If adults, over the age of 21 and therefore as near as possible to full brain development, who are suffering from the psychiatric condition of Gender Dysphoria, want to embark on the process of creating for themselves a facsimile of the gender they believe themselves to be, then I’m not going to stand in their way. Although I’ve come to the conclusion that transitioning may not help everyone who has this condition, too many people who transition are still left with the mental sadnesses that drove them towards transitioning, there are some for whom full transitioning is the only way that they will get mental peace.

I’ve met enough sensible and sorted transsexuals, who have lived blameless and contributory lives to know that for a tiny number of people, transitioning was the path for them. Such individuals have lived the lives that were best for them and have been accepted as their chosen gender by others.

None of them to my knowledge have bullied or coerced people into accepting them and neither have the misrepresented biology in order to force others to accept them or tried to impose their views on vulnerable people. They got on with their lives quietly and mostly happily.

However, there are some in the transgender movement who do try to coerce and bully people and whose activists and trainers have allegedly misrepresented biology. Such groups have also targeted those who are vulnerable such as children and may have helped to put distressed children on a path to transition that is highly likely to not be the best choice for them.

One of those groups is Mermaids and it is this group that is the subject of a brilliant article from early June 2021 by Josephine Bartosch writing over at The Critic magazine.

Ms Bartosch is scathing about Mermaids, an organisation that purports to support children and teenagers afflicted by gender dysphoria or gender confusion, but which seems primarily interested in guiding, or rather pushing children down the path of gender transition.

Ms Bartosch said that Mermaids started out in the mid nineties as a support group for teenagers struggling with gender image. She said that back then the group counselled caution with regards to treatment, which in my view is the correct path as gender identity struggles may be a cover with teenagers for other psychiatric problems or even same sex attraction. But Ms Bartosch said that over time Mermaids became a lobby group and set aside the sensible view that caution should be applied and now push gender transition at a very young and possibly inappropriate age.

Mermaids have also become extremely litigious and have no issue with using the law to attempt to shut down and shut up opponents.

Ms Bartosch said:

First, they told us children would kill themselves if they weren’t affirmed in their childish imaginings. Secondly, they tried to haul ideological opponents through the courts. Thirdly, they branded those who disagreed with them fascists. These are the actions of Mermaids, a charity at the heart of the establishment, an organisation that enjoys the support of celebrities, royals and police forces. Last week Mermaids took the first steps towards legal action against the registration of the LGB Alliance as a charity, the only organisation advocating solely for same-sex attracted people. 

Ms Bartosch then pointed out that the claims of mass suicide attempts by young people because of gender identity issues were on shaky ground as the survey that Mermaids used to come to their conclusion that 48% of young people with gender identity issues had attempted suicide was a self selected group of only 27 respondents. In my view this is nothing like a large enough sample nor a survey that can be relied upon because it is self selected. Mermaids have used this shonky figure to frighten people into agreeing with them. After all a nigh on 50% attempted suicide rate looks terrifying until you realise that it only represents 13 people who were motivated enough to choose to take part in this survey.

I’m pleased to report that the attempts by Mermaids and other groups to cancel the Charity Registration of the Lesbian Gay and Bisexual Alliance (LGBA) has failed. The Charity Commission looked into the attempts to deny the LGBA registration and found in the LGBA’s favour.

According to Ms Bartosch, Mermaids are pushing policies that make a lot of people, especially a lot of parents, concerned. Policies such as the right of children to take action, without parental consent, against schools that refuse to treat them as their chosen gender and for the provision of puberty blocking drugs to under sixteen’s. Mermaids will also have no truck with any policy that doesn’t affirm the child’s claim of gender dysphoria.

On the subject of the Mermaids group’s policy of pushing puberty blocking drugs to under sixteen’s., Ms Bartosch said:

Over recent years court rulings and new research have disproved the claim that drugs to block puberty are harmless and fully reversible. In December 2020 three High Court judges reviewed the evidence and ruled that puberty blocking medication was “experimental” and that a “child under the age of eighteen cannot give informed consent to treatment with puberty blockers.” But rather than reconsider their stance, Mermaids doubled down, breathlessly claiming the ruling would cause “untold, irreparable damage to young trans people” and that it foretold of “a new era of discrimination, treating trans youth differently from all other young people and barring them from accessing life-saving care.”

