Mick Hartley

More on Mermaids vs. the LGB Alliance, from Janice Turner in the Times – "Victory over trans charity Mermaids strikes a blow for pluralism and against the creeping tyranny of the gender lobby":

It is astonishing how Mermaids, and the wider LGBTQI+ sector, whose abbreviation includes the “T” for trans, could not tolerate the tiniest of opponents. Mermaids has 18 staff, has received millions in public money including a £500,000 National Lottery grant, and its fund-raising cookies are sold in Starbucks; LGB Alliance has three staff paid with small private donations. Mermaids is lionised by celebrities such as Emma Watson and in the ITV drama Butterfly about its ex-CEO Susie Green surgically transitioning her son at 16. The alliance is barred from Pride and even its recent summer party was picketed. Tying the alliance up in exhausting, expensive litigation appeared deliberate: the process would be the punishment. When this drained its meagre resources, putting on hold funding applications for a planned helpline and a history project, Mermaids could claim it had no other purpose than to attack trans groups. During Pride month it is clear the LGBTQI+ cause is now far from marginalised. Pink and blue pedestrian crossings, rainbow-painted London buses, Pride self-checkout screens in Sainsbury, banners over town halls, government buildings and major corporations: this is a mighty, powerful lobby. For capitalist institutions who crave a sprinkle of progressive politics, getting Stonewall to lecture your staff on pronouns or remove “mother” from your maternity policy is non-redistributive; indeed, almost cost-free. (Banks are less keen to tackle the trickier, pricier challenges of violence against women or disability at work.)

In the public square, Stonewall’s arguments are now robustly challenged. Mermaids, in its action against the alliance, exposed itself to scrutiny and now faces a statutory inquiry from the Charity Commission for allegedly sending breast binders to young girls without their parents’ consent and advising children in its chatrooms how to access puberty blockers and hormones. Add its other scandals: a serious data breach, a trustee found to have paedophile links, evidence it referred — without medical expertise — children to the Tavistock Gids clinic who’d been turned down by GPs. However discredited, however far their views on gender are from mainstream opinion, groups like Stonewall and Mermaids maintain stealthy institutional power. This week’s hoo-ha about Nigel Farage losing his Coutts account was a distraction from a more insidious phenomenon. Several gender-critical Scottish campaigners — Stuart Campbell, who runs Wings Over Scotland; Lesley Sawers, the Scottish Equalities and Human Rights Commissioner, whose role encompasses women’s rights — were dropped by Royal Bank of Scotland. Banks are not obliged to give reasons, so there is nothing to stop prominent feminists like, say, Kathleen Stock also having their personal accounts closed.

Every day I learn of feminists who have lost work, been de-platformed, dropped by publishers, denounced on company intranets, for believing sex is immutable and real. The highly influential LGBTQI+ networks within banks will use their corporate power to weed out opponents if they are allowed. The tribunal is a timely reminder to the left that democratic norms are precious. If you try to crush every political opponent or believe intimidation is fine when it happens to the “bad guys”; if you declare that law-breakers you agree with should go unpunished, while those you disagree with don’t deserve legal representation, you are no better than Trump or Orban. Stating that a lesbian does not have a penis is an inalienable right.