Former Mermaids CEO Susie Green never lied about who she was, or about her motivation. In her famous TED talk she boasted about putting her son on puberty blockers at an early age because he liked to play with girlie toys, and Dad didn't approve. On his sixteenth birthday the lad was whisked off to Thailand to have his bits removed - though, much to Green's amusement, the surgeons didn't have much to work with when trying to construct a new vagina, since the boy's penis hadn't developed because of the puberty blockers. But never mind: Susie Green and Mermaids became untouchable.
Hadley Freeman at UnHerd:
During her time at Mermaids, Green has been advising parents, schools, the police, the media and NHS trusts about how to deal with other children who dare to not be gender stereotypes. She was their first staff member — before Mermaids was run by volunteers — and under her leadership, she has transformed the organisation from a quiet, low-key charity to an energetically active lobbying group, and her theories about childhood and gender have been at least as influential as Judith Butler’s. Mermaids has been endorsed by the Be Kind brigade, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jameela Jamil and Emma Watson, accrued a slew of corporate sponsors and been awarded £500,000 by the National Lottery. Progressive newspapers advise readers to contact the service should they have any concerns about their child.
Since 2017, I regularly asked editors at the newspaper where I worked [that would be the Guardian - MH] if I could write about Mermaids in general and Green specifically, because it was so obvious that something was very wrong here. The answer, always, was no, but the reasons given were fuzzy: it wouldn’t be right in that section, they couldn’t see the news peg, it felt too niche. A more likely reason was one articulated to me with some passion on social media any time I tweeted anything sceptical about Green or Mermaids: to question either was to wish trans children would die.
But the tide is turning. Susie Green is suddenly gone from Mermaids, and the ship is sinking.
Maybe the Mermaids board belatedly realised that if they want their organisation to endure, they needed to get rid of the wacky front woman. Ultimately, I don’t care why she went, because so much damage has already been done. But what I do want to know is this: how did so many people take Green so seriously for so long? Why did so many people turn off their intelligence when faced with this former IT consultant from Leeds? And how could so many LGBT activists champion and defend a woman who saw effeminacy — and therefore homosexuality — in her two-year-old and feel she had to “correct” this “defect”? ...
I’m not waiting for celebrities such as Emma Watson to own up to their foolishness, mainly because I don’t care what Emma Watson thinks about anything. But all the journalists, teachers, editors and activists who endorsed Green’s obviously ludicrous ideas and shouted down anyone who didn’t, they really need to take a long look at their judgement, their motives and themselves. Because Green never once hid who she was.
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