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!

My local hospice's Christmas lighting service was yesterday, which made me remember: if you lost a loved one at the hospice you're allowed to fundraise but not allowed to directly volunteer or work for them until 2 years have passed. Clearly a wise policy to allow reflection, healing, and ensure that hospice staff don't spend all their time supporting and safeguarding emotional new starts and volunteers.

One can't help but contrast the difference 'lived experience' has on a culture...

What an absolute shit show.

One thing it really highlights though is the importance of good governance. Effective governance would have prevented so many of these problems and for those it didn't prevent, it would have led to them being picked up earlier and the negative impact being reduced. That's why I think the Trustees, along with SG, will ultimately be in the shit following the CC Inquiry.

This is the explanation that makes most sense.

It's blackly funny that the staff aren't even allowed to read a report about the organisation they work for, and that was commissioned in response to their own concerns.

@MilkshakesBringAllTheCoosToTheYard Thanks for sharing that example; I think the other potential damage cases like this do is to make people think that involving service users / having user led organisations is inherently problematic and I don't believe it is. It does however require a lot of really sensible planning, robust policies and procedures, good governance and so on, which of course are required for any charity. I have worked for and with some excellent user-led organisations both now and in the past and clear boundaries are particularly important.

How was this deeply dysfunctional organisation led by someone with next to no CEO experience able to garner so much reach, influence, and money??

This old term from Dr Johnson's Dictionary may explain quite a lot about the politicians, celebrities, corporations and Righteous Folk who jumped on the Mermaids bandwagon:

Timepleaser: one who complies with the prevailing agreements no matter what they are.

Well doesn't this shit show just get sillier by the day.

"it isn’t possible to create the safe spaces for processing the report that are vital”.

Maybe if they all take their mum's to work with them today they can go on an outing to a local library and Jimbo the drag queen wearing his balogna from vagina suit can read out the major hurry bits to them.

Fuck me.

Does anyone have a feeling that the SJC report will be startlingly reminiscent of the report that was done by the duo commissioned by Maya Forstater's employers? (And that the duo removed from their CVs/LinkedIns following the exposure it got during the tribunal.)

But that is still the prevailing narrative. If you look at the responses that the Cass Review's response to the NHS interim service consultation had on Twitter, it was overwhelmingly, depressingly calling safeguarding the new Section 28.

TRAs believe that all children should have unfettered access to drugs and surgery no matter how old they are or how vulnerable they are.

The big question to me is how this ever became accepted. How did we get to a place where a small group of disturbed children deserve no protection?

One way or another the trustees don't want the staff to read that report.

Whether that's to stop it being leaked, to stop them taking to social media to complain or to stop them all resigning/suing over it en masse.

And they'll have to bribe them all to ensure all that. Maybe they're frantically coming up with water tight non disclosure agreements as we speak.

They couldn't have whipped up more salivating interest in the entire thing if they tried.

The big question to me is how this ever became accepted.

I think it's two main things, one - the analogies to past social justice fights and the 'wrong side of history' . TRAs like to paint themselves as modern-day Rosa Parks. Single-sex spaces are as segregationist as whites-only spaces; transphobia is the new homophobia/ Section 28 is back but now it's coming for your trans kids.

This scares your middle-lefty-do the right thing - I'm not a fascist types. They get similarly targeted by the Just stop oil protestors and Xtinction Rebellion... yes I agree with your broad thrust so I won't rock the boat or put myself in the firing line by questioning your actual actions.

And two - no debate. We all know there are serious logic flaws in all this, from the magical transformation that is biologically impossible, to the social contagion aspect via young lesbians in a horribly misogynist and pornified environment.

No debate is over now.

It's only thanks to this thread that I realised SG was chair before she became CEO - a culture led by the same person at both ends (so to speak) is always going to cause issues. The CEO is usually involved in trustee recruitment too.

I completely agree with you that this will damage user-led organisations.

I doubt the word 'robust' is in MM's vocabulary.

Yes. And I also think the 'better a live daughter than a dead son' has done a lot of heavy lifting. And that evil concept can be laid squarely at Green's feet. She started it and she continued to replay it again and again. And people kept repeating it, not least because it is such a heinous thing to tell unhappy children and their desperate parents that no one could believe it was a big fat lie.

Yes. Imagine being the parent of an unhappy child, and to go to those who claim experience and expertise, and for them to say such a thing. It's a cruelty beyond belief.

