Susie Green & Mermaids UK - "Trans Kid Support Charity", Susie had her underage kid get GRS

[OttoWest]

Jesus fuck. If you commit a crime like that, you’ve excluded yourself from humanity. You should be grateful for any rights you get, for you surely didn’t earn them.

If it makes you feel any worse, Luis/Synthia spent his entire trial making stupid faces at the court and giggling with his co-defendant.

He deserves the absolute worst and then some.

 

[Geranium]

If it makes you feel any worse, Luis/Synthia spent his entire trial making stupid faces at the court and giggling with his co-defendant.

He deserves the absolute worst and then some.

For anyone wondering, yes, Synthia China Blast / Luis Morales is the rapist and murderer that Roderick Laverne Cox supported.

Anyway, back to Susie, another retweet. This time it's from Owen J Hurcum, formerly the they/them mayor (unelected) of Bangor who sacked it off when someone bought him a houseboat:

@OwenJHurcum, tweet 1625060969146613762 (archive)

I am heartbroken to read this news, my thoughts go out to Brianna's family, friends and our entire trans community that will undoubtedly be affected by this horrendous crime.
Every single transphobe is complicit in this. Transphobia kills.

We did it guys! We're responsible!

 

[Trianon]

I'm not sure why everyone is just sliding past the fact that this child was killed by other children. Is there going to be any energy spent on holding them accountable? Or are children incapable of recognizing the long-term impacts of their actions......?

It is almost like ... teenagers in general are getting stabbed and killed at the highest rate in 75 years. I'm sure it's nothing.


link | archive

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

I'm not sure why everyone is just sliding past the fact that this child was killed by other children. Is there going to be any energy spent on holding them accountable? Or are children incapable of recognizing the long-term impacts of their actions......?

Clearly Rowling used the Imperius Curse.

 

[Tragi-Chan]

I'm not sure why everyone is just sliding past the fact that this child was killed by other children. Is there going to be any energy spent on holding them accountable? Or are children incapable of recognizing the long-term impacts of their actions......?

It is almost like ... teenagers in general are getting stabbed and killed at the highest rate in 75 years. I'm sure it's nothing.

View attachment 4527158
link | archive

The troons have their narrative. They’d rather have people paying attention to a nonexistent issue (that gets them sympathy) than actually work towards preventing this from happening again.

 

[Geranium]

This Times article was published the other day but I’ve just got round to looking at it. It’s a preview of a new book on GIDS by Hannah Barnes, one of the Newsnight reporters who worked on their exposés a couple of years ago. Tavistock scandal ‘on a par with East German doping of athletes’ (archive)

Regarding Mermaids, it mentions their lobbying for a shorter time between prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, which IIRC we already knew about from Parliamentary testimony.

But it does include this bit about Susie Green personally lobbying GIDS to have doctors replaced with those thought more likely to prescribe the drugs:

• In 2016, Susie Green, former head of the pro-trans charity Mermaids, emailed Dr Polly Carmichael, who was then the head of Gids, asking to cut the time children had to spend on puberty blockers before irreversible cross-sex hormones could be introduced.

• Staff raised concerns when, on behalf of families, Green requested children’s clinicians to be changed to someone believed to be more likely to prescribe hormones.

…

On other occasions a change in clinician would be requested by Green, the Mermaids chief, Spiliadis said.

“I remember thinking and talking to Paul [Jenkins, the Tavistock chief] and saying that this is really inappropriate — how come a person who’s the director, or the CEO of a charity, is entitled to request a change of clinicians on behalf of a family?”

Edit, a few hours later: Hadley Freeman's article (also from Sunday's Times) is also worth reading. How the Tavistock gender clinic ran out of control | The Sunday Times Magazine (archive)

Here are some bits relevant to Mermaids:

By the early 2000s those working within Gids noted that certain gender activist groups — such as Mermaids, which supports “gender-diverse” kids and their families — were exerting an “astonishing” amount of influence on Gids, especially in regard to encouraging the prescribing of puberty blockers.

[…]
So what actually happened at Gids? And why did no one stop it? Barnes’s book suggests multiple credible factors. Activist groups from outside, such as Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence, came to exert undue influence on the service and would complain if they felt things weren’t being done their way. For example, Gendered Intelligence complained to Carmichael, the Gids director, when a clinician dared to express the view publicly that not all children with gender dysphoria would grow up to be transgender. In 2016 an expert in gender reassignment surgery warned Gids that putting young boys on puberty blockers made it more difficult for them to undergo surgery as adults, because their penis hadn’t developed enough for surgeons to construct female genitalia. Instead, surgeons had to use “segments of the bowel” to create a “neo-vagina”. But senior managers rejected calls from its clinicians to put this on a leaflet for patients and families. In the book, Hutchinson is quoted as saying, “I may be wrong, but I think Polly [Carmichael] was afraid of writing things down in case they got into Mermaids’s hands.”

Susie Green was at this point the chief executive of Mermaids and had taken her son, who had been on puberty blockers, to Thailand for gender reassignment surgery on his 16th birthday. In an interview, which is still on YouTube, Green laughingly recalls the difficulties surgeons had in constructing a vagina out of her child’s prepubescent penis. Green stepped down from Mermaids last year.

[…] And then there was the outside culture. Basic safeguarding failures at Gids seem to have accelerated from 2014 onwards, at the same time that there was a push for the rights of transgender people. Stonewall, having helped to secure equal marriage, had now turned its sights on the rights of trans people. Susie Green, at Mermaids, gave a TED talk that suggested taking her teenage son for a sex change operation was a parenting template to admire. Meanwhile, the TV networks weighed in. In 2014 CBBC aired a documentary, I Am Leo, about a 13-year-old female on puberty blockers who identifies as a boy — mainly, it seems, because of an abhorrence of dresses and long hair. In 2018 ITV showed the three-part drama Butterfly, about an 11-year-old boy whose desire to be a girl is expressed as a desire to wear dresses and make-up. Susie Green was the lead consultant on the show.

