Mermaids--the Irish connection

Recently, Graham reminded reminded his colleagues on the Father Ted Musical that of the thousands of children ‘treated’ by Mermaids, 238 were Irish, 32 of those children were under ten years old and two were 5 years old. One wonders how many parents were influenced by the “Most Colourful Woman in Ireland”, Taryn DeVere. Here she is, lying to your face while accompanied by music from a haunted ice cream van, presumably parked just outside the house.

@taryndeverechatting PBs & "concerns" for trans kids. #Trans #transgender #lgbt #science #evidencebased

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It’s a lie of ommission. Puberty blockers have indeed been used by doctors in the past, just never on healthy children. Alan Turing, for example, was given an ancestor of the drugs Taryn is now promoting for children. And of course, unlike Turing’s homosexuality, precocious puberty is an actual disorder which can be addressed by prescribing these drugs.

This summer, the founder of the website GenderGP, Helen Webberley, was found to have put children at an “unwarranted risk of harm” after it prescribed hormones and puberty blockers to children who were confused about their gender.

Almost exactly two years earlier the website appointed Taryn as its social media manager.

Interestingly, and in a move reminiscent of Mermaids’ deletion of its posts that children can be born in the wrong body and that the toys children play with are a sign that they’re transgender, both GenderGP and Taryn have deleted almost all mention of their partnership.

For example, Taryn has deleted all her tweets in which she states she works for them, and GenderGP has removed her name from their articles, although they can still be found in Google cached pages. Evidence of her position there also exists in a few rogue tweets which seem to have been missed during the deletion spree, most of which showcase her fashion sense.

Perhaps Taryn, who has repeatedly stated the mantra that puberty blockers are fully reversible, discovered something about the Webberleys’ corrupt working practices that even she couldn’t stomach, but she is equally likely to have been forced out. It is not unusual for her to gain and leave employment on a regular basis and she once claimed to have had ‘27 different occupations’.

Who is Taryn?

Taryn goes by several names. Her most common at the moment is Taryn De Vere, but she has also used the name Taryn Gleeson, and possibly Taryn Townsend, and has been married to men with the surnames Ponsonby and Galvin.

Taryn has also had eight weddings (seven of them to the same person; a man who seems to identify as homosexual, from whom she lives separately and marries regularly as a work of ‘feminist performance art’) and five children, the youngest of whom is a 12-year-old boy who identifies as a girl.

Taryn, an Australian who has lived in Ireland since the 1990s, appears to model herself on Canadian blogger / grifter Amanda Jette Knox, and, as well as having a ‘trans child’, also boasts a newly discovered ‘genderqueer’ identity, which will allow her to deflect any criticism she gets from either side of the trans issue. She is also a relentless self-promoter, or perhaps just has a good agent, and regularly appears in Irish and UK newspapers and magazines in stories mostly about parenting or her colourful dress sense.

Although Taryn confesses to being ‘not the best mum’, she will provide parenting tips for cash and markets herself as a ‘sex-positive parent’ (note the clear editorial addition of a caveat in the puberty blockers section here). She has also given ‘sex-ed’ classes at her children’s primary school, where she advocates for use of terms like ‘people with a penis’ and ‘people with a vulva’.

Taryn has a sad past, particularly regarding her eldest child who committed a violent burglary while homeless and addicted to heroin, and her grandchildren have been in care. She often alludes to darkness in her life, which the whirlwind she creates is undoubtedly designed to obscure. Her many occupations and forays into sex education and parenting advice are perhaps a misguided attempt to redress the balance and help others who may be struggling. Since leaving GenderGP, however, she has continued to argue for ‘trans children’ to be prescribed puberty blockers, which she says do not constitute transition, she continues to push the lie that children who are not affirmed in their trans identity are at high risk of suicide. She alo regularly posts public messages to ‘trans kids’ which imply she is willing to ‘help’ them in private if their parents are unsupportive.

Taryn may have parted ways with GenderGP but she is still indirectly working for them with her harmful, destructive and dishonest rhetoric.