Bad Santa

An organisation with links to Mermaids wants to send vulnerable children secret gifts

Pink News and Diva Magazine have announced that “LGBTQ+ organisation Think2Speak has launched a heartwarming Secret Santa campaign to “spread joy to trans youth across the UK this Christmas.” According to the Think2Speak website, “the more money raised, the better the parcels will be.” Gifts are available to “young people,” which appears to refer to those aged 25 and under.

Yes, children are not nominated. They are encouraged to contact the organisation directly, without permission, giving their name, email and phone number. Then, unrelated adults, unknown to their parents, will send “secret gift bundles” (Diva) sent in “discreet packaging.”, with no opportunity for parents to scrutinise the contents. 

There is no part of the website dedicated to safeguarding or data protection. Not a single, solitary word about either. Maybe it’s just a problem with their servers, but in place of safeguarding information, there are only unanswered questions. Why is there no lower age limit? What do the packages contain? What GDPR and safeguarding protocols do they have regarding data gathered from internet contacts from children? How do they vet adults who are handling this data? Is there any propaganda in the packages? How difficult is it to get from what is sent in the packages to explicit online content? 

These are not idle questions; any organisation engaging in an activity as suspect as sending “secret” gifts to children without their parents’ consent should be considering them, and putting the answers up front and centre.

Language

The language across the piece is concerning. Patronising, contradictory, coddling, echoing sexualised trans content, victimising, bordering on cultish. Grooming, through and through. Imagine the shopping centre Santa we alluded to earlier doesn’t just invite you to sit on his knee and ask you what you want for Christmas. He tells you, like Think2Speak, “you’re loved, little girl.” He tells you he wants to “spread a moment of joy” to you by giving you a “secret Santa present.” As a parent, how much of this talk would you put up with before you pulled your kid out of there? 

Let’s say we are willing to let it slide. We leave our kid on Santa’s lap, and suppress our uneasy feelings about the language of “joy.” What if Santa then tells our kid she’s “cherished, valued and part of an extended global family that champions your success.” He tells her he wants to be a “ray of hope,” and tells her that he wants to “remind her that she is loved more than she knows and that she’ll always have a family of people around the world who care about her and want her to succeed.”

I would have had her out of there the second he leered at her and patted his lap, but surely, the moment he starts in on the “love” bit, anybody would high tail it out of there, no matter how tolerant they were. Call me old fashioned, but individuals and organisations who regard it as their role to take over the role of, you know, actual families, tend to run rather quickly into cult territory. 

But perhaps the rest of the article advises children to turn first to their own families and communities, to look for the cherishing, joy, love and support that so many of us find amongst our imperfect families, neighbours, friends, volunteer networks, sports clubs, educational institutions and workplaces?

No such luck. 

Let’s imagine we leave our little girl on Santa’s lap and swallow our gathering anxiety. On and on he talks. “The whole world,” he tells her, “is dark and dysfunctional.” There is “heavy, disheartening coverage in the media, devastating attacks by the government” on her and children like her, and “a concerning rise in transphobic abuse” “78% of trans youth experience bullying at school, just 6% feel supported.” The only “ray of hope” in this dark, dystopian nightmare? That’s right, a secret present from an unrelated adult member of the global trans “family.” A Secret Santa. 

Now let’s imagine that our shopping centre Santa says to our kid, “now, little girl, will you write down your email address and your phone number and your full name so Santa can send your special surprise out to your home!” There are only two types of children whose addresses will end up in Santa’s hands. 

The first, kids whose parents have no clue what’s going on in their lives, who are so desperate for love and affection that they will accept gifts of “joy” and “cherishing” from strangers. Kids whose parents have their back turned whilst they hand over their address. And second, the children of parents who are actively pushing the kid towards Santa – who are either so fundamentally unaware of safeguarding that they don’t spot the red flags, or who have other, darker reasons to want Santa to know all about their child.

What is in the parcels and who is sending them? 