The book, Time to Think by Hannah Barnes, will be published (in the UK at least) on the 23rd by an independent publisher, Swift. Swift Press | Time to Think (archive)

This is the reaction Barnes got from the big publishers:

“I wanted to write a definitive record of what happened because there needs to be one,” she tells me. Not everyone agreed. “None of the big publishing houses would take it,” she says. “Interestingly, there were no negative responses to the proposal. They just said, ‘We couldn’t get it past our junior members of staff.’ ”

 

[Nova Prime]

Now vtubers are donating to the child abuse cult.

Link (Archive)

 

[TismFarmer]

View attachment 4557158
Link (Archive)

Do you think this Lich V will show receipts for the $42,000.00+ that they promised? I hope they don't actually donate. That way Mermaids don't get that influx of cash, and also because the fallout on twatter when it comes out would be funny.

 

[Geranium]

Susie Green may want to be careful endorsing comparisons of people she disagrees with to serial abusers of vulnerable children.

 

[Hongourable Madisha]

Especially ones whose abuse was covered up or supported by the BBC, the police and minor royals.

 

[Gramlol]

Especially ones whose abuse was covered up or supported by the BBC, the police and minor royals.

At least Queen Liz awarded an OBE to the founder of children's safety advocate/anti grooming org 'sex matters'. That was a wonderful thing.

 

[Geranium]

Especially ones whose abuse was covered up or supported by the BBC, the police and minor royals.

It’d be interesting to compile a comparison of those establishment figures that supported Savile and those that supported Mermaids.

King (then Prince) Charles v Prince Harry, etc etc.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

View attachment 4576542
Susie Green may want to be careful endorsing comparisons of people she disagrees with to serial abusers of vulnerable children.

And the comments section are full of people saying "No Savile was better because he did charity work."
The post and replies continue to support all my assumptions about this tool and his followers.

 

[sheepworldvizor]

Susie Green Ted X vid on YT has been memory holed.
Plenty o’ copies available, womp womp.

 

[Geranium]

Unless my searching ability has failed me, I can't seem to find a copy of the original archived into the thread. (There is a version with commentary by Kellie-Jay Keen (Posie Parker) here.)

So here's a high quality video of Susie Green's TED talk, from TEDx Truro on October 17 2017 .

Original (now-private) YouTube video, archive from March 2022

Original title: Transgender: a mother’s story | Susie Green | TEDxTruro

Description:
Susie Green shares the inspirational story of her transgender daughter, who told her when she was four that she should have been born a girl. Susie is the CEO of Mermaids, a charity that supports gender variant children, young people and their families. Susie became involved with Mermaids when she needed support for her daughter, Jackie...Susie has expanded the charity’s capacity and funding, as well as developing the services it offers. She campaigns for the provision of more services and respectful media representation of transgender people. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Chapter list:
[0:00:00.000] <Untitled Chapter 1>
[0:01:34.000] From Jack to Jackie
[0:01:43.000] end up as this 24 year old young woman?
[0:02:01.000] Before we knew anything about gender dysphoria... 10 months old 2 years old
[0:06:29.000] Girl at home, boy outside
[0:10:53.000] Blockers and Dr Norman Spack
[0:14:36.000] Demand

Edit: Here's a transcript of the video.

[00:00:00] Susie Green: 20 years ago, my life took on a wholly unexpected direction. I was sat watching television with my then four year old son, and he said he needed to tell me something. And I said, fine. Yeah, what is it? And he turned to me and he said, mommy, God's made a mistake and I should have been a girl.

[00:00:43] I was terrified, but also it explained so many things, so many things, but a bit like monopoly, I jumped straight from fear, straight into denial, and I told Jack that it was fine to be a boy and like girly things, but that didn't make him a girl. And he looked at me and he dropped his eyes and he didn't say anything else. That day, anyway.

[00:01:17] So what I want to do is I wanna walk you through the process that has filled the last 24 years of both my life and my child's life, and hopefully explain our journey.

[00:01:30] So from Jack to Jackie. So how did this eight pound baby boy, and by the way, she hates this picture. She said it makes her look like a member of the Village People. Turn into this 24 year old young woman.

[00:01:46] She likes this picture. She says it makes her look hot.

[00:01:48] Well, Jack was, uh, my first child. I thought I knew what to expect, but really I started to notice that as soon as he got mobile and could express himself, he was gravitating towards things that you would see as stereotypically female. But I wasn't bothered.

[00:02:08] That didn't, you know, that didn't, um, phase me at all. As far as I was concerned. Children should be allowed to play with whatever they wanna play with, even if it doesn't fit the norm. And at the child minders, when I went back to work, Jack's favourite outfits were the tutu and the Snow White costume. And again, that was fine.

[00:02:30] But not for dad.

[00:02:31] So Jackie's dad struggled and he blamed me. His thoughts were that because I allowed the Polly Pocket and the My Little Pony that I was facilitating and encouraging. And I disagreed and it caused tensions.

[00:02:51] What I had come to the conclusion with over sort of the, the sort of years up until she was about two, was that I had a very sensitive, quite a effeminate little boy who was probably gay, but Jack's dad did not approve of our child's effeminate behavior.

[00:03:07] And it created such tensions that we ended up in couples counselling. We went to couples counselling and what they said to us as parents that we had to agree no matter what it was that we agreed upon, we had to agree. At that point, Tim decided that I must agree with him apparently. And all the girl toys, all girly toys as such, were taken away and put away, and Jack was made aware that this was not appropriate.

[00:03:35] And, suddenly a confident, happy little boy, became quite quiet, withdrawn, very clingy and tearful. I didn't like it and I didn't think it was right. And really for me, the point at which I really put my foot down was about a few weeks later, I think, and my mum phoned me and said, what's going on with Jack? And I said, what do you mean?

[00:03:57] She said, well, I phoned a couple of days ago to ask what Jack wanted for Christmas, and he took the phone out of the room and said, can you buy me Barbie Rapunzel, but can you please hide it? Because if mommy and daddy find it, they're going to take it away. And I realised that I was shaming my child and their toy choices, and the toy embargo stopped.

