Girl Guides are now GIRL ONLY! - Thread 2

I’m sure you’re busy at work now but when you get a chance if you could answer my earlier questions that would be great.

We’re not going to get anywhere in a conversation without common definitions for words, so what do you mean by ‘gender’ or ‘gender identity’ and what does your child think a girl is?

Di you understand that not everyone believes in the concept of ‘gender’ as being an actual thing?

And while we’re at it, what does you define as a ‘trans person’ as we can’t discern their erasure or otherwise if we haven’t got a common understanding of what one is.

I just listened to the female person from Trans Actual, Shay Brown give her interview with Jeremy Vine.

In it is much of the usual discussion points such as 'where is the harm'. But also she then stated but what about those members where their friends don't know that they, the person, was trans?

Absolutely no consideration towards the female people who might be very negatively impacted by discovering that someone that they had been led to believe was female is a male person. Absolutely no consideration towards female people at all in that discussion.

No consideration for female children's right to be able to consent with full information. I don't believe that those adults who actively allowed this to have happened have given any thought at all to female children and their needs.

Here is Helen Joyce on Jeremy Vine today discussing GG and WI.

And of course, Jeremy Vine asks the 'just a few' fallacy, 'what harm is there in having a very small few in GG vs 'exciling' them'?

Helen discusses the misuse of language used to sell in the policies, similar to the discussion here.

Jeremy Vine also tackles the 'kindness' issue too.

And in fact most trans people don't choose to have these operations because their effectiveness is limited and complications frequent.

"there are operations that people have all the time, whether they are accepted as women (or trans women) is the key here"

No extreme body modification changes a male person's sex. Ever.

A male person who has extreme body modification is exactly that, a male person who has extreme body modification.

A penis or a piece of intestine that has been inserted as a cavity into a male person's groin is not a vagina in any way. Regardless of what some people call it. It will never have the functionality of a vagina.

No male person should ever consider that they have should be rewarded with acceptance as a female person if they have this brutal extreme body modification. It is an extreme body modification that has been chosen by that male person based on their philosophical belief about themselves when that belief does not reflect material reality. The modification does not change this material reality.

Good. Boys and men are not, and never can be, girls and women, regardless of how much some would like to pretend that this is the case.

"This argument that all the girls accepted the boy's presence, that no one minded, is predicated entirely on the boy's perspective - the girls weren't each, individually asked, and if they had been, they may not have felt able to speak up or even to put complex feelings into words - because, even in the asking of the question, the boy's self-perception was already the starting point and default."

Yes.

By assuming what the girls believed, this is actually a safeguarding failure of sorts. Imagine thinking the girls felt they had any choice in this matter. At all!

Plus, of course, as has been discussed on this and the previous thread, this is also a safeguarding failure for protecting those girls because an adult who should have had the girl's interest central to their decisions did not consider the negative impacts of those decisions.

When a girl has been told by an adult they respect that a male person is a female person, this changes their reaction to male people being in places that those female people feel uncomfortable sharing with them. This desensitises them to being alert for male people in places where they previously might not have expected / wanted them and it actively lowers those female people's boundaries.

Perhaps, it is appropriate to say it is conditioning their future reactions to male people being in female single sex provisions to be accepting rather than alert and questioning.

After all, they have a good friend 'x' and they have been told that 'x' is a 'girl' and this must be true because adults treat 'x' as if they were female. Of course, it is ok to be undressing in front of 'x', even as teens because 'x' is female, right?

and so the internal discussion goes.

All because adults who are seen as having knowledge about this have told female children that a male child is a 'girl', just like 'other' girls and to be treated as if they are female.

I sincerely hope that you are not telling your child that there is an operation he can have to change him into a woman. There absolutely is not. The surgeries which are available do not change your sex and often cause severe, life long morbidities as well as guaranteed sterility.

By the by, 'people' do not have these surgeries 'all the time', over 90% of transwomen retain their penis.

