Janice Turner did a twitter thread yesterday criticising the Guardian and Amelia Gentleman for FINALLY asking the right questions about the sudden rise of trans identifying teenage girls and doing an article about it.
She made the point that she started doing this 5 years ago and women like Hadley were effectively bullied out of the Guardian.
This week the Guardian also ran an interview with Susie Green defending Mermaids. A decision which begs a few questions. We're the Guardian caught massively off guard, did Susie know the writing was on the wall and wanted to get her defence in first or did the Guardian see the writing on the wall finally?
And Susie Green has now left Mermaids.
In this above mentioned twitter thread from Janice are the following comments about Amelia Gentlemen:
Pete Marshall at petemarshall
She seems to accept uncritically that “gender “ dysphoria exists. In reality body dysphoria is a common problem in adolescents particularly girls. It’s social contagion that this now manifests as gender rather than other forms of self harm. AGP men have deliberately created this
Adhip at adhip
Important point.
The language games played around this topic are mind-bending. This is all about sex, sexism, and in almost all the cases of those older males, a paraphilic obsession.
Truth Hertz at djbraymond
It’s no coincidence that most trans identified females are young girls and most trans identified males are older men…
I am highlighting them in the context of a charity which has promoted the transitioning of children (a substantial amount who are girls), there is this pattern of young girls and middle aged men being the two key demographics and the chronic safeguarding fails (including the padeo friend and the willy wonder guy) at Mermaids which have now led to the departure of their safeguarding lead.
This become an unavoidable inconvenient problem for Mermaids.
I think we will start to see more conversations about this dynamic appearing.
Ultimately Mermaids have an existential problem in the wake of the Cass Review, its own safeguarding car crashes, growing evidence and concerns about sport, detransitioning legal cases starting and people starting to spot the social contagion problem.
This also leaves Stonewall and all its rainbow buddies in an ever increasing pickle.
What happens to Mermaids definitely has implications elsewhere.
So is this a damage limitation exercise and if it is who benefits exactly? Or is it an admission of Mermaids completely unravelling?
Its actually difficult to tell at this stage.
Susie Green clearly isn't in this camp but she certainly falls foul of the Cass review observation about homophobic parents. And thats problematic too in the context of the law on homosexuality being same sex not same gender. And that in turn is problematic in the context of the Mermaids litigation against the LGB Alliance.
So Mermaids - and in particular Susie Green - are stuck in the middle of these two forces developing. Could Susie stay? She should never have got the job as someone who freely admitted to the press she bypassed ethics and safeguarding in the uk.
It will be very intriguing to see how the next couple of weeks play out.
How fast will pronouns start to get dropped by companies who suddenly realise that promoting this stuff, maybe isn't as progressive as they thought...