[00:04:22] But I went to my GP because I was lost and I did not know what to. And she raised her eyebrows and she went, Ooh, that's interesting. Which wasn't really very helpful cuz I was hoping for some direction. And then she wasn't the first and she certainly wouldn't be the last person to tell me that it was a phase.

[00:04:43] It's quite a long one by now, wouldn't you say? And that she would grow out of it, but she didn't. And what happened was she kept reiterating, I'm a girl. I'm a girl. I'm really a girl. Six years old. She asked me when she could have the operation to make her a girl, and it was really hard for me as a parent to watch the devastation when I told her that she had to wait until she was a grownup before that could happen.

[00:05:11] But what that identified for me is that I had to do something and I couldn't keep ignoring this and pretending it wasn't happening. And so I did some internet searches and I put in, my son wants to be a girl. And it came up with a number of different sites, but I think about 10th on the listing was a site called Mermaids.

[00:05:33] So I clicked on that and there was a phone number and I made really quite a pivotal call for me, and I spoke to Lynn, who was a founder member of Mermaids, the charity. I think I cried through the entire conversation because it was such a relief to finally talk to somebody who understood what I was going through. And could point to similes regarding their children and my child. It gave me hope.

[00:06:00] At seven years old, Jackie was referred to the Tavistock, which is the NHS clinic that supports children and young people with gender dysphoria and received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Oh, really? Not a big surprise.

[00:06:13] And at eight years old, unfortunately, her dad and I separated.

[00:06:20] But what this did for me was, gave me much more freedom to be able to give Jackie expression. The Tavistock said that allowing her girl clothes in the house was, was helpful and said that she needed to remain in male persona outside of the home. And that was fine. And I remember our first shopping trip for girl clothes.

[00:06:41] And we went into the store and I said, okay, so over there there's the girl clothes. You can go and get a couple of things, anything you like. And the look on her face was indescribable. She was so happy. And she went pelting off and she came back about two minutes later and she had two dresses. She couldn't decide and she was holding them up and she was just beaming.

[00:07:04] And she was just like, which one do you like, this one best or this one best? And doing a twirl. And I just thought to myself, oh my goodness is, is somebody watching me now thinking this mother with this little boy with dresses, what is she doing? And then I look back at my child in front of me and I looked at her face and I thought, do you know something?

[00:07:26] I can't care about what strangers think. The most important person to meet is right there in front of me, right now. At 10 years old, we went on holiday. So we had three weeks where Jackie lived as Jackie. Girl pronouns, girl names, girl clothes for the entire time. And what that really pointed out to me was how much lighter, how much happier, how much more cheerful my kid was just like, literally from getting up to going to bed.

[00:07:55] And it was at that point I decided that actually forcing my child to live as a boy in school was the wrong thing because I was sending her that message that somehow wanting and needing to be a girl and express herself as a girl was shameful. That, that it was something to be hidden, secret.

[00:08:13] So the last year of primary school was her absolute best year of school ever. So she grew her hair, she wore the girl's school uniform and school said that they noticed an entirely different child from the one from the previous year.

[00:08:27] And the kids were amazing. I remember the head teacher saying to me that she'd, uh, overheard a conversation between two of the little girls and one girl said to the other, why, why is Jack growing his hair and wearing girl clothes? And the other girl went, oh, didn't you know he's got a girl brain in a boy body. And the other little girl went, oh, okay.

[00:08:53] And that was it. Unfortunately, some of the parents weren't quite so open-minded and we had to get the police involved when we had a mother when she was collecting her own child, about the same age as Jackie, leaning out of the window of her car, and shouting abuse at my 10 year old daughter walking home from school.

[00:09:11] By this time Tim had come around, he had seen more and more that this wasn't something that was a choice. This was just a part of who our daughter was, and he was now supporting, and frankly, she wraps him around her little finger.

[00:09:29] But we were now preparing for secondary school and the Tavistock were fully on board and helping. But from the minute she walked in the door, she was annihilated, absolutely annihilated. And within two weeks she took her first overdose.

[00:09:49] I spent the next three years on suicide watch, and I look back and I don't know how I got through that, but I don't know how she did either.

[00:10:00] To add to all of this, puberty. So at 12 years old, she started going through a male puberty and it was horrific. She began cutting herself.

[00:10:13] And we were absolutely desperate and faced with an NHS at that time, it's different now, who wouldn't prescribe any medication to pause puberty, no matter how badly a child reacted to those stages.

[00:10:26] I went back into research mode and I found a doctor in America who was working with children with gender dysphoria and who would prescribe totally reversible blocking medication that pauses puberty.

[00:10:41] If taken away puberty resumes, but it gives children like my daughter the time and space to live and be without their bodies changing. I know he looks like Indiana Jones, but he really is a proper, proper doctor. Um, he's Dr. Norman Spack and he works at the Children's Hospital in Boston and he's a world renowned expert and he saved my daughter's life. I have no doubt about that whatsoever.

[00:11:06] In the midst of all of this school was up and down. Eventually we found her a school where she went to school eight miles away from home and nobody knew her as anything other than Jackie. And that sort of settled down. But the effect on her education on her life was profound.

[00:11:23] She had had seven overdoses in three years, all related to transphobic abuse and attacks. And one of her best friends was the hate crimes coordinator for West Leeds, so that gives you a bit of an indication of what she went through.

[00:11:41] But at 16, my daughter underwent gender reassignment surgery, and now the next bit, I'm gonna let her talk to you.

[00:11:53] Jackie Green: I was born in the body of a boy, but I had the mind or the brain of a girl. I think I was five years old when I said to my mother like, God's made a mistake. I shouldn't, this, this isn't me. I'm wrong.

[00:12:05] I think I was like seven and I started growing my hair and I started to wear the girls' uniforms. My school itself, they were really, really good about it, really helpful.

[00:12:16] Uh, and so were a lot of the students, if anything, like I found some parents were not as accepting. I was walking out of the school gate to go home. For a good two, three weeks consecutively, she would like hang out of her car window and like shout abuse at me. This mother, I could feel like, hate.