This website might be helpful for you https://statsforgender.org/category/medical-transition/ - there are other sites which show the physical reality of so called 'gender affirming' surgeries but I'd advise you to read before you look at any of those.

Maybe we need a reminder.

No person can understand what something 'feels' like that is not their personal experience. How can they then 'add to' the female experience with their experiences if they are not female at all?

They simply can't.

And no male person can ever experience life as a woman. They can only ever experience life as a male person who believes they are a woman. Or, who 'understands' their experience as being a 'woman's' only because they describe it that way. Not because it materially is a woman's experience.

Even when they 'act' like a woman, they are acting as they believe a 'woman' should act. Even if they are treated 'as a woman' by some people, they are being treated as a 'male who presents as a woman and believes they are a woman'. Because their every reaction is based on that. Not on them being female in any way.

Even when they have extreme body modifications, it is to be their own concept of what a female looks like to them. It is not what a female is.

How can it be?

The only way a person can experience life as a woman, is to have a female body, formed around the production of large gametes, even if it doesn't produce those and to navigate their life based on the decisions they and society makes that revolve around them having that body.

A male can conceptualise what it might be like to be a female, but that is all it ever is - their concept of being female.

They may do it because they don't feel they fit into how they conceptualise how a male person interacts with the world (ie. their own stereotypes around being male) or they do it because they want to be seen as a female (using their own stereotypes of how a female navigates life). It really doesn't matter though. Their motivation is irrelevant to the outcome. And I consider the outcome can only be described as misogyny.

Which is that they will always be just a male who believes they are something they are objectively not.

How can the material reality be any different? This is why someone's gender is only based on someone's philosophical belief. And philosophical beliefs are fine for people to hold, but not one person in the UK has to comply with another's philosophical belief.

The logic cannot be any different than that I am afraid.

Sure a male person might ‘feel’ different than they label a stereotypical male person’s interaction with the world might be, but it is only based on that individual’s labelling behaviours and interactions using their sexist understanding of the world. All they are really doing is incorrectly labelling their own male perspective and interactions because they reject what they, personally, perceive as what being male means.

There is no possible way for someone to have the ‘wrong body’. They can only have the body they don’t want to have.

So, why are female people being ceorced and manipulated into applying female language to any male person? Why is this considered 'kind', yet the people doing the ceorcing are anything but being 'kind' towards female people when they do this?

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Common sense at last!

I'm often reminded by this issue of times and places in which a woman's word or statement has been - or is! - given half, or less, the value of a man's, with two or more women being needed to counter just one man's testimony.

This argument that all the girls accepted the boy's presence, that no one minded, is predicated entirely on the boy's perspective - the girls weren't each, individually asked, and if they had been, they may not have felt able to speak up or even to put complex feelings into words - because, even in the asking of the question, the boy's self-perception was already the starting point and default.

So yes, they absolutely may all have been fine with it. But we don't and can't know. Because, ultimately, the boy's stated perspective - "I am a girl, I belong" - is being used to predict and define what the girls' unstated perspective must inevitably be in the absence of explicit opposition or implicit discomfort.

Trans ideology, fundamentally, gives individual males the power to impose their perception of reality onto multiple females. The moment a transwoman enters a woman-only space, he is projecting his perception of reality ("I am girl/woman, I belong here"), onto any and all women who may encounter him in that context. He is presuming that they, by default, adopt his subjective experience of the world, as the starting point is the assumption that each individual woman must be in agreement about his status as woman - and, by extension, about his perception of what a woman is - what she, herself - is.

It is coercive. The tragedy is that it didn't have to be - it could have remained a polite legal fiction and unspoken social contract in some limited contexts. I, for one, really did start out more than happy to play along in support of a minority of vulnerable individuals. But that wasn't the road taken by the activists.

Instead, I was told what to think and what I am. In a sense, it really is Adam's rib, the male gaze defining, "writing" and creating woman, all over again.

(I am not a spare rib 😅!)

