Last week, Mermaids – a charity that supports young trans people and their families – announced that they had been forced to shut down their helpline and webchat temporarily due to the torrent of ‘intolerable abuse’ that they were receiving.
They also said that once they resume work, they would have reduced hours as a ‘duty of care towards staff and volunteers’.
This is deeply concerning, as Mermaids helps offer life-saving services to young people and their families. With a helpline like that closed – albeit temporarily – it means that people had one less network to go to.
This could mean that a young person in a mental health crisis or a parent unsure how to respond to their child coming out can’t get the specialised advice Mermaids offers.
Access to support for young people is shown to be absolutely vital for them. Ultimately, this disruption means that there will be more people without it long term.
While they don’t offer any medical services, they are an important point of call for young people and their families. They help them to find a safe haven, explore, and find themselves.
Most importantly, Mermaids allows young people to express themselves however they want, without judgement.
During this recent storm surrounding Mermaids, a now-resigned trustee of the charity and associate professor at London School of Economics (although his faculty page on the LSE website now says he’s ‘on sabbatical leave until January 2023’), was found to have attended the B4U-ACT conference – an organisation that calls for paedophiles to have the right to live ‘in truth and dignity’ – as a PhD student in 2011.
The charity’s chair of trustees, Belinda Bell, said that he ‘should never have been appointed’ in the first place, and they were unaware of his connection to this conference until the news broke last week.
Thankfully, he had only been a trustee since July this year and had no direct interaction with any of their young people or their families, and only attended one board meeting.
Despite the charity addressing the issue immediately and effectively – they said they were ‘commissioning a review’ of their ‘trustee recruitment process to be carried out by an external expert body’, among other practical steps – this has led to even more abuse for them.
Unfortunately, the toxic trope of LGBTQ+ people being paedophiles has resurged all over social media, despite the fact that the vast majority of paedophiles are straight men.
I know for a fact – from countless young people and parents – that Mermaids has been a lifeline
Regardless, the importance of Mermaids’ work remains, and the need is clearly there. Mermaids staff, services and volunteers being targeted as a result for something that essentially has nothing to do with them is unjust, and clearly misguided.
Countless people have benefitted from their services, and continue to, which are carried out by professionals and people dedicated to supporting those in need.
I know for a fact – from countless young people and parents – that Mermaids has been a lifeline. I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know some of the people that have been aided by them.
One of those people is a trans girl called Poppy, who we filmed with through our film project, My Genderation – a film project that celebrates trans lives and experiences – when she was 11 years old. She is now turning 16 this year, and is thriving.
Another young person we had the privilege to film with is a trans boy called Kai, who came out at the age of nine, and has recently turned 18.
Both of them accessed Mermaids’ resources, and are happily living as themselves – and are living proof of how important it is to be there for kids who are trans.
Their stories are what I hoped mine would be.
I was always gender non-conforming growing up, and if we had lived in a society where there was more awareness, I wouldn’t have had to struggle with trying to navigate why I was different. Even though gender non-conformity doesn’t necessarily mean you are trans, it did so in my case.
My parents fortunately allowed me to express myself however I wanted, but it was clear none of us actually knew how to deal with the fact I clearly wasn’t a boy.
If an organisation like this had existed when I was growing up, it would’ve been incredibly helpful for my family and I. It could have been a safe place for us, and help us figure things out together. It would’ve saved me a lot of distress, and would’ve allowed my parents to get some peer support as well.
Targeting an organisation and forcing them to shut down their services will have adverse consequences for the well-being of young people
At the heart of all of this are young people that deserve our understanding and backing, not distrust and ire. They are best equipped to know who they are, and those advocating we ‘let children be children’ truly do not understand that young trans people simply cannot be themselves if they don’t have the resources they need.
All kids deserve the opportunity to express themselves in a way that makes them most comfortable and happy – including trans young people.
Mermaids carry out some of the most vital and important work for the trans community in the UK. They offer young people and their families the support that every adult trans person wishes they would have had when they were young.
Thanks to an increase in awareness and understanding about trans people, young people can access this and have a chance to live a much fuller, richer and better life as themselves much earlier on.
This will equip them to become better-adjusted adults, who will suffer less mental health issues than the older generation, and who have had to suppress who they are for decades because of a society that didn’t accept them.
Being allies to young trans people, and the work of organisations such as Mermaids, is a matter of common sense, freedom and ultimately compassion.
Targeting an organisation and forcing them to shut down their services will have adverse consequences for the well-being of young people, and it’s shameful that people feel driven to let young people suffer because they can’t accept trans people. It shows a complete lack of empathy.
Families and parents just want the best for their kids, and for some, that means accessing gender-affirming support.
Young people know best what it is they need, and organisations such as Mermaids should be commended and celebrated for their work – not bombarded with abuse.
Organisations like Mermaids will hopefully one day become obsolete, as young trans people will be accepted wherever they go and being trans will simply be seen as a part of the beautiful tapestry of human existence.
But right now, it is clearer than day that the work of organisations such as Mermaids is sorely needed – and nowhere near finished.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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