[00:12:40] And then I got into high school, which was a nightmare.

[00:12:44] The story of me spread like wildfire. My first day, like the first day in school into my high school. I was in my, uh, my form group and uh, some kid who I'd never met opened the door to my full room and he was just like, oh, is that freak in here? Is that freak? I got spat on and I got beat up and it really does hurt to think back like how cruel people could be.

[00:13:20] I found it quite empowering that I've gotten through it and then I got asked to do Miss England and I was like, come on, I must be actually, am I attractive? Oh my God, like, it gave me a real boost that I, I just needed it. It's part of my story, it isn't my whole story, cuz, as I say, like, I'm a sister, a singer, actress, model, all kinds of things before I am a trans person.

[00:13:45] And I hate that. Like why do I need a label? Why can't I just be a woman? Everyone has the right to live their life how they want to and be who they want to be. So why does it make, why is it different for me? I'm proud of everything I've gone through and I wouldn't, I wouldn't change it now. It's part of my make-up it's in my DNA.

[00:14:04] I am a girl and I always have been.

[00:14:09] Susie Green: I can't watch that. I have to look down cuz it still affects me. I'm now CEO of Mermaids, so I'm running the charity that I contacted so many years ago. This gives a little bit of an indication of the demand and how it's rising and what we are facing in terms of young people coming forward.

[00:14:27] And the good thing is that parents are now listening as well, but you can see the difference. Society maybe is becoming more accepting, at the same time children and young people across the country are still being treated like Jackie.

[00:14:42] This is from a 2017 Stonewall survey. 51% of trans children are bullied. One in 10 receive death threats. 84% self-harm compared to 10% of the population, and 45% of them attempt suicide at least once. Being transgender is not a mental health illness. Society's prejudice, discrimination, hatred, leads to anxiety and depression.

[00:15:12] Now, this is her now.

[00:15:18] And you can see she's maybe a little bit of a diva as well. Dunno where she gets that from. Bottom line is she's happy and isn't that all that matters? Thank you very much.

Perhaps Susie had the TEDx video made private because the Hannah Barnes book Time to Think is doing the rounds. A big part of that is about puberty blockers (it's where the title comes from) and part of the TEDx talk has Susie saying this (from 10 minutes in):

To add to all of this, puberty. So at 12 years old, she started going through a male puberty and it was horrific. She began cutting herself.

And we were absolutely desperate and faced with an NHS at that time, it's different now, who wouldn't prescribe any medication to pause puberty, no matter how badly a child reacted to those stages.

I went back into research mode and I found a doctor in America who was working with children with gender dysphoria and who would prescribe totally reversible blocking medication that pauses puberty.

If taken away puberty resumes, but it gives children like my daughter the time and space to live and be without their bodies changing. I know he looks like Indiana Jones, but he really is a proper, proper doctor. Um, he's Dr. Norman Spack and he works at the Children's Hospital in Boston and he's a world renowned expert and he saved my daughter's life. I have no doubt about that whatsoever.

 

[AnOminous]

The most disgusting lie these child groomers tell is that shit like Lupron is "totally reversible." That's like saying you can do cocaine all you like and if you stop your collapsed septum will just magically heal itself. The idea you can just turn puberty off and on like a switch years later is completely asinine. It doesn't even take a doctor to see that's a complete obvious lie that flies in the face of common sense.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

The most disgusting lie these child groomers tell is that shit like Lupron is "totally reversible." That's like saying you can do cocaine all you like and if you stop your collapsed septum will just magically heal itself. The idea you can just turn puberty off and on like a switch years later is completely asinine. It doesn't even take a doctor to see that's a complete obvious lie that flies in the face of common sense.

Much easier to tell that lie when it will be only proven to be a lie in 10-20 years. Especially given how popular that lie is right now?

The amount of people whose faces split into confusion when I remind them of the MANY times the medical industry has done this before is depressing. "But that was nicotine/sugar/ADHD medication. This is so much more serious, they're be much more careful this time!"

Hell needs a new circle.

 

[Norbert the Tiger]

For anyone wondering, yes, Synthia China Blast / Luis Morales is the rapist and murderer that Roderick Laverne Cox supported.

Anyway, back to Susie, another retweet. This time it's from Owen J Hurcum, formerly the they/them mayor (unelected) of Bangor who sacked it off when someone bought him a houseboat:
View attachment 4526910
@OwenJHurcum, tweet 1625060969146613762 (archive)

We did it guys! We're responsible!

You beat me to it. I am watching this now. I think perhsos this video should be added to the original article.

 

[Geranium]

I've picked out the sections of Hannah Barnes's book Time to Think that mention Mermaids, aside from a couple of minor references. Susie Green isn't mentioned outside of this parts.

The page numbers are by way of the Kindle edition. I hope they match up with the hardback but I can't check at the moment. (f = and next page, ff = and following pages)

Notes (marked with a symbol) are included but references (marked with a number) are not.

There's a lot so I admit I've not fully read these sections.

Edit: I wonder if the Susie Green TEDx talk was made private on YouTube because it appears in the references for chapter 3, "The Push for Puberty Blockers", when discussing Norman Spack:

28 Susie Green, ‘Transgender: a mother’s story | Susie Green | TEDxTruro’, via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZiVPh12RQY

Spoiler: p37ff

Over time, Sue Evans’s concerns weren’t simply about geography. One ‘red flag’ was what she perceived as the subtle, but undue, influence of patient-support groups on GIDS’s clinical practice. Evans recalls how Domenico Di Ceglie and his successor, Polly Carmichael, would regularly attend meetings of Mermaids, for example, and upon their return encourage staff to change practice.37 It was on the advice of Mermaids, Evans says, that the GIDS team stopped including birth names on clinical letters. That might sound small, but the influence of Mermaids grew.

