The mimmymum Standard: DARVO and projection

If you’ve spent any time in the gender debate, especially over on Twitter, you’ll no doubt have come across the obsessive troll Helen Islan, aka mimmymum (if you haven’t, consider yourself lucky). I’ve mentioned her before, in my post about Mermaid’s Susie Green, but I think she deserves a post of her own, especially considering her recent antics.

Helen promotes suicide ideation

During the week, another Twitter trans activist, RobinSaysBlerg, allegedly threatened suicide over “harassment”.

I’m also going to provide a bit of backstory to this tweet. RSB had been attending court during the week with another Twitter TRA, abadgirly, in support of their friend Stephanie Hayden. I haven’t got time to describe Hayden’s vexatious use of the courts, to silence people who do not believe in gender ideology, so I’ll link to an article in The Times and you can read about it there. The case in question, this time, involves Catholic journalist Caroline Farrow, you can read a bit about that ongoing litigation here. Anyway, RSB and ABG alleged that Caroline had tried to assault them at the court. There was a strong reaction to these spurious allegations and this, apparently, is the “harassment”.

One of the people, besides Farrow, who was mentioned in RSB’s tweet is Louise Moody. Louise responded to this with a thread on Twitter. In her thread, she first of all suggested that RSB should seek help if they were feeling suicidal and then went on to explain how she, as a child, had been subjected to emotional abuse, including threats of suicide, from her mother.

This is where Helen enters the story. Rather than showing any concern for RSB or any empathy for Louise that this incident may have been upsetting, for re-opening childhood trauma, Helen decided that Louise was definitely to blame for RSB’s emotional state and, inexplicably, Louise was wrong for showing concern and talking about her own experiences.

This really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Helen is a fierce proponent for the suicide baiting of dysphoric young people. You can see some of her work here…

There’s a few issues with Helen’s obsessive tweeting about “trans kids” being at risk of suicide. I’m going to highlight them here, with some quotes from The Samaritans.

1. “Various characteristics of the reporting of suicide are thought to increase the risk of imitative behaviour. These characteristics include: information about the method of suicide, prominent or repetitive reporting, or where the person involved is a celebrity.“
2. “…there is a risk of imitational behaviour due to ‘over-identification’. Vulnerable individuals may identify with a person who has died, or with the circumstances in which a person took their own life. For example, combining references to life circumstances, say a debt problem or job loss, and descriptions of an easy-to-imitate suicide method in the same report, could put at greater risk people who are vulnerable as a result of financial stress.”
3. “Young people are particularly vulnerable to imitational suicides. Research shows they are the group most likely to be influenced by the media.”
4. “Approximately 90 per cent of people who die by suicide have a diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health problem at the time of death.

• Over-simplification of the causes or perceived ‘triggers’ for a suicide can be misleading and is unlikely to reflect accurately the complexity of suicide. For example, avoid the suggestion that a single incident, such as loss of a job, relationship breakdown or bereavement, was the cause.
  
• It is important not to brush over the complex realities of suicide and its devastating impact on those left behind.”

It’s difficult to believe that Helen, a former marketing officer for Mermaids, is not aware of these facts. They are all readily available on the media section of The Samaritans website. One would assume that a charity, supposedly working with young people in a high risk group, would ensure that their marketing staff were trained in the responsible reporting about suicide and the vulnerable demographic they work with, rather than adding to the issue themselves by repeatedly bombarding at risk youth, and their family, with stories associating their group membership with suicide ideation.

In fact, Helen sometimes refers to The Samaritans in these tweets, so it’s impossible to believe that she is not aware of their guidelines, but she continues to ignore them, sending the message to dysphoric young people that they belong to a group who will inevitably attempt suicide, just because they belong to said group. I have never seen Helen suggest that people feeling suicidal should reach out for help from experts. Quite the contrary, to be fair, if we go back to the story that prompted this post, we can see that Helen and her supporters seem to think that buying some new pants might be more beneficial to RSB instead.

Predictably, Helen, who has been criticised in the media for her involvement in this, has not taken kindly to the criticism, and is denying that she has supported the narrative that Louise is responsible for RSB’s suicide threat.

So, I’m just going to leave this here, with no further comment…

I’m also going to point out, before we move on, that the suicide statistics, favoured by Helen, have been debunked by many people, including Michael Biggs, associate professor of sociology at Oxford University and women’s rights group Fair Play for Women.

I can’t believe she’s so bitter

In another of Helen’s recent shenanigans, she targeted the brand Flora for being “Mumsnet approved”. Here’s the tweet that started it…

Yes, that’s right, Helen announced she would be boycotting the brand Flora because they said they were mumsnet rated. For those of you unfamiliar with mumsnet, it’s a parenting forum, where mums can talk to each other about, well, parenting. For some reason, mainly, I think because mumsnet allows sensitive and nuanced discussions about dysphoric children, rather than telling them they will all die by suicide, if doctors don’t make them infertile before they reach their age of majority, Helen is obsessed with mumsnet too. As ever, here’s some examples…

Anyway, as I say, Helen had decided she would boycott Flora, and made sure to let her followers know about this, leading to a campaign by TRAs on Twitter, to put pressure on Flora and their parent brand Upfields to sever ties with mumsnet. This was ultimately successful. A result of this was users of mumsnet declaring their own boycott of the brand.

I bring this up because it gives us a beautiful, blatant example of Helen’s projection and DARVO (if you’re unfamiliar with this term, here’s a quick rundown of what it means). Bear in mind that this episode all began with Helen’s threat to boycott Flora herself, for not being part of her hivemind, this was her response when she heard about mumsnet’s users plan to do the same after her campaign had been successful.

This last one is particularly telling, we’ve already seen Helen’s obsessive tweeting, about suicide ideation and mumsnet, here’s a sample of her tweeting at and about Flora and Upfields both before and after them severing ties with mumsnet…

Court in a trap, or not

Of course, these recent examples aren’t Helen’s only forays into trans activism, nor her only examples of DARVO. Earlier this year, Helen took transsexual Miranda Yardley to court for, wait for it…”transphobia”. Yep, a self-proclaimed “cis” woman, took an actual trans person to court for supposedly being anti-trans. The case was, unsurprisingly, unsuccessful. However, it subjected Miranda to months of unnecessary stress. He has documented some of the DARVO in the case himself here, so I’ll let you read about it in his own words.

Helen has also targeted Graham Linehan, for daring to question the wisdom of Mermaid’s push to sterilise dysphoric children, by trying to coordinate a mass reporting campaign to his talent agency Inspired Thinking Group (ITG) Limited.

Helen also belonged to the secret Facebook group, exposed in The Times, that was set up with the sole purpose of targeting academics who are critical of gender ideology. In fact, Helen loves coordinating her supporters for pile-ons. Here’s some more examples…

Of course, though, if you were to read Helen’s Twitter feed, with her penchant for DARVO and projection, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s “the TERFs” who are doing this to trans activists.

It’s a huge concern to me that emotionally abusive and manipulative people, like Helen, have become spokespeople for not only vulnerable children but trans people in general. Her targeted harassment of anyone who does not affirm her beliefs, and constant manipulation of reality, should ring alarm bells for us all. As should the fact that Mermaids allow her access to their own social media, despite her well documented, unacceptable, online behaviour. If this is the standard of care and representation dysphoric young people in the UK can expect, we are letting them down badly, and it’s time the powers that be consider who they are allowing to influence them.