So that's why Susie Green left

[DistantVworp]

Charity commission launches formal inquiry into Mermaids:
twitter.com/SexMattersOrg/status/1598666394610147329?s=20&t=x_Supvwk6lHkKBR7a-ESSw

About bloody time!

Yes. As a parent, you can't quite believe what you're hearing and seeing. It's impossible to imagine doing this to your own son.

I listened to this recently.

A Mormon dude (former Mormon? He’s v critical of the LDS church but I can’t figure out if he’s critiquing from within or after leaving!) talks a detransitioned woman through a questionnaire that seeks to answer the question ‘Is my group culty?’

It’s 3 parts and approx 6 hours in total.

There is a short clip here, I picked this one because it’s specifically about demands for purity

The questionnaire is here:

isitculty.com

Video is about gender ideology generally but Mermaids exists within/feeds that ideology so lots of it is relevant.

Also, I hate to point this out but it’s not just suicide, voluntary and/or coerced castration is historically associated with cults too:

apnews.com/article/fc9ffd3235d37830cf26da5ad1720b4d

www.vice.com/amp/en/article/5dgzga/india-cult-ram-rahim-castrations-dera-sacha-sauda

www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292122000526

digitalcommons.ciis.edu/advance-archive/12/

@TheClogLady Can't sleep so did the survey you linked to and they scored an impressive 70.5/80.

I think the cult element is very interesting, and it rings true to me that people tend not to think of a cult as something that could be non-religious.

The underlying issue is perhaps that people often have a fairly arbitrary divide between religious and non-religious belief systems. Everyone has a belief system, a way they think the world and reality work.

If a kind of vague scientific materialism is the most common belief system of current times, of course you would get cultish versions of that belief system.

@RedToothBrush It was the cult word that got my first deletion when I'd just joined MN back in early 2020 after frustration with the lack of American sites to discuss gender ideology. I was already a feminist, but no one wanted to talk about the potential problems to women and girls.

I'd been seeing all you viper UK women using rather shocking words like 'fuck' and 'cunt' so I thought I'd be okay to use a tamer c word. Ha!

This is important information. WTF is the DCMS doing there?!

This must be why the Charity Commission wasn't happy. They did not bring in the kind of organisation that looks at what went wrong re Breslow.

Andrew Gilligan - who investigated Mermaids long ago - on the others who must come under scrutiny:

twitter.com/mragilligan/status/1598781699164409886?s=46&t=9lXzq7elTBy_CvSUaZ8ukg

"Since 2018, Mermaids' delinquency has been documented by me and many others. But official bodies still funded and endorsed it. Their role must come under scrutiny too."

And Dr Em's 2018 thread is worth a revisit:

twitter.com/pankhurstem/status/1075352101985902592?s=46&t=9lXzq7elTBy_CvSUaZ8ukg

"This tweet by @ DawnButlerBrent may not age well. I get the impression that she hasn't done the reading and is refusing to listen to concerns about child welfare and safeguarding."

twitter.com/pankhurstem/status/1075033889566003200?s=46&t=9lXzq7elTBy_CvSUaZ8ukg

"The relationships that don’t sit well with me are the ones between Mermaids and MESMAC and Mermaids, MESMAC and the police. #charitytuesday"

Well this is an interesting turn. Of course on hearing the Charity Commission are undertaking a statutory inquiry and SG had left following an internally commissioned review, we all (well I did anyway) naturally assumed SG was too Mermaidsy even for Mermaids. Now it turns out she wasn't Mermaidsy enough. Genuinely didn't see that coming although as ever it seems so obvious now.

@RedToothBrush I hope your post is allowed to stay up because it is epic and absolutely spot-on.

Ditto.

Or just write a book, please

Oh hang on everyone. I've checked with Jolly fox and you're all wrong, wrong, wrong.

So, will JM cease the donations and reserve judgment about the New Order management?

That might not be something he wants out there when the CC publish their report.

Admitting to having provided advice to shape governance and management that clearly is a dangerous shambles isn’t a great promotion strategy for your services.