Mermaids is not just any old patient support group. It’s a patient support group whose history is intricately intertwined with GIDS. Mermaids was set up in the mid 1990s by some parents who had attended group sessions at GIDS.38 The GIDS groups were aimed at helping parents of children with gender identity problems not to feel so isolated, and they ran for a number of years.39 Di Ceglie believed that a patient group like Mermaids was able to offer ‘the kind of help and support that we, as professionals, cannot’. Mermaids ‘contributed creatively’ to the development of GIDS and in Di Ceglie’s eyes was a ‘complementary organization’ to the service.40

In its early years, Mermaids’ views appeared to reflect those of Di Ceglie and his service. The group’s website in 2000 spoke about gender identity problems in children and adolescents being ‘complex’ with ‘varied causes’. It noted that ‘only a small proportion of cases will result in a transsexual outcome’, and acknowledged that ‘some gender issues can be caused by a bereavement, a dysfunctional family life, or (rarely) by abuse’. Whatever the cause, it argued – just like Di Ceglie – that children with gender identity problems were often very unhappy and needed support that was ‘sympathetic and non-judgmental’.41

GIDS’s close relationship with Mermaids was seen as such a positive by Di Ceglie that it was emphasised in the service’s bid to be nationally commissioned by the NHS. Di Ceglie himself was a patron of the organisation, and, commissioners were told, the ongoing relationship with Mermaids meant ‘users’ views have influenced the development and organisation of the GIDS since its inception’. Furthermore, GIDS committed not just to continuing its close ties with Mermaids, but amplifying them, were its application to be successful.¶42

Another clinician from this time recalls how the group’s original leader had been ‘really thoughtful and really helpful’. Their own child had experienced gender difficulties but had not gone on to transition as an adult. But over time, Mermaids became more political and harder to work with. Their position appeared to be that there was only one outcome for these children and young people – medical transition. The annual Mermaids meetings were not always pleasant, one clinician recalls. ‘I didn’t ever want to go… You’re going to these people who are really slagging you off and saying, “Why don’t you give medication, you’re killing our children.” It’s a really extraordinary world to work in where you’re working in a service… being absolutely attacked for just trying to stop and think with [children].’

¶ Indeed, Mermaids went on to play important roles in GIDS’s formal research. For example, the group officially endorsed a 2011 joint GIDS study looking at the incidence of ‘gender identity disorder’ in children and adolescents in the UK and Ireland. The researchers wrote: ‘The London GIDS is already actively involved with Mermaids (the only UK support group for young people with GID). Mermaids is supportive of the proposed study… and of improving access to specialist services for young people with GID. They are open to greater involvement in the study and will be involved in the dissemination of study outputs.’ The study is as follows: ‘Investigating the burden of gender identity disorder (GID) in children and adolescents: a surveillance study of incidence, clinical presentation, co-morbidities and natural history’ [HRA 11/LO/1512] (30 August 2011).

Spoiler: p41

[Dr Az] Hakeem too was concerned about the influence of Mermaids, whom he describes as ‘omnipresent’. ‘GIDS and Mermaids were virtually inseparable,’ he says.

Spoiler: p55

But demands for change grew more vociferous from the mid 2000s. Along with Mermaids, the Gender Identity Research and Education Society – GIRES – lobbied hard for GIDS to lower the age at which they’d consider treating children with puberty blockers. In fact, GIRES seemed to be the most influential group at this time.

Spoiler: p60

In 2005, GIRES and Mermaids organised a meeting with clinicians from gender clinics around the world to try to develop ‘guidelines for endocrinological intervention’ in the UK.26 The creators of the Dutch protocol, GIDS director Domenico Di Ceglie and colleague Polly Carmichael, along with the endocrinologists who administered puberty blockers to GIDS patients, attended. So did the Harvard-based clinician Norman Spack. GIRES talked about British families ‘taking their children to the USA’ for puberty-blocking treatment.27 ‘The USA’ in this case meant Norman Spack, who is believed to have treated a small number of British children over the next few years, including the child of Susie Green.28 Green later became chair and then chief executive of transgender charity Mermaids. (In 2009, Green accompanied her child to Thailand, where, on their sixteenth birthday, they underwent male-to-female sex reassignment surgery.29)

Spoiler: p62

For his part, Domenico Di Ceglie was open about the difficult position that GIDS found itself in when it came to offering a medical pathway.33 He experienced ‘confusion and disorientation’ in trying to deal with increasing and competing pressures.34 GIDS needed the support of the wider Tavistock and Portman Trust, which was sceptical about the use of drugs in this context, but felt it could not alienate groups like Mermaids.35

GIDS’s existence seemed to depend upon ‘a continuous process of negotiation’ with ‘user organizations and the wider institutions where the professional and service belong’.36 And, as its founder and director, Di Ceglie ‘felt under extreme pressure’ to join one side or the other. He compares the anxiety he felt to that of Ulysses (Odysseus) having to navigate the passage between two cliffs, guarded by the two monsters Scylla and Charybdis. On the one side there was the voice of trans groups like Mermaids and GIRES, who saw physical interventions as ‘the main way of reducing distress in early adolescence’ and a ‘lifesaving intervention in the face of suicidal and self-harming behaviour’; on the other were those of many colleagues in the Tavistock Trust and outside, who ‘had the view that adolescents should only be offered psychological and social support but not the possibility of any physical intervention’. If the Trust became too unhappy, ‘there was a risk that the service could be closed.’ If service users were alienated, that too could have ‘serious consequences for the survival and the provision of a service’.37

Spoiler: p106f

It wasn’t just the clinical work that felt at odds with what she had known before. Anna Hutchinson was immediately struck by the influence of patient groups on GIDS – Mermaids and GIRES, specifically. ‘I was used to being in a team where there was a dialogue with the patient groups that was a bit conflictual at times, where the NHS clinical team had to hold its ground a bit and say, “Well, this is why we’re offering it.”’ That didn’t seem to be happening at GIDS, she says. They weren’t holding their ground, explaining why they were doing what they were, presenting the evidence base. Instead, ‘I just had a real sense that the GIDS management were kind of bending over backwards to try and please.’ It felt ‘qualitatively really different’.†

In those early days a lot of time would be spent in meetings talking about what Mermaids were saying, or what GIRES were saying, ‘and a huge amount of time was spent thinking about how to respond and how to not upset them’. Bernard Reed, the founder of GIRES, would regularly be on the phone to Polly Carmichael, Hutchinson recalls, and the GIDS Leeds team, in particular, would often bring up Mermaids.

