Change of CEO at mermaids…

[backaftera2yearbreak]

mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/susie-green-leaves-mermaids/

I don't think the youngsters currently affected by this will be easily helped. Any intervention will feed into the persecution complex. I fear a bit of a lost generation, to be honest. We'll need a lot of consistent messaging to achieve even recognition of the need for deprogramming.

The Good Law Grifters are in court next week trying to get the nhs to dish out drugs to kids without proper safeguarding.

Is this the case where they are attempting to force the nhs to see everyone within an 18 week timeframe?

I read the blog RedTB - it’s just that it wasn’t clear to me that Helen Webberley wrote that blog? It’s written by an anonymous mum and dad of a trans child according to the ‘About’ page. Webberley tweeted the article but was not the author of the article?

Surely Mermaids is about supporting "trans" families, ie parents whose child is exhibiting a level of gender dysphoria. A trans CEO might not have the rapport that worried parents are looking for, and also send out the signal that transition is the way forward. Susie was able to advertise, rightly or wrongly, her own experience.

Just before the interim Cass report came out a paediatrician friend asked me whether I knew of any organisations other than Mermaids who supported parents/families. She had a family looking for support who had rejected Mermaids. However Mermaids were the only contact on the list supplied by her Trust. I suggested Bayswater, but warned her to be careful. She had already worked that out.

Who knows how Susie, who is pretty ordinary, got her charity into such a dominant position. I always saw her as a useful/dangerous fool who would be discarded when her usefulness ran out. (I credit Cass for the sea change.) I really hope NHS Trusts start using their own critical judgement rather than sub-contract to overpaid EDI people. If Mermaids is to survive they need someone sensible who will be able to survive a level of scrutiny and achieve the trust of, worried and perhaps gullible, parents. I hope Mermaids, in its current form, does not survive. That said, parents need something, and I hope the NHS is about to find someone more neutral to signpost to.

The Good Law Grifters are in court next week trying to get the nhs to dish out drugs to kids without proper safeguarding.

That'll be fun.

Can't wait.

Webberley retweeting it is surely endorsing that opinion even if she was not the creator.

I don't think it matters who wrote it originally tbh. The important part is the endorsement of the idea.

I don’t see how Mermaids can survive the oncoming storm. Their funding stream will dry up, every worker / volunteer would have to completely change tack and become the thing they hate. Just ain’t gonna happen imo.

I do think it is interesting how few people are speaking up for SG. I suspect many of the higher profile people can see which way the wind is blowing. Hopefully SG will have a fit of pique and decide to bring down a fair few of them with her.

@RedToothBrush I think you may have a good point about SG reinventing herself in the US/Canada. Isn't that what the autism/MMR vaccine doctor (Andrew Wakefield was it) did? They are still very much captured countries, and with Biden and Trudeau forcefully driving through women hating legislation, she'd have a good prospects over there with her CEO experience. Even though she is not a expert and never has been, her ability to reshape an organisation into an evangelical mission, formulating policies largely based on her own experience and retrospectively justifying her own drastic decision making for her child, would I am sure be quite attractive to other organisations that have gone down a similar route across the pond, e.g., the ACLU. I'm thinking "expert witness", lecturer on gender, gigs on the speaking circuit, adviser to government on trans health etc.

When the Good Law Grifters manage that, I will watch in interest that they will insist on the same with CAHMS generally.

The problem isn't being trans and needing drugs. And going to court isn't going to magically enable waiting lists to be shortened.

Anyone who thinks a legal challenge to shorter waiting lists is a magic bullet, lives in la la land.

I am sincerely hoping that there is enough evidence of failures and mismanagement that she would be seen as a lawsuit waiting to happen particularly in the US.

I believe that as soon as litigation really gets going in the US from detransitioners etc (some of which is already threatened) there will be a major reverse ferret from corporations who will be afraid of the cost. It won't be a moral stance, it will be naked financial self-interest and reputational damage limitation. What insurance company will insure a doctor performing gender surgery if million-dollar lawsuits are lurking in the background.

I have no idea what happened. But my very uneducated guess is the new trustee board had enough and got solicitors involved, who then settled with Susie Green for £££££.

If this is the case, the statement would have been agreed as part of the settlement.

