Genspect Explainer: Mermaids

Mermaids is a UK registered charity that was established in 1995 to support “transgender, nonbinary and gender-diverse children, young people, and their families.” It is known as one of the main organisations in the UK that lobbies for an affirmation-only approach to gender dysphoria in young people, actively promoting the use of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgeries for minors.  Mermaids has been under fire in recent weeks but its problematic history predates recent events. 

Susie Green, a former IT consultant, became CEO of Mermaids in 2016 and has been accused of facilitating the unethical childhood transition of her own son. In 2017 she gave an infamous TED Talk in which she admitted that her now ex-husband had disciplined her son for playing with feminine toys as a child, and that the boy began identifying as a ‘girl’ after those toys were taken away from him. Green and her husband appeared to be more comfortable having a “trans kid” who was “really” a girl than having a feminine boy who was probably gay.  

When the child reached puberty, Susie instigated the child’s medical transition. As cross-sex hormones were illegal in the UK for minors, Green took her child to America to obtain cross sex hormones and soon after Green took the child to Thailand for gender reassignment surgery for their sixteenth birthday. Gender reassignment surgery is now illegal in Thailand for anyone under 18 but was legal at the time. 

Green, who has no medical training, held regular meetings with the senior management of GIDS, the UK’s sole clinic for treating gender distressed children; in which she advocated for the early and aggressive medicalisation of children’s gender identities. GIDS at the Tavistock is now due to close after Dr Hilary Cass published an independent review finding that the gender affirmative model of care was leaving young people “at considerable risk” of poor mental health and distress, and having just one clinic that was focused only on gender, was not “a safe or viable long-term option”. Despite this damning review, Mermaids continues to advocate for an affirmation only model of care for young people.   

In 2019, a Sunday Times investigative report revealed that families’ personal emails and personal data were freely available online. Mermaids’ partnership with GenderGP, an online gender clinic, has also been sharply criticised. A medical tribunal found that Dr Helen Webberly’s fitness to practise was impaired by reason of a 2018 conviction for running an unregistered medical agency. In June 2022 she was suspended for serious misconduct for putting three patients, aged 11, 12, and 17, at “unwarranted risk of harm” by failing to provide good clinical care. Meanwhile Webberly’s husband, Dr. Michael Webberley, was recently found guilty of recklessly prescribing puberty blockers and cross sex hormones to patients as young as 9. Although Mermaids has appeared to end its partnership with the unlicensed provider, references to GenderGP can still be found on its forums. 

In a highly unusual move, Mermaids, a charity, launched a legal campaign to have the charitable status of another UK charity, LGB Alliance revoked. Mermaids is ideologically opposed to LGB Alliance, an organisation that advocates for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, mainly because the LGB Alliance has voiced concerns about the medical transitioning of children. Research shows that gender non-conforming children often grow up to be lesbian, gay or bisexual and so medicalising these “pre-gay” children to live as the opposite sex will have a profound impact. The case was first heard at tribunal in September and will resume later this year. 

In this court case taken to revoke the charity status of LGB Alliance, Mermaids revealed some very controversial views on same-sex attraction and the safeguarding of children. However they were truly hoist by their own petard as the UK Charity Commission, after hearing Mermaids’ garbled responses in court, announced that they were opening an investigation into Mermaids as a result of its reckless approach to safeguarding children. 

Never a stranger to controversy, Mermaids then made headlines after an undercover investigation by the Telegraph found they were sending breast binders to teenage girls without parental knowledge or consent.  There is a well-documented array of significant negative health effects , both short-term and long-term, associated with breast binding.  

Perhaps the final, final straw has finally been revealed as The Times uncovered evidence that a recently appointment to Mermaids board recently resigned after his extensive history of paedophile apologism was uncovered. Mermaids has stated they were ignorant of Dr Jacob Breslow’s connections with paedophile apologism and his appearance at the B4U-Act conference (an organisation that promotes acceptance of paedophilia as a sexual orientation) prior to being approached by the Times. However Breslow’s extensive academic history on the subject of child sexualisation was freely available, suggesting either Mermaids doesn’t do due diligence on their appointees or they do and were perfectly comfortable with the controversial nature of Breslow’s work.  

Breslow gave a presentation at a 2011 symposium organised by self-described “people who are attracted to children” in B4U-Act, an organisation founded in 2003 by convicted child abuser Michael Melsheimer. In his 2011 paper, Breslow compares a child to a shoe: “Just as the desire to and the act of cumming on a shoe requires a rethinking of the shoe and how it comes into being, I want to now argue that the desire to and the act of cumming on, or possibly even with, a child requires a rethinking both of the child, which we just begun, and of the person for whom the child is a sexual fantasy or partner.”

Five years later, Breslow suggested in his PhD. thesis that children have sexual desires and perversities. Last December, during the launch of his book Ambivalent Childhoods: Speculative Futures and the Psychic Life of the Child which explores “the queer life of children’s desires”, Breslow asked “is it really that children or young people having sex is the problem? Or is it [the problem] the conditions under which that sex happens?”. One chapter in Breslow’s book, “Desiring the Child”, opens with a description of a 12-year-old child dancing and mimicking sex acts to a group of adults.  

In another demonstration of how academia has lost its ways, Breslow’s incoherent ramblings were published in a peer reviewed journal where he argues for finding “ways of embracing trans childhoods unconditionally” and smeared the reputations of JK Rowling and our own Stella O’Malley in his paper, “They would have transitioned me: third conditional TERF grammar of trans childhood”. 

Time and again Mermaids has revealed itself to be a disreputable organisation that needs to be shut down immediately. Whenever they are criticised they call “transphobia” and succeed in shaming and silencing their dissenters. When Graham Linehan voiced concerns about Mermaids in 2019, he was viciously attacked and YouTuber HBomberGuy raised £125k for Mermaids in retaliation. This was made possible by a large number of famous people who proudly contributed to the Mermaids cause. 

Commentators have compared Susie Green to Camila Batmanghelidjh  and Mermaids to Kids Company, but the comparison doesn’t really work: Mermaids have done a lot more harm to a lot more children and they have had a lot more public support. Mermaids regularly weaponise inaccurate suicide statistics and they call anybody who disagrees with them “transphobic”. But finally, Mermaids seem to have had their day. Everybody who works with children know that toxic empathy, reckless promises and cruel optimism does not help children, instead cautious, careful and gentle care and attention works far better.