† Dr Polly Carmichael declined the invitation to be interviewed for this book, but in written correspondence said that she did not accept that GIDS was overly influenced by outside groups. She said she thought it ‘significant’ that the ‘service has been criticised for its approach by advocates of a number of diverse viewpoints’, including GIRES and Mermaids.

Spoiler: p123

Another clinician in the service at the time remembers differently. Andrea Walker,* a straight-talking, highly experienced social worker from the Leeds team believes the decision to roll out early intervention was based largely on two considerations: the Dutch team were doing it, and Mermaids wanted it to happen. The issue was ‘becoming really political’, she says. ‘And if we don’t do it, we’re just going to become irrelevant.’

* Not their real name.

Spoiler: p137f

Groups like Mermaids were calling for the age limit on cross-sex hormones to be lowered from 16 ‘all the time’ and for the requirement that young people be on puberty blockers for a year first be dropped.61 Some of the UK’s parliamentarians appeared to agree with them: if anything, GIDS was too cautious.62 Society, or parts of it at least, was calling for GIDS to move faster when it came to physical interventions, and to do so at younger ages. Bernadette Wren told Parliament in September 2015 that GIDS reviewed the question of making cross-sex hormones available at younger ages ‘constantly’, but explained that ‘there are issues about the range of young people coming forward and the difficulty of knowing which are the children who might do really well, unless we confine [cross-sex hormones] to a vanishingly small number, which we possibly should’. Sitting next to Mermaids’ chief Susie Green at the time, Wren explained that dropping the age limit would make it ‘harder and harder for us to say, “No”’, and that that made GIDS ‘anxious’. Wren explained that GIDS questioned whether it was ‘sound ethically’ to allow children to make ‘critical life changing decisions at 14’.63

Wren was explicit about the pressure Mermaids exerted on GIDS: ‘I know that Susie and Mermaids would like a fast track so that young people who are already well into puberty and feel that they know that they want to move forward into physical intervention would bypass our assessment process and move straight into physical intervention,’ she said. ‘We feel that is not an ethical way to practise, and this is a sticking point between us and Mermaids.’ Wren explained that physical interventions were not ‘the royal road to perfect mental health’ for many of the young people being seen at GIDS.64

The pressure did not go away, and in 2016 the Tavistock confirmed that it was ‘highly likely’ that the requirement to be on puberty blockers for a year would be scrapped, and that it was ‘actively looking’ at whether young people could commence cross-sex hormones at a younger age, as part of a ‘research protocol’.65 In an email exchange the following month, Mermaids’ Susie Green expressed her wish for the time spent on blockers before cross-sex hormones to be reduced. Polly Carmichael replied that there could be ‘flexibility’ around the year requirement.66

Spoiler: p162f

‘I may be wrong, but I think Polly was afraid of writing things down in case they got into Mermaids’ hands,’ says Anna Hutchinson. (It’s why, she thinks, she also couldn’t get approval to write to those whom GIDS knew they would not be able to see: those who would be too old by the time they reached the top of the service’s waiting list.) Dr Alex Morris,‡ one of those who would always pass the information on, agrees. While she rejects the notion of being ‘frightened’ of Mermaids, she explains that ‘anything you put on paper would be picked up, scrutinised’. Carmichael would then receive emails from Susie Green at Mermaids, or from private providers of gender care, who might accuse GIDS of scaremongering. They would take issue with ‘anything that suggested there was anything dangerous, worrying’, Morris says. Mermaids’ view was that ‘this is an increasingly normal practice, mainstream, safe thing to do, which doesn’t have any significant consequences, and we should just be doing it quickly. And saving all these poor kids lots of trauma.’ Having written down what had to be included in an assessment would, she said, have helped introduce more consistency across the service, though, rather than leaving it down to individual clinicians, who may or may not have been present when important new data were discussed. Clinicians who didn’t know what they didn’t know.

‡ Not their real name.

Spoiler: p168

The lack of CAMHS involvement or support for young people before they arrived at GIDS created a further problem. Left with no help whatsoever, support groups like Mermaids and GIRES stepped in to fill the gap. No blame can be attributed to very worried parents or their distressed children for seeking help when nothing else was available. But these groups are not clinicians and their personal experiences meant they held very particular views. These organisations would often use ‘alarmist’ rhetoric, convincing families that if their children did not receive access to medication for their distress, they would most likely take their own lives, GIDS staff say. This meant that by the time a young person did arrive at GIDS, their views were often so deeply entrenched as to what needed to happen – largely, puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones – that doing any kind of exploratory work became extremely difficult.

Speaking in 2015, Bernadette Wren described the wording on Mermaids’ website as ‘as scary as it can be’. She questioned whether it was ‘helpful for [young people] to be encouraged to believe that what they feel is completely intolerable’. ‘When inaccurate data and alarmist opinion are conveyed very authoritatively to families we have to wonder what the impact would be on children’s understanding of the kind of person they are, and will become, and their likely fate.’5

Spoiler: p178f

Walker is discussing the early years of GIDS Leeds – 2013, 2014, 2015. Young people didn’t just face a potential clinician lottery; according to some there was a postcode lottery, too. Mermaids, Walker says, was ‘very active’. They’d even accompany some families to their assessment appointments at GIDS and sit in the waiting room as support. Just as in London, many of the young people seen were highly complex. With her background in social work, the most complicated referrals – those involving looked-after children, historical sexual abuse, self-harm – would be put on her desk. The team in Leeds at the time was tiny. Walker tried her best, but it was difficult. She would try to talk about gender being a social construct, and how the young person saw themselves, ‘but they weren’t really there for that; they were there for the drugs.’ She would try to have difficult, challenging conversations about what a medical transition might really be like, she says, and what changes to the body would take place, but it was ‘soul-destroying work’. Although it was important to be honest, in order to try to gain informed consent, ‘actually you’re dismantling these fantasies of young people, aren’t you?’ she says. ‘That’s what I felt I was doing. I was making young people who are already really sad and vulnerable, really, really sad.’ Some, but by no means all, appeared to be facing homophobia, often internal. It was ‘shocking’ to her that young people felt ‘it’s not okay to be gay’ in the twenty-first century.

