Who, us? Advocate puberty blockers??
Mermaids says what now?
Really? Gosh, I could have sworn…
Absolute, total, shameless lies. Your ex-CEO referred children to the Tavistock gender clinic. Mermaids has repeatedly claimed puberty blockers are reversible, sent out breast binders to girls as young as thirteen and insisted publicly that unless children are affirmed in their trans identities they’ll kill themselves. Your fingerprints are all over the catastrophe of child transition, and those who funded you, campaigned for you and allowed you to embed yourselves in healthcare systems need to be held to account.
I think there’s quite a lot of documentation of that claim.
As aggravating as the dishonesty is, it’s a positive development I suppose that this is Mermaids’ response, rather than “the Cass Report is transphobic nonsense that contradicts well-established medical knowledge.”
We have to rejoice at such tiny pitiful crumbs…
I’m not so sure they’re tiny pitiful crumbs.
Ask yourself, what would “winning” this public debate look like? It’s never the case that a huge number of people on one side of an argument just shrug and say “ok, we were wrong.” What happens is some combination of (1) a few rare folks say “ok, I was wrong,” (2) a bunch more people just stop talking about that issue and either fade from public life or find other things to talk about, and (3) the goalposts are moved — either “well, we never actually SAID that X was true, just that there was reason to believe it was true,” and/or “look, the problem here is that you folks were saying X and Y and Z, and Z isn’t entirely true, so that tainted what you were saying about X so can you blame us for maybe overstating the case on X?”
Now, it’s early days yet, and it may well be that the activists rally around the “Dr. Cass is a despicable homophobe and her entire report is garbage” position. But if they coalesce around “hey, we’ve always said that the evidence is uncertain and more study is needed, and blockers and transition aren’t always the answer,” I think that’s unequivocally a win, and a substantial one.
Interesting question. I think this public debate isn’t like usual public debates. I kind of do think a lot of people are going to realize how absurd the belief system is, which doesn’t mean I think they’re necessarily going to say “Ok I was wrong.” I think a lot will just age out of it, walk away, change the subject, etc.
Oh, I think so, too. But the CEO of Mermaids doesn’t really have that option, so this is about as much as we can expect.
I agree with Screechy Monkey, that this Mermaids attempt at “retcon” (retroactive continuity in fiction) is a positive development.
Another positive development, that JK Rowling accused the present CEO of Mermaids of “shameless lies” without fear of being sued for defamation, because Rowling’s tweet cites facts.
When those who have mostly kept their mouth shut and gone along with whatever absurdities have been foisted upon them, announce that they have were right all along and those crazy gender criticals with their moral panics have been decisively proved wrong because, hey, it worked all right out in the end due to the universe’s well known tendency to self correct, then I’ll know we have won. Sigh! A prophet and all that.