody teach it to the children in the first place. Teach them the ideology, and then treat them for believing it.

The 999 service gets plenty of abuse but has to put up with it.

To be clear: I've no doubt at all that she's a shit IT consultant.

What she definitely isn't includes: doctor, psychologist, social worker, safeguarding expert... all of which were needed to do Mermaids properly, and all of which they seem to have self-identified as not needing.

EAT are based on the recognition that eating disorders are harmful. The use the word "disorder". Mermaids simply don't believe that physical transition is harmful or that wanting to physically change your sex is a disorder.

We're in the situation where children are bound to receive physical treatment for serious mental health issues that we're not allowed to call mental health issues.

'There is nothing wrong with these children, therefore they must be medicated and be put on a path to surgery to affirm their health'

All telephone lines which are open to the public do.

And if their volunteers are anything like the other people we see involved in this ideology, they are the least resilient people ever.

Constantly feeling 'unsafe', tantruming at being misgendered, and just generally feeling persecuted at every turn.

Had they not thought to press the disconnect button and end the call…?

I am confused by why, if receiving so much abuse, the response is to reduce hours and close on Wednesdays.

Receiving abuse over the phone is better if it’s not on Wednesday?

It’s clearly obvious that either volunteers have left or they have started checking the backgrounds of their volunteers and realised they have to get rid od a load of them.

The problem Is a lack of people to man the phones. I doubt they record calls and I bet if they did, non of the so called abusive ones would be available to listen to.

Both these posts are so on the nail. The points they make need to be broadcast far and wide until there's no one left who doesn't understand what's going on, and it's crystal clear that anyone who still supports this organisation is happy to state they're OK with this.

Training for Samaritans and Childline is pretty rigorous. I wonder if Mermaids was less so.

It is 100% guaranteed that it was woefully inadequate.

Mermaids and their like simply cannot exist IF proper safeguarding was in place. As no ACTUAL safeguarding would allow kids to be sent for puberty blockers in the first place.

That's the point.

The more I read the more I am starting to think somebody was/is suffering from Munchausen by Proxy. In the extreme form. Its the only thing that makes sense to me.

Yesterday's revelations were that they employ with a 'trans friendly DBS' - whatever that means [an assumption that trans people's old lives mustn't be looked at?], and that they encouraged kids onto Discord which is for over 17s only.

Indeed and as they push for children to able to change their sex on their medical notes and “Deadnaming” being equivalent to actual violence, it does not surprise me.

Exactly.

Mermaids in its current form is built off the experience of Susie Green.

This means that they believe that children of 2 or 3 can be socially transitioned by their parents with no questions asked because children of that age are capable of understanding and expressing their sex and all parents are capable of understanding this without possibility of something nefarious or misguided going on.

This basis belief that underpins Mermaids is incapable with safeguarding.

Mermaids exists to validate Susie Green's belief and prevent all questioning of her.

If you remove the bubble of protection that is Mermaids, Susie Green is exposed.

Well, so they say. I don’t condone abuse of staff and volunteers, if that’s happened, but I wouldn’t necessarily take Mermaids word on it.

If vulnerable children, at risk of self harm or even suicide (and that is the constant claim), surely the sensible thing to do it you have to close your phone lines would be to sign post elsewhere. Childline or similar.

Safeguarding can not exist in a charity that continues to signpost the Webberleys OR promotes the idea that Susie Green knew better than doctors and was right to take her child abroad.

It is incapable as it is bypassing ethical practice and protocol.

As a charity its role has to be to prove evidence and research that harm isn't being done by transition and that transition provides better outcomes.

Yet it does not support any research for long term studies and it can not produce research that isn't deeply flawed.

What you don't do is offer up children for affirmation only in the absence of this.

They seem to have been pushing an ideology rather than adopting a child centred, evidence based, approach.

Yet it does not support any research for long term studies and it can not produce research that isn't deeply flawed.

And hasn't read the Cass report. Or did they 'skim it'?

The most comprehensive report into the treatment of children who think they are the opposite sex, and the country's leading charity who claims their sole concern is to support these children, hasn't read it.

Potentially for those that needed the attention this was an ideal way of getting it.

For a lot of parents, it is genuine fear of having a gay child.

Which is why 'transing away the gay' became a thing, and medical professionals at the GIDS were saying 'soon there will be no more gay kids'.

And I'll get banned if I also mention the other reason that parents were keeping their children in a child like body as I am sure that will all come out in the wash.

Yep.

Which only possibly can be at odds with safeguarding. It is impossible not to be.

And indeed Datun.

Everything they do is incompatible with safeguarding yet they wonder why they get so much attention and concern about their practises and the only the defence they have is to wail "everyone hates us"

This is a dynamic which is reminiscent of a cult where everyone outside the bubble is out to get them, hurt them and hates them.

This is not normal and is cause for concern in its own right.

Never mind all the other stuff.

To be shilling about the hotline without announcing proactive steps for culture change is indicative of the problems that persist at Mermaids and aren't going away.

Oh thank goodness. That could definitely never be abused

Yes, given that any criticism is instantly branded "transphobia" I'm somewhat sceptical about how MM are defining "abuse".