With some young people, Walker would try to delay and not refer for puberty blockers after three sessions. ‘Some of them I did delay, and they would come back and would say the feelings are less intense. And I go, “Amazing, go away, come back in six months,” you know. Some of them would get Mermaids on board.’ When that happened, there’d be pressure to refer to endocrinology, she says. ‘We were answering to Mermaids,’ Walker states definitively.†

† The head of GIDS Leeds, Dr Sally Phillott, said she did not agree with this assessment. ‘At that time Mermaids was an active support group that supported many of the families being seen at GIDS,’ she said. ‘However, no group changed the way in which clinical decisions were made or judgements exercised. We followed the NHS England service specification when referring to the endocrinology team.’

Spoiler: p199f

What also worried him [Anastassis Spiliadis] was that some complaints and requests for a change of clinician were not coming from the families themselves, but from Susie Green at the charity Mermaids. And these would be agreed to, too. ‘I remember thinking and talking to [Tavistock chief executive] Paul [Jenkins] and saying that this is really inappropriate – how come a person who’s the director, or the CEO of a charity, is entitled to request a change of clinicians on behalf of a family?’ Spiliadis says. Others say that while Green would contact GIDS, they didn’t see her influencing clinical decisions. ‘Any correspondence or any contact we received from her, you just sent it to seniors,’ one clinician said.

That Green would contact GIDS on behalf of specific families is not in doubt. And the charity’s serious data breach which came to light in 2019 confirmed it. It also confirmed that, such was the closeness of the relationship between GIDS and Mermaids, Polly Carmichael’s line manager – Sally Hodges – agreed to ‘co-ordinate’ the content of GIDS’s website with Mermaids so that they were ‘consistent’. ‘It would be valuable to think with you about the content going forward,’ Hodges wrote in November 2016. In a separate email, Polly Carmichael told Susie Green it was good to be working together on a different project.4 The service specification also allowed Mermaids to refer young people to GIDS.

Spoiler: p225ff

Those who voiced their worries about the work at GIDS could find their lives difficult not only within the service, but as a result of outside groups too. Having written a favourable review in an academic journal of a book whose ‘central contention is that transgender children don’t exist’, GIDS psychotherapist Melissa Midgen found herself targeted by Gendered Intelligence and Mermaids, both of whom are criticised in the book.23 Midgen expressed her view that, as things currently stand, ‘we do not have sufficient evidence or understanding to know whether there are children born into the world intrinsically “trans”, in “the wrong body” as it were’. Midgen sets out her view clearly. We know that there are many happy and successful trans adults, she says, and that it is ‘logical to infer that some of the children and young people we see in Gids will grow into adults whose gender dysphoria is such that the only reasonable “solution” or treatment is a social role transition followed by medical intervention’. But, she adds, ‘the complexity of presentation of the children seen at Gids… suggest[s] that for many of them at least there are reasons for their body dysphoria other than an inborn “trans” nature.’ While some will grow up to be trans adults, others will not. ‘It is both my experience, and the argument posited throughout this book, that the current socio-cultural situation is one which has permitted an inflation of the idea, and that we are indeed co-creating the very notion of the “trans kid”,’ writes Midgen, explaining that ‘many scores of hours’ had gone into the formation of her ‘thoughts, ideas, concerns and dilemmas’ on the subject.24

Following publication of the review in a specialist publication for fellow psychotherapists, chief executive of trans-led organisation Gendered Intelligence, Jay Stewart, wrote to Polly Carmichael, asking to know what steps had been taken to address the ‘inappropriateness of the review’. He said he hoped that Carmichael would prevent Melissa Midgen from making any further comments in the public domain and that she (Carmichael) would have issued a public statement apologising for the review. Stewart advised that the fact of a member of the GIDS team expressing such views made him question the current relationship between Gendered Intelligence and GIDS. But Carmichael was wholly supportive of her colleague Melissa Midgen over the review.

Several months later, Mermaids mentioned the book review and Melissa Midgen in a written submission to Parliament. The charity stated that GIDS had members of staff ‘who are openly unsupportive of TNB CYP [trans and non-binary children and young people]’. There was in fact nothing in Melissa Midgen’s book review that suggested that she was unsupportive of the young people in her care, or that she was not trying to do the best for them and their individual circumstances. Mermaids asked that ‘a thorough audit’ be carried out of the views of GIDS’s staff, ‘to ensure every TNB child is dealt with in a respectful and supportive way’. The charity went further, arguing that training should be given to ensure all staff had ‘a correct approach’ to gender issues.25

On this occasion, GIDS neither submitted evidence to an inquiry concerning its own area of work, nor sought to publicly defend its staff whose reputations had been attacked. But the service did not heed Mermaids’ demands.26

Spoiler: p270

Jacob was encouraged to look at the group’s [Gendered Intelligence’s] website and do some research. But this baffled Michelle [Jacob's mother]. ‘To me, if you’ve got someone that’s working for the NHS, why are they pushing a charity?’ she asks. Jacob was given a leaflet for Mermaids too, but it was Gendered Intelligence that was talked about more. Michelle felt that to point young people towards certain resources and ‘like-minded people’ was ‘pushing an agenda’. At the time of writing in 2022, young people are still directed towards Gendered Intelligence and their resources on several pages of the GIDS website.4

The influence of these outside groups – Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence – was also felt at GIDS ‘Family Days’. Neither Jacob nor Michelle speaks favourably of the events, Michelle branding them ‘chaos’ and lacking any kind of structure or boundaries. Jacob did not like the fact that the sessions for young people attending GIDS were invariably led by trans adults from either Gendered Intelligence or Mermaids. These adults had often not been through GIDS themselves, Jacobs says, and they were only interested in hearing about positive stories. ‘I couldn’t discuss my way of thinking,’ he says, because those facilitating the discussion only chose people who were like them – fully sold on medical transition and its merits, Jacob recalls. It’s understandable that GIDS would want to try to show that many who transition are happy. But to Jacob there was no diversity of opinion allowed or presented. No other ways of seeing what ‘being trans’ could mean.