I’m not sure what you mean here. If you have a boy people can acknowledge that.

OML

So how come little girls don’t also un-clip their onsie's and make them into a skirt?

They know they are girls right but they don’t have issues with onsies just boys that think their girls.

How truly bizarre

"I'm simply asking you to respect her gender."

In asking me to agree that a male person is a girl, you're asking me to accept that what differentiates boys and girls are certain types of feeling - and if you feel the 'wrong" feeling for your body then there is something wrong with your body.

Genuinely, do you not understand what you are requesting that people buy into?

Imagine asking mothers to accept that their anorexic daughter actually was fat because she truly believes it? No doubt the belief is real, but that's because the understanding of what "fat" is is harmful.

So in future, please say these things with the full understanding of what you are asking. Don't stick your fingers in your ears because it might be uncomfortable.

I think it would be a great thing if people who believe that "biology is an ideology" put it on a t-shirt.

I encourage this with gusto.

I reckon it will be great.

"That I've literally seen children understand the women of Afghanistan to mean a group identifying as women, including males."

This is really grim to read, Catiette.

However, it is exactly where this control of language through emotional coercion leads. It is interesting to note that in that Brownie group, no female child was asked how they felt and considering how I have been told how cruel I am amongst other things, I have no doubt that no female child would have expressed any discomfort in that group.

The demonisation of people who reject the language demands is really a sign of the authoritarian and totalitarian approach that extreme transgender activists have taken.

I obviously have to qualify that with the proviso that I do mean 'extreme' to be those people who demand that a male person is treated as if they are female even when sex matters. I don't refer to transgender activists who are advocating for finding equitable solutions for issues and for protection of their rights when those rights do not negatively impact on any other group's rights.

"We have, instead, been forced into the reductively biological-sounding "female" (which is then duly used against us, as we're accused of "essentialism" 🙄)"

Yes. I reckon it could be described as DARVO in how it works, as I have said plenty of times before. We have been forced to use particular language terms for accuracy and clarity, and then we are abused because we use those terms while the person demanding that female language is used for male people claims to be a victim because people reject that demand.

@SolidMam

my personal take here is that the debate is not being reduced to sex organs, more that you cannot see the impact on others of your son telling you he is female, and expecting to take part in female activities

This may work now, but won’t as soon as your child hits puberty, and are you seriously saying that you expect teen females to get changed in front of your male child ? Can you not see how unacceptable that is?

I fully accept that it is difficult for you and your child, and you will both have to navigate a different world to that of most children, but it is not acceptable that your one child is put ahead of hundreds, if not thousands of female children and I am really disappointed that you, and other parents of trans children can’t see that

Yes - this explains very well why we both responded (jinx!) with:

"I don't demand anything. I'm simply asking you to respect our sex. In my view, the erasure of women is a huge problem and that erasure starts with language."

I do think our version, above, is far more convincing than OP's original, on the basis that transgirls do actually have a noun of their own, while girls in the collective "immature female" sense no longer do (including, as they must, transgirls). We have, instead, been forced into the reductively biological-sounding "female" (which is then duly used against us, as we're accused of "essentialism" 🙄). And in threads like this, we feel like we have to explain and hedge and qualify our views throughout, because the language we used to have has been taken away, with nothing left but uncomfortable phrasing we never wanted to be forced into using to describe ourselves. Trans girls may prefer not to use the qualifier "trans" and instead be included in "girl" - but this preference fades into insignificance when set against another oppressed group - girls and women - not being left any word to themselves any more. I mean, even animals - cows, vixen and hens - are allowed this! But we're not?!?

Both concessions are upsetting, for both groups. But I know which I think is more "cruel", leading as it does to an inability to even articulate a group's needs. I RESENT that I can no longer refer to the number of women and girls killed at the hands of men without being misunderstood. That I've literally seen children understand the women of Afghanistan to mean a group identifying as women, including males. To not be able to name your oppression really is the ultimate form of oppression. It really, REALLY distresses me.