Ms Bartosch then went on to comment on and criticise the CEO of Mermaids, Susie Green. Ms Bartosch told of how in 2010 Ms Green took her then teenage son to Thailand for a sex change operation that is now banned there for minors. Ms Bartosch said that Ms Green having a son who has had a sex change is the only qualification that she has and is not a ‘qualification befitting her role’. Ms Bartosch also commented on how Ms Green had had the women’s campaigner Kelly Jay Keen, arrested for telling Ms Green that she had had her son ‘castrated’. Ms Keen was eventually released without charge.

Something that will worry many is Ms Bartosch’s description of the close relationship that Mermaids enjoy with some police forces. Mermaids are contracted to provide training on trans issues to various police forces even though much of what Mermaids has to say on the issue of transsexualism is both questionable and contentious. Ms Bartosch claims that the relationship between Mermaids and the police is so close that on one occasion Merseyside Police benefited Mermaids by a Christmas party organised by that force. In my view the relationship between Mermaids and various police forces are far too close. They are so close in fact that they could give rise to accusations of Mermaids having influence over policing matters.

Mermaids are also active in schools and this is a matter that should especially concern parents. Parents need to be much more proactive in finding out which groups are trying to worm their way and put their ideology into their children’s schools. This is because Mermaids may be unduly influencing children who may more than likely grow out of their gender dysphoria and for some it might just be phase that some teenagers go through on their way to becoming normal LGB individuals.

Ms Bartosch said that the training that Mermaids is giving to school governors has been criticised as being anti science and that this group and others like it has gone out of its way to silence even the most polite of critics.

Ms Bartosch said:

For many years, those voicing concerns about trans ideology have been shamed and silenced. Some, like former school governor Rev Parker, have been pushed out of jobs and voluntary roles for simply asking questions. In 2019 Mr Parker, who had been a school governor for seven years, resigned after attending a presentation “full of factual inaccuracies” by a Mermaids’ trainer. Mr Parker recalled in an interview with the Daily Mail:

I am an Oxford biologist by background so I was gobsmacked by what was being said from a biological perspective… I also knew some of the legalities of the situation and knew that the whole governing body and staff were being misled.

In response he was told by the Mermaids’ employee: “My job is to deliver training. I have done that. I don’t have to listen.”

She’s correct there about the shaming and the silencing. Too much of it has gone on and it has all but completely stopped a very necessary open debate that needs to be had about a trans ideology that has become filled with adherents that are all too cult-like. I was struck by the arrogance of the particular Mermaids trainer. There are ways for a trainer to deal with awkward questions that are raised in a training session such as asking the questioner to address their question to head office for example. To say ‘I don’t have to listen’ is an extremely arrogant answer especially when addressed to an Oxford trained biologist.

Thankfully as Ms Bartosch said, the tide seems to be slowly turning against the extremes of the cult of trans. More and more people are starting to see that groups like Mermaids are peddling ‘magical thinking’ about gender and also myths about transition and transition procedures. People, even quite liberal ones, are starting to ask some awkward questions about the paediatric gender transition movement including whether paediatric gender transition has done little more than sterilise and mentally and physically scar young people for no good reason.

Ms Bartosch said that those organisations that have pushed the trans line too far, such as Stonewall, are now failing and flailing about. She said that on one occasion a Stonewall representative sunk to the level of calling those asking awkward questions about the cult of trans as ‘Nazis’. This shows that groups like Stonewall have lost the argument over the trans issue. It’s a last desperate attempt to try to shame people into shutting up.

Mermaids like Stonewall has peddled complete bollocks about transsexuality to people and organisations for many years. We can only hope that the public and Government ministers who have become increasingly disturbed by the trans extremism of Stonewall, do the same to Mermaids and see them for the lack of credibility organisation that they are.

Please read the entirety of Ms Bartosch’s article via the link below:

https://thecritic.co.uk/dont-forget-about-mermaids/