If Green was going to leave to go to a better gig in the states which has already been arranged, I think she'd serve notice and go with Mermaids blessings all the same.

The statement isn't one indictating there's been a job offer.

Its a full on, drop from great height with immediate effect statement. Its coupled with Green and child going silent / deleting on twitter.

Green has gone because she's toxic. We don't know what the exact reason is yet but I suspect we will eventually find out.

Green won't have many options left in the UK. A move abroad is inevitable because of that.

@lifeturnsonadime, you ask about any basis for suggesting that 'trans kids' should be denied an education.

Not long ago the Girls' Day School Trust was under fire from certain people for holding to their founding principle of only accepting girls. They allow girls identitifying as boys to remain in school (female bodied, after all), just won't accept males IDing as girls.

This was spun by some as 'denying trans kids an education'. Which is nonsense, of course.

I think the problem is that the watchful waiting approach is BORING. there is no glitter, rainbows, unicorns or kids in drag to celebrate, no Pride marches, BBC dramas or TED talks associated with watchful waiting. 'appropriate' doesn't lend itself to memes like 'kind' does. trans kids have pretty much been up for public consumption under Mermaids but appropriate treatment puts them back out of sight in the hands of medical and health professionals. it's just not very exciting is it. I'm not sure they would attract as much lottery funding or celebratory/royal endorsement

Hope her child/children are alright. I think late twenties is a reflective time. It must be weird if your family has been so defined and dominated by this.

Those ban conversion therapy people. Transition is literally a synonym for conversion... Are these people stupid or just too lazy to research before jumping in a bandwagon?

I think the state of play in the US is that some states and groups and politicians are so engrossed in 'but transphobia' that Green has a few years at least where she can make a career there.

Its worth mentioning the politicised nature of the US court system with that in mind too. As long as she picks the right blue state she will be fine.

Well exactly. They are not being denied an education because they are trans, they are being denied because of their sex.

I find this line of reasoning very offensive as many children with SEN really are denied an appropriate education because of lack of appropriate provision, where are the famous advocates and massive charitable donations to help these kids.

Same with being denied healthcare.

One of the things that shocks me is that I've read she said she knew her son was gay from the age of 2 because he didn't play with boy toys and preferred girl toys.

What on earth has gone wrong here? Don't we say these days there are no boy or girl toys? Don't we want children to play with whatever they like? Playing with "girl toys" doesn't mean someone is gay. And it certainly doesn't make a boy a girl. That poor child.

I am sure that this much have dawned on her in her time at Mermaids mustn't it

the problem is, she left herself no room to change her mind or position even a bit, did she. once you have taken your son abroad to have his testicles removed, it would be too devastating to 'reflect'

and as Suzie built a life and career on this, Jackie has no room for regrets.

I don't know, @MarmaladeFatkins I haven't seen any hint that she's had a change of heart, have you? She seems steely in her resolve.

Standing up for a kid that's developed behavioral issues isn't Instagramable.

You cannot get it past safeguarding to be publicising the problems of such children in photos especially if they've spent the last term bullying or hurting other kids in the class.

You cannot put pictures of a kid self harming on social media to promote the problem because of the accepted social contagion issue with other forms of self harm.

You cannot put pictures of a kid who has suffered from sexual abuse or trauma which leads them to want to identify out of that pain on twitter.

The beauty of the trans child is its media friendly and can be clearly visually seen. Whereas adhd or autism is invisible in a photograph, self harm is off limits and sexual abuse has legal implications and issues over the right to privacy.

None of these things exist in the world of the trans kid or the drag artist kid.

Celebrities can't exploit the issues for their own benefit in the same pr friendly way.

@ChazsBrilliantAttitude Lawsuits can only happen if the law backs up your claim. States like California have been pushing through extreme trans friendly/women hating laws on a state basis. I can see SG finding a place in a number of well funded and powerful trans friendly organisations looking for an advisor. I just hope that she can't go because she's in a prison cell over here - but unless her child turns on her and cooperates with the police, I don't see the police taking action against her.

I hope someone has had the foresight to archive all of SG and her child’s tweets.

What are the reservations about Bayswater?

I say this as someone who had cause to find both them and Transgender Trend very helpful a few years ago, but didn't get overly involved with either. But their recommendations for therapists etc and supporting research were incredibly helpful,