Spoiler: p411f

There is some evidence, too, that the once-close relationship between GIDS and trans support group Mermaids began to cool. In conversations with a director of the Big Lottery Fund, which had agreed to grant Mermaids £500,000 in December 2018, GIDS director Polly Carmichael was asked for the service’s views on the charity.5 The Lottery was reviewing the decision after concerns were raised.6 Carmichael explained that ‘it is important and valuable to have localised support groups for families’, and that GIDS tried to attend all the residential sessions run by Mermaids.7 But Carmichael is also reported to have told the Lottery that ‘she felt like Mermaids had challenged the Tavistock in the past by suggesting different approaches and that if this is not done in a constructive manner then there is a risk that this can result in the potential of parents losing trust in the services provided by the Tavistock and that this could be unhelpful’. Carmichael explained that in the United States, surgeons advocated ‘early surgery and much earlier sex hormones’ – something contrary to the Tavistock approach. ‘Polly feels it could be argued that the Mermaids approach is more aligned to the American model,’ the Lottery director noted. ‘Polly finished by saying that Mermaids are an important group with an important view but they have a particular view and that other groups out there offer something else.’8

It’s understood that more senior figures in the wider Tavistock Trust took a stronger position. Some at board level believed by the middle of 2019 that GIDS should not be engaging with Mermaids at all – including attending any of their events. Mermaids was a lobbying group, they believed, and it was vital for GIDS to have boundaries and retain its patient focus. This message was relayed to Carmichael.

Around the same time, mentions of GIDS or the Tavistock on the Mermaids parents’ online forum began falling, and mentions of private providers increased. In 2020, private providers were talked about more often by parents being supported by Mermaids than the NHS’s sole provider in England.†

† While GIDS has constantly said that it holds the middle ground between two opposite poles – those who call for physical interventions quickly and at younger ages, and those who do not want them at all for under-18s – its treatment of different support groups calls this into question. Mermaids have been allowed to have their information leaflets within GIDS and have had regular ongoing dialogue with the service for many years. The GIDS website has provided links to both GIRES and Gendered Intelligence, too. However, the Bayswater Support Group, which represents around 400 families and describes itself as ‘wary of medical solutions to gender dysphoria’, particularly as a first-line treatment, had its dialogue with the Trust terminated after just a year. In 2021, Tavistock chief executive Paul Jenkins told them that their ‘gender-critical’ views would make it difficult for GIDS to work with them. Tavistock chair Paul Burstow repeated similar sentiments, telling the group that they were ‘not neutral’ and that its website ‘makes it more difficult to have a constructive dialogue’. None of the groups supporting gender non-conforming or gender-diverse young people and their families – Mermaids, GIRES, Gendered Intelligence or Bayswater – are neutral. That GIDS and the Tavistock Trust were only willing to engage with those supportive of paediatric medical transition is worthy of note. The author has seen the correspondence cited here.

Spoiler: p453

It seems that ideology and feelings have been allowed to trump traditional medical evidence in the work of GIDS. And where ideology impacted GIDS so strongly was in the service’s inability to keep an appropriate distance from charities and support groups like Gendered Intelligence and Mermaids. That the bosses of both organisations saw themselves as entitled to write to GIDS director Polly Carmichael directly and demand clinicians be reprimanded, or switched, or that the service go further and faster with physical interventions, is telling. Presumably, they believed their words would be heeded. GIDS put itself in a position which made it difficult to say no to these groups. Carmichael for one had attended Mermaids meetings since at least the mid 2000s, and had fostered a friendly relationship with its chief, Susie Green, who left the charity in November 2022.56 It appeared from emails that Carmichael had responded sympathetically when Green asked for changes to GIDS’s practices. GIDS Executive member Sarah Davidson was listed by the Gendered Intelligence website as one of its ‘team members’.57 She has spoken publicly about working closely with them and delivered professional training and education events alongside them.58 It was pressure, in part, from lobby groups that took the service initially down a path of providing physical interventions to younger children without a strong evidence base. And some argue that the fear of a backlash from these same groups prevented GIDS changing direction when it should have.

 

[teriyakiburns]

@Geranium

Mermaids was set up in the mid 1990s by some parents who had attended group sessions at GIDS.38 The GIDS groups were aimed at helping parents of children with gender identity problems not to feel so isolated, and they ran for a number of years.39 Di Ceglie believed that a patient group like Mermaids was able to offer ‘the kind of help and support that we, as professionals, cannot’. Mermaids ‘contributed creatively’ to the development of GIDS and in Di Ceglie’s eyes was a ‘complementary organization’ to the service.

I didn't know this, but it explains a great deal. Mermaids wasn't just gaining influence over Tavistock from the outside; it was effectively part of it from the beginning.

It's clear that Tavistock has, for a long time, operated by gestating policies and treatments, and then seeding those concepts into daughter organisations. These new groups are then used to astroturf support for particular goals Tavistock wants to pursue, either directly as new "services" that are connected to the institute, or indirectly by the generation of favourable publicity, by lobbying the NHS, government, or even Tavistock itself. The latter serves to give the institute an external actor to point at for justification of its own position.

I've got a little way into Estulin's book, Tavistock Institute: Social Engineering the Masses, which promises to go into more detail on this sort of institutional behaviour. It reads a little conspiratorial and its language is the sort of overwraught prose you'd expect from a book like that, so I'm somewhat leery of it, but there's definitely a core of truth in there.