Medics and genderists, Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, academics, and politicians, all were pushing the bullshit 'born in the wrong body' line, 'affirmation only'. What parent would have the resilience, in the face of all that, to ask 'hold on a minute' and look for more evidence?

What a clusterfuck of awfulness. What bastards.

Slightly off topic; there's been a notable absence of community disruption here since both mermaids and Hadley unleashed began, I feel.

Returning to the question of why staff spoke to the Telegraph rather than anywhere else, I imagine it was possible they approached more left-wing outlets like the Guardian/BBC/Independent and were rebuffed. That's just a guess. Or maybe they assumed they'd be rebuffed and didn't bother.

When you look at the outlets most likely to publish the story, you're looking at the Times, Telegraph and Mail. A lot of these people really hate the Mail, so out of the two remaining options, they probably went for the paper that they thought most likely to cover the story.

What could they Honestly say to this shit show Warrior?

How on earth could they spin this?

The fact that they aren't even trying speaks volumes

Of course they could be pissed under a bed somewhere unable to come to terms with the fact that maybe just maybe the terfs were right about mermaids.

Why the Telegraph?

Dunno but I might speculate this.

There are limited options for whistleblowing on this. You can't go to the Guardian. It's not a BBC story. Not even newsnight really as its all a he said - they / them said rather than hard on concrete facts.

That leaves you with the Mail, Telegraph and Times.

Again for the same reason as news night, maybe the Times isn't the way to go.

The Mail has obvious draw backs. And the Telegraph 'at least is a broadsheet.'

Then my thought is the original whistleblower knew a lot of details for an internal report so toxic there was no safe space for it. That leaves my guess being that not all the trustees are happy about withholding the report. Certainly they weren't happy about the staff reaction to Green going. But they can't leak report either.

Theres obviously discussion going on within the group and internal infighting which isn't healthy in its own right. And it looks like at least one trustee has probably been party to that. I'm not convinced they are a whistle blow themselves but there's certainly unease.

Both whistleblower 1 and 2 are in the more moderate group and are starting to see the batshittery around them and know they are in deep shit.

Whats the best way to protect yourself in this situation with looming threat of investigations and criminal charges?

Whistleblow.

If the telegraph is willing to give you a voice and your options are limited, you'd take it even if it's not ideal.

Its about self preservation and a dawning realisation that not all is well. So the Telegraph does make sense if you are desperately worried about what's happening.

All the she / her and they / them gossip is toxic in its own right and there's clearly factions within Mermaids trying to compete for its future in an increasingly public way.

Yes. And then encouraging children to see their parents as the enemy if they don't affirm, affirm, affirm.

It's a fucking racket.

Honestly, sometimes the horror of it all washes over me afresh.

The bloody tweeting about wanting to seek out 'vulnerable teens with no parental support'. Utterly monstrous.

Remembering SG moaning about how unfairrr it is that there needs to be any conditions for kids to have surgery. Because its fine for 'non trans' kids to get, what was it appendectomies? bones set?? So removing healthy body parts is fine.

Self serving, dangerous crack pots.

I'm beginning to wonder if the telegraph sent in someone to work at mermaids

I'm hoping to sit down in 12 months to one of those panorama type hidden camera on reporter staff member episodes. But instead of the usual care home type scenario it will be "today during the mermaids staff meeting..." and footage of rainbow clad staff crying about lack of safe spaces and how Susie is a massive transphobe.

Some interesting thoughts on why the Telegraph from pps, thanks. It strikes me as a bit more of a 'sleeping with the enemy' situation here given how much crowing about how evil, right wing, everything-phobic it is there usually is from the likes MM and supporters.

Would it make the whistleblower a transphobe by association? It usually takes much less. In which case the 'community' must really be tearing itself apart.

It's sinking ship mentality

Agree - it struck me that they feared a knee-jerk reaction from staff.

Also - re @NitroNine 's post:
A wee boy of 2 has just killed himself in North Carolina with his father’s gun.
What sort of idiot a) leaves a weapon - any weapon - where a child can access it? b) leaves it loaded? c) leaves the safety catch off? and d) has such a hair trigger set on it that a toddler can accidentally fire it?

It just beggars belief!

The journalist who wrote the story is a gay man who only graduated in 2020 from Sheffield. I'm guessing he knows someone at mermaids.

Oh I think they’ve been extremely robust in many ways. All of them problematic. If they’d been less robust and more own minded and conservative in approach, things would be a lot less worrying.