One thing we know is in the parcel is a Christmas card designed by Mister Samo (a trans-identified female). A simple Google Images/ Youtube search of the name brought me to what appears to be Samo’s latest contribution; a hand-drawn book of naked and semi naked trans-identified individuals, “I Exist.” It is designed to “celebrate trans bodies.” The book has cartoon drawings of genitals, full frontal nudity, menstruation, and trans surgery scars. Samo’s aims are “education” and “normalisation” regarding trans bodies. 

A street artist whose “most important” contribution is drawings of naked people should maybe not be asked to design Christmas cards for kids. The artist’s name is only one Google search away from images that aren’t suitable for children, that arem, in fact a glorification of dysphoria. “Trans bodies are beautiful, trans bodies are loved,” says the video. “There are so many wonderful trans bodies, so many beautiful stories to share” opines Samo, over a stirring soundtrack. It shamelessly pushes the fantasy of transition.

Another of the main proponents is another testosterone-quaffing ‘non-binary’ female, Jude Guaitamacchi. Jude’s Ted X talk is only ten minutes and worth a listen. It is a tale of teenage angst, substance abuse, identity issues, an extremely unlikely dress-up box, unhappiness, worthlessness, social exclusion, shame and mental health difficulties. Transition really was a transformation, she tells us. From living with “an extreme discomfort that I didn’t even know I was suffering,” Jude found her autonomy, her career took off, she got a modelling job, went topless sunbathing, and everything came up roses. 

It is another sales pitch for transition. Her Ted talk closes with “is this not a journey we could all benefit from embarking on? “

The third proponent of this Secret Santa is Octavian Starr, “everybody’s favourite goth uncle.” Can I make a universal plea for adults to stop referring to themselves and each other by family names when they are not related? No, you are not anybody’s uncle, or daddy, or auntie, or whatever. Stop it. Octavian is a GIRES trustee and was Senior Housing Support Officer at Stonewall previously (12 years dealing with 16-25 year olds). Her worst moment was being told by an “anti-trans” speaker on a panel that she was a “confused lesbian and mentally ill. 

No digging at all will take you to Octavian’s Instagram page with deaths’ head hawk moths over naked female torsos, skulls, mannequins, tentacles, frightening masks, Wednesday Adams….basic gothic teen girl stuff. Octavian’s single Youtube video discusses suicide in ways that contradicts Samaritans' guidance, claiming that trans people are “at the highest risk of suicide” and physical and verbal abuse. As a result, it appears that Octavian is often in a “hopeless state” which only art can help her escape.

Our three figureheads, then, are all trans-identified biological females. One’s main contribution appears to be a book of dirty pictures; one is a walking, talking advertisement for transition as a cure-all for the pangs of adolescence; one lingers lovingly over the topic of suicide and mental ill health,  and loves the macabre. Whatever else comes in the discreet packaging of these Secret Santa gifts, you can be sure that there will be much promoting of transition for teenage girls.

But the gifts promised by gender medicine come straight from the witch's oven in the Gingerbread House; Hansel and Gretel would do better to refuse them.

Mermaids

Given their modus operandi, you may be unsurprised to discover that the organisation has links to… Susie Green, late of Mermaids, the woman who confessed on a Ted Talks stage to castrating her gay son. The director of the company running the Secret Santa for trans kids is a co-director of Anne Trans Health CIC. ATH was only incorporated a few weeks ago, so this is not an old association between Mermaids and ATH. For anybody who’s been following the series of scandals that have rocked Mermaids, the methods outlined above should not be surprising. Susie Green’s safeguarding blind spot was so enormous that she presided over the appointment of a paedophilia enthusiast to their board of trustees, Jacob Breslow.

Who are Think 2 Speak?

As with every cluster of red flags, the questions are not confined to child protection. Gill KPSS points out that Think 2 Speak, the organisation running the trans secret Santa is, in fact, a trading name of LGBTQ+ Village CIC. She tracks through a few worrying financial questions in this thread. 

Given the extremely worrying safeguarding issues, the sales pitches for transition, and the financial issues, these people should not be allowed to collect money from the public, to generate a list of gender-confused children, and they should definitely not be allowed to invite such children, without their parents’ knowledge, to sit on Santa’s lap.