Mermaids on the rocks

A very fishy tale (except I didn't really want to say that)

Like many here in the UK, I couldn’t help but cheer at how Mermaids have so expertly shot themselves in their own tail, and are now being exposed as the dangerous bunch of ideologically-driven, life-denying cult enforcers they have turned into. Thanks to their attempts to expose @LGBAlliance in court as a so-called “hate group” that should therefore no longer remain a legitimate charity with charitable status and legitimate aims, they managed to expose themselves to the spotlight of scrutiny, and I can’t really see them lasting much longer.

A Mermaids training powerpoint, discussing enemies of The Cult (slide 1 of 300)

But, the exposure of the investigation they’re being put through means that people are waking up to the ugly truth about Mermaids - their founder, who had their own son surgically transitioned at 16, the “counselling and support” carried out behind parents backs, the links to Stonewall, GenderGP, and the social and medical transitioning of children, the indoctrination of teachers, healthcare providers, police forces, and most recently - the recruitment of a pedophile apologist trustee to their board. Due diligence? Safeguarding? completely absent.

I’d say you couldn’t make it up. Except they did. They professed to having no medical expertise or experience, and yet were proficient and practiced at sending out binders behind parents backs, advising on affirmation treatment options, going into schools and encouraging young people to make choices that would prove to be irreversible where puberty blockers and surgery were concerned, once social transition with peers and teachers, and pronouns were in place.

There’s been plenty of great responses to the news across Twitter and other social media platforms, and some great summarising from some of my favourite substackers - Glinner and Eliza Modegreen in particular. Julie Bindel wrote a great article for UnHerd, Andrew Doyle put together a great thread on twitter. But the profound real world implications of this event are impossible to get squeezed through the pipes and cracks of mainstream news media to give it the full attention it deserves. It’s been “reported on” briefly by many, but has got nowhere near the exposure this abusive racket deserves. To mainstream news media it’s a toxic hot potato (there’s my next AI image prompt, or maybe someone else could run with that one). For those of us who join the dots for those who can’t be bothered, or remain blinded by the beauty of a mermaid, it’s very thin pickings.

In our collective consciousness, the images of mermaids that we let live in our heads, we experience as a vision of absolute beauty and goodness. Our imaginations seem conditioned to view these shimmering beauties inside a kind of hypnotic spell. We’re so bedazzled we can’t look. We’re all seduced by the fairytale, the mystery, we’re like sailors lured towards the rocks by sirens. Mermaids are folkloric (folx-loric?) and untouchable, deeply deeply special and elusive, and imbued with a Disney-like wholesomeness. How dare anyone shatter that illusion with fishy tales of human cruelty and abuse attributable to such a cherished mirage.

So the doubling down begins. The Belief Persistence that Andrew Doyle wrote about on his twitter feed is clear as day throughout the entire trans “movement” and their supporters - the irreversibility of puberty blockers, the surgeries carried out on children, male physical advantage over women in sport, men identifying themselves into women prisons - ALL continually denied in the face of evidence and fact.

All those celebrities and countless corporations who sponsored, donated, supported, championed this unchallengeable entity called Mermaids are suddenly silent, or squirming to wriggle away from the carnage of children lives ruined, of futures foreclosed, of infertile and traumatised teens, autistic children duped, of potentially gay and lesbian children who could otherwise grow into happy and healthy same-sex attracted adults. All this handwringing and obfuscation, and distortions from TRA’s, from trans allies, and from blue tick notables and celebrities, just so they can escape the ruination of their brand and reputation. What an ugly business seeing all these people scramble for cover to avoid the fallout.

One of our daughters groomers; a trans-identified young man, once had almost the entire department of a local college busily turning him into a glorious mermaid just for a really “cool” photoshoot idea with fabrics and make-up,. Everyone was roped in to the idea - so I was told by a lecturer there, who reported to me what a glorious occasion it was, and what an obviously special thing it was to take part in. It was all done purely for his benefit, his validation; living out his fantasy for the art dept to worship and admire. Mermaids seem to be assigned an almost spiritual seductiveness to - you know the type - “intersectional” feminists, desperate to appear kind and gracious and loving to all, and especially the underdog - the real cheerleaders of the BeKind brigade, but completely ignorant of how the men they champion betray them behind their backs with the endless appropriation and destruction of womens rights, spaces, privacies and dignities. And bodies. Mesmerised by Mermaids. Such a cutesy, wholesome, fairytale. No wonder people just stop looking, or thinking…

Some great summaries, and brilliant writing from some of my favourite substackers. They say it all so much better than I could,

gcnews.substack.com

elizamondegreen.substack.com

grahamlinehan.substack.com

savageminds.substack.com

This recent Facebook petition shows exactly how powerful the propaganda can be; when concern expressed over the lack of informed consent and the speed with which young people can be chemically and surgically “transitioned” is framed as hate, or in this case, how a parent “not immediately affirming” a young persons gender identity is a crime of conversion therapy comparable with “Torture”.

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I’ve attached a few of my “primitive AI’ images featuring mermaids. In all honesty, it’s very rudimentary work, employing a very basic use of how the prompting language works - IF your benchmarks are all about the kind of forensic precision we make our digital dreams and nightmares come true with. I sometimes place them next to operating tables or surgeons in a kind of horrific juxtaposition that exemplifies the sheer madness and cruelty of it all.

But it is still work in progress, and the distorted faces and surreal imperfections really do capture for me the haunting nature of mythical mermaids in the nightmares they inhabit inside my own head since we lost our own daughter to the cult. The imprecision and fuzzy nature of this form of image-making is working for me at the moment therapeutically, in a way that more “accurate” or more clearly-rendered outcomes could not achieve. I’m loathe to try harder or learn more in case I spoil that, although In time, I’ll likely get better at prompt-building and fine tune with Photoshop.

Photoshop meanwhile, allows me to quickly assemble montage ideas from emojis, screenshots and my own image library, like the clown and pyramid image at the top of this post, where a Mermaids Trainer lets us all know just who are the major threats to the continuation of their operations, carried out in the name of gender transition and affirming therapy. Which of course they can’t do, because they have no medical expertise.