Mermonsters
The Telegraph reports that Mermaids is giving binders to 14-year-olds against their parent’s wishes.
Mermaids, which receives funding from the taxpayer and runs training for schools and the NHS, offered to send a breast binder discreetly to a girl they believed was only 14, even after they were told that she was not allowed to use one by her mother.
Evidence obtained by The Telegraph shows that the charity’s staff have offered binders to children as young as 13 who say that their parents oppose the practice.
Chest-binding has been described by parent groups as a form of “self-harm” and it can cause breathing difficulties, chronic back pain, changes to the spine and broken ribs.
And, despite all that discomfort and risk, the girls doing it don’t magically turn into boys.
Sports risk injury too, and ballet is very hard on the feet, especially girls’ and women’s feet, but at least there’s a genuine purpose in view.
The Telegraph has uncovered evidence of the Mermaids online help centre offering advice to users who present themselves as young as 13 that controversial hormone-blocking drugs are safe and “totally reversible”.
In the last month alone, this newspaper has seen discussions in the charity’s moderated forum for 12 to 15-year-olds on how to raise money to start taking drugs and the best way to take testosterone.
A moderator also publicly congratulated a teenage user for deciding that they were transgender by the age of 13 and deciding that they wanted drugs and “all the surgeries”.
It’s so Jonestown, so Branch Davidians. Believe The Leaders, join The Cult, do what The Cult tells you to do, shun everyone outside The Cult. Believe believe believe.
In a statement setting out its position on binders, Mermaids said that it took “a harm reduction position” that providing a binder with safety instructions was better than people using other “unsafe practices” or experiencing dysphoria.
Of course Mermaids and trans activists are busy coaching people to believe that “dysphoria” is both real and worse than anything else.
Mermaids holds a privileged position in public life. The controversial charity is paid to train teachers, police forces, NHS staff and social services on dealing with transgender issues.
In recent years, it has received more than £20,000 in taxpayer’s money from grants and more than £500,000 from the National Lottery.
Staff have met government officials, given advice to the NHS and were identified as influential at the soon-to-be closed Tavistock Clinic as it was dolling out drugs to children.
It’s as if Jim Jones or David Koresh had been put in charge of Health and Human Services.
I wore a girdle once – once! I didn’t wear it very long, and I don’t remember what stupid reason persuaded me to put it on, but I struggled to breathe and my back hurt. Girdles are probably (I don’t know for sure) less of an impact than chest binders. I wouldn’t dream of wearing one again. Thank goodness neither my job nor my husband think it is part of my role to be Twiggy.
I remember visiting an acquaintance’s place years ago, a guy I thought of as decent and level-headed. Part way through the afternoon his young son arrived home from school or barged in during dinner or something, and approached his parents with the air of someone with Important News. He informed the room that he had been penalised points on a science test at school, maybe even failing it, because he answered everything in the biology section with ‘evolution isn’t real’ and ‘God created Adam and Eve’ and similar, instead of the answer he knew was expected of him.
Both parents immediately beamed at him, congratulated him for his good christian values and so on; effectively, they flooded him with approval and positivity. They then informed the rest of us that they had not coached, pressured, proselytised or anything of they sort; they insisted they had raised him with strict neutrality regarding the question of evolution versus creation.
I had known the family to be christian, but there was a distinct pang of dismay at realising they were that sort of christian. At the time, I thought the big lesson to take from this was that even generally reasonable people can have irrational – even delusional – beliefs. While this remains true, I now take a second lesson from that day. I believe those parents genuinely tried to be neutral towards their son regarding evolution, making no overt effort to pressure him into creationism; I also see that their idea of neutrality is heavily biased, undercutting their conscious effort to be neutral. The delight they showed was a strong social cue to him that choosing creationism over evolution was the one that earned parental approval, and while it was the first such instance I’d witnessed between them, it cannot have been the first time ever. The mere fact that they still claimed to be neutral with him on the matter – while love-bombing him – showed me that claims of neutral treatment of a question cannot be trusted. That may have been their genuine goal, but the selective approval shines through.
…
TRAs like to say they do not exert influence on children to be trans, that the urge bubbles up entirely from within. But they also do this:
Positive reactions, celebratory receptions like this are a strong social cue, and children are not blind to them.
[…] a comment by Holms on […]
But would coaches and instructors offer training in either without parental consent? Billy Elliot aside, would they take kids on in secret, against parental wishes? I would imagine that at this point, given the fear of litigation, most extracurricular activities like this would require parents to sign off on their child’s participation.
LGB Aliance take note: this what a real charity is supposed to be doing.
Hang on: how can this be a “harm reduction approach” if binders cause “…breathing difficulties, chronic back pain, changes to the spine and broken ribs.” If it’s not as bad as home mastectomies, then they’re “better?”
Humans are very clever at finding ways to make girls and women mutilate their bodies in the name of fashion, or modesty, or morality, or, in this case “harm reduction”(!) and (while they don’t actually use the a-word) “authenticity”. Become your authentic self by squishing your breasts and chest till they hurt and you can barely breathe!
We are strange creatures.