Where are the Mermen?

[Shirozaki]

Mermaids were a mythological story created by sailors about half women half fish creatures that were reportedly beautiful and had a thing for luring sailors to their deaths. Mermen never existed in folk lore, they never existed in fairy tales, cos they never existed in the fearful minds of men at sea. Sailors at sea for as long as they were simply had no attraction to another man's bum (maybe they were already getting some, who knows?) and so were not threatened by them.

Why should a card game invent a gender for a folk lore creature that itself only had one gender?

As much as I agree with the question, most of that is factually inaccurate.
The thing you described is what was originally known as "Sirens", which is actually half-bird, half woman, but often confused or even called mermaids (see Odyssey), while mermaids are generally known for attempting to "rescue" drowning men by either pulling them underwater or pulling them to the nearest shore (Andersen was fairly accurate with the Mermaid mythology in his tales) and are shy enough to be considered bad omen in british folklore.
They are also known as freshwater spirits in middle europe (melusines) (which gets blurred in welsh mythology, since Morgen's are a mix of both attributes).

I don't buy the whole Manatee sightings, because they're way too popular to be attributed to simply that.

[gadu]

["Sirens", which is actually half-bird, half woman

I thought that was a Harpy.

[wakka9ca]

There are also Merrows, which can be both female and male although the males are supposed to be ugly (i.e. Deep Ones-style). Thus female merrows prefer human companions.

Siren is a beautiful half-bird half woman. Harpies are ugly/monstrous half-bird half-humanoid.

[fargone]

While this was not my source of information (I have enjoyed mythology for more than 20 years now) I will use this quote from wikipedia:

"Much like sirens, mermaids will sing to people or to gods to enchant them, distracting them from their work and causing people to walk off a ship's deck or to run their ship aground. Other stories depict mermaids squeezing the life out of drowning men while attempting to rescue them. They are also said to carry humans down to their underwater kingdoms."

Whether you are willing to accept it or not, old mythology depicts mermaids as being beautiful false rescuers. Mermaids were not nice, never saved anyone and led sailors to their deaths.

Almost all original fairy tales were not nice.

The fact that later siren stories were often confused wtih mermaid stories does not change the origins of the mermaid mythology. Even in English folklore, Mermaid led sailors to their death.

[gadu]

Well, you can hardly blame them for using the ocean as a toilet.

[kirk22]

I like the fact that I made this thread cause I was bored and its turned into a conversation about the mythos of mermaids in general. Tis nice when a thread invokes interesting conversation.

[Callonia]

Not sure if i remember correctly But i think some of the greek mythology also included mermaids. And the mermaids is hot about killing humans. Yes, what fargone said about old mythology on mermaids is correct.

[AquasFire2]

didnt they all died when the dinosaurs did?????