I am intrigued by the concept that the issue with Susie (partly or wholly) is that she’s not trans. They’ve previously made it very clear that they disagree with the EHRC’s position on the Equality Act’s provision on single sex protections and spaces- they are adamant that gender identity can and should be subbed in where the Act refers to a persons sex. (“They” being Mermaids legal team, though I don’t know who that is). They disapprove very thoroughly of any attempt to boundary single sex spaces by using biological sex as a differentiator.

mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/single-sex-spaces-know-your-rights/

mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/our-analysis-on-the-ehrcs-single-sex-spaces-guidance/

So I’m curious as to the mechanism by which they propose to (legally) ensure that the leadership team of Mermaids are trans- they are very keen that the “proportionate means of meeting a legitimate aim” threshold for excluding transwomen from women’s services is high to the point of non existence. But the converse of that is that they’d need to acknowledge that the proportionate means of meeting the legitimate need of discriminating against a woman as Mermaids CEO was equally high, no? And what would that look like?

God, it would be utterly delicious if Susie took them to an ET with a discrimination claim where she argued that she’d been discriminated against for not being trans. Glorious, glorious stuff

Equally interesting would be a non trans person not being employed in the new recruitment drive and taking them to a tribunal for unlawful discrimination on grounds of gender reassignment (that they hadn’t had).

Oh, what a tangled web!

God, it would be utterly delicious if Susie took them to an ET with a discrimination claim where she argued that she’d been discriminated against for not being trans. Glorious, glorious stuff

I totally agree.

Lol just when I think mermaids can’t get any more batshit they do and I can’t believe I’m saying this but I have a tiny sliver of sympathy for SG.

imagine what it must be like to manage a team of naval gazing beprouned youngsters aware of any and every possible ‘transgression’ you might make and them having the nerve to call you lacking in self reflection. Imagine dealing with HR at mermaids. did they all need support dogs/cats/wombats a la kirrin the trans lead are stonewall?

And then realising that you’ve been devoured entirely by a monster of your own making

they’re obviously going to blame everything on SG so it depends if she’s prepared to let that ride or whether she’ll fight back. Given her behaviour to date, I can’t imagine she’ll shrug her shoulders and say “whatevs”. This could get very messy

If you aren't trans, you are anti-trans.

There is no neutrality; no middle way; no way to step back and take a clear view.

You chant the mantra, change your gender, insist that anyone can be any sex (or none), and if you don't then you are anti-trans.

Everything that the light touches is transphobic, except trans people. Even their handmaidens make a mistake sooner or later - an accidental misgendering, perhaps - and then there is no way back.

A charity commission investigation is not enough. Look at the threads of evidence on twitter - some of these actions should be considered criminal. And there also needs to be thorough investigation of all affiliated parties too.

Indeed.

There will be a panicky blame-shifting exercise and "honest guvnor, we dint know nothin" . I hope they get slaughtered!

www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2022/12/03/charity-commissions-new-inquiry-mermaids-long-overdue/

Such stories, and the Charity Commission’s forthcoming inquiry, will help to shine a light on the workings of an organisation which, like the Tavistock clinic before it, has managed to assert what its critics claim is an extraordinary grip over mainstream health policy. Yet that light will prompt many to ask why questions were not asked earlier. Indeed, those who have allowed it to play such a leading role in the transgender debate should also be required to reflect on their actions. For too long, rational discussion about this issue has been shut down by activists who label anyone voicing concerns as “transphobic”.

I don't feel sorry for Green. Before mermaids deleted their staff list from their website (see screenshots) I checked out their staff.

I think there was one employee with professional charity experience. Every other person was either a trans young person or a mother of a trans child.

Her purity spiral swallowed her whole.

@Theeyeballsinthesky Totally agree. One of the bits from the whistleblower quote I find very interesting is this: 'More junior staff, the younger trans people who you’d hope an organisation for trans young people would support, are the ones most dissatisfied at how it’s being run.'.

It suggests to me a complete lack of understanding of boundaries throughout the organisation. Of course every employer has certain responsibilities in terms of staff wellbeing but to me the above suggests a lack of understanding of the distinction between staff as professionals and staff as service users. Many charities will have this issue nowadays, with the gradual move away from paternalistic providers to inclusive, user-involving / led approaches, but the key is to have clear boundaries so that everyone knows what they can expect. Another basic governance failure.

Michael Cashman has tweeted some blah blah under attack drivel but he has left out the T from the alphabet soup. I assume this is a typo twitter.com/mcashmancbe/status/1598788658672242689?s=46&t=14xUlkqZGtKYYXSlBf34_Q

If they're struggling financially, it will be interesting to see how they manage redundancies and competitive assimilation type scenarios. Because they're a SW type organisation so doubtless they'll have gone beyond the law, and awarded special statuses where they don't legally exist.

Oh also, were they SW champs and do SW now have to downgrade them because of their poor "equity" policies?