I scrolled on TikTok last night and my FYP was full of people handwringing about how awful the GG decision is, and the comment sections were full of parents and leaders claiming they’re leaving and/or dragging their daughters out of GG. I have to admit, I wasn’t brave enough to argue with any of them though I personally am thrilled at the decision yet disappointed they have had to explain how sad they are to make it!

I like GG because it is girls only. I chose it for my daughter because it is girls only. Despite her having two older brothers who went through Beavers, Cubs and Scouts. I saw how difficult it was for the leaders of those groups to control the boys because they naturally wanted to run and climb and play and not come to the circle at the end of the session. And I was happy for my boys to go somewhere where they were supported to be active and a bit feral, but I knew my daughter would not enjoy it as much. Because having worked with children all my adult life, with some exceptions to the rule, little boys and little girls are quite different to each other. I personally would have been happy with Scouting staying single sex for males. By the time my youngest finished Cubs there were a lot more girls in the group and the activities were changing to more craft based and I thought that was a shame as that wasn’t what the majority of the boys wanted to do.

I home educate my daughter and in various HE groups I have come across various boys who you don’t necessarily know are boys because of long hair and bright clothes and shoes. Which is fair enough. But after observing them for a short while I can always tell if they’re actually boys or girls because generally the girls want to find other children to make connections with and play cooperatively with and the boys want to find other children they can race, or have sword fights with or be generally very active with. I have come across one child who I was told was transgender and wanted to be a girl. That boy was no different to any of the other boys other than the dress he wore. He charged around with the other boys and played in a very loud and physical way. He was very stereotypically a little boy.

In every other group my daughter attends the boys dominate. Brownies, where they are all girls, is the only group where there isn’t a stand out child dominating things.

In actual fact my daughter, for a whole year between age 2 and 3, said she was a boy. Insisted upon it and argued back when I told her she was a girl. But I didn’t take that as fact she was transgender. I took it as fact that she was a girl with two brothers at an age when she was just starting to understand the differences between boys and girls. Eventually she stopped saying it and aged 8 is happy with being a girl. She’s not particularly ‘girly.’ Most of her her t shirts come from the ‘boys’ section of shops as she likes Minecraft and Pokemon and tops with those on are assumed to be for boys. She’s not bothered about skin care or pretty hair or shoes or anything else stereotypically ‘girly’ but none of that makes her anything other than a girl (and actually she’s just naturally like me who lives in jeans and t shirts, has short hair, wears no make up yet is happily married to a man and identifies as a woman because I am one no matter what I look like or wear).

I wonder that as well. I’m a third generation guide, and had I had girls instead of boys, probably would have been a third generation Brown owl or guide leader (and fourth generation Brownie/guide in the family). I’m so glad (with a joyful heart) that the organisation has gone back to its roots.

@SolidMamI understand that you want to protect your son, and you love him, etc.
But you do know that the world doesn’t revolve around him?
You’re doing him no favours by behaving like this, and basically telling him that everyone else is alright with it, and that no one can tell that he’s male.

Your son is going to be told ‘no’ a lot in his lifetime, and Joe Public doesn’t care about the (elephant in the room) lie you’ve told him.

I’m sure the statement from GG was hurtful to you, but the so-called ‘trans inclusive’ policy wasn’t legal, in the first place.

And he could wear a pink dress and decide that his favourite name was Jane and he would still be a boy, just like a girl wearing a Spiderman outfit isn't suggesting anything more than that she like dressing up as Spiderman.

I had a boy's name all picked out and I told my mother that I was a boy. I told her that I did all the things that 'boys' do so why can't I be a boy. I most certainly didn't want this body I had.

Your child isn't being singled out.

I don't expect anyone to conform to a gender, so wouldn't know what I would be recognising.

Often sex is completely irrelevant, and in general sex discrimination is unlawful. However, nobody can change their sex or its consequences.