Girl Guides and Trans Awareness Week

Thanks. That is grim.

Apparently though some people feel it is worthy of celebrating. I find those who celebrate it have no real concept of safeguarding.

@Helleofabore the truth is even darker than that. Over COVID they purposely removed, from their overnight permission form (REN) the section where the leader has to notify their District Commissioner whether boys/men - no matter their proclaimed identity - are attending and if they have separate accommodation & showering facilities. Screenshot of the section that’s been removed. They have done this knowing exactly what they are doing. This isn’t an oversight. It’s intentional.

Ah. Yes. This was a person in a regional leadership role advising leaders about safeguarding…. Such an aspirational leader.

And how wonderful it is that no parent should ever be told that at a camp, their daughter could be sharing a tent or a dormitory with a male. And the showers. How very inclusive that is for any girl who doesn’t want to share with male people or cannot for whatever reason. So very very inclusive !

Ah, you think young girls must include people like this.

Got it.

How is manipulating the survey and twisting the results to suit a narrative respecting their views ?

They shut down commenting on their Facebook page pretty quickly. Got rid of comments pointing out the safeguarding flaws. I've been in Guiding since I was 10, a leader for over 15 years, and it really feels to me like they are losing their way.

Goodness, you're so woke you must have been up at the crack of dawn! Can you seriously not see the safeguarding issues here?

That survey interviewed a selected (ie invited) couple of thousand individuals out of the entire guiding community. It is not reflective of the people at the the coal face at all.

Fantastic to see how strongly girls and young women support inclusion, and great to see an organisation respecting their views! Well done girl guiding

Our Royal Charter states that Girlguiding is for… the primary object of educating girls and young women to help them
develop emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually so that they can make a positive contribution to their community
and the wider world’gaslighting girls and young women to help them better serve boys and men, learn to deny girls’ own instincts, needs, privacy, and dignity, and instead to police the girls’ language and behaviour, while enabling the fantasies of adult cross-dressers and providing those men with access to the sleeping and changing spaces of female children, so that the children can make a positive contribution to men’s rights activist groups in their community and the wider world.

There, fixed that for you.

Yes. It's completely ridiculous. Trans people deserve as many rights as everyone else and should not be discriminated against. That doesn't mean TW/ TG (aka males) get free reign to go into spaces for women. That's not a right's issues. That's male privilege.

Pushing of conversion therapy and instilling of internalised homophobia. How very progressive.

It's highly dishonest, isn't it? Using a statistic of 82% of girls agreeing that transw shouldn't be discriminated against and conflating that as:

82% of our girl members agree with great enthusiasm that trans identifying males ought to be welcomed unconditionally into the Guides.

I have moved from a much kinder (on the surface, but maybe not when you look deeper) position of going along with some accommodation of trans demands. I now think there actually is a wrong way to be a woman, and that is to pretend that you are a man (and vice versa) - not because I have anything but concern for the transgender people I know, but because they have been caught up in a movement based on distorting truth. And Guiding is enabling that distortion, to the detriment of the people they originally set out to help.

So true! but then I'm not sure that they can pin anything on the leader who follows one arm of their conflicting policies.

Isn't it dreadful watching a once respected organisation for girls being destroyed from the top like this? It's the Denton's playbook of entryism - destroying all things centred on women and girls. With the irony that every time individuals boast about gaining access, media scrutiny evidences that they're a safeguarding disaster.

Unfortunately, a lot of the things we think these idiots need to do, they don't agree they need to do.

They need to define single sex if they want people to understand they mean both female and male bodied people.

I think it's obvious that they are now using a completely different definition of "single sex".

If the consequence is that leaders just quit, this could be the end of the GG.

What consequences could there be? GG give out two diametrically opposed pieces of policy information: we are single sex and we allow boy as well as girls in. The leader would be following one arm of that incoherent information. I guess the TGs folks might try and sue GG but wouldn't that be GG central not the leader? (also it would be a shit thing to put their child through and I think they'd be better off investing their efforts in helping their child find a way to be comfortable in their own skin whilst not encroaching on protected spaces because actually most people don't want to shit on others and you don't want to give that vulnerable boy something else to have to come to terms with (aka the knowledge as they mature that they disrespected girls).

I imagine you'd get the Katie Allock treatment. My view is that I'd rather just walk and let them have the ball ache (pun intended) of saving the unit from folding. That way, I'm removing myself from the situation, not requiring the boy to remove himself and not discriminating against anyone. I'd make my feelings plain and my opinion on their policies known. What are they going to do to me if I've left, but not prevented the boy from joining? I'm not particularly invested in GG as an organisation, I'm not going to enter a legal battle with them - I simply don't care enough about them as a org to want to save them from themselves.

This thread has reminded me that I received an email on 10th Nov asking me, "What do you think of guiding?" If you're a parent of a guide/ brownie/ rainbow, you might have it too.

It's interesting as a lot of thr survey focuses on single sex spaces. Also it has a lot of free text boxes to expand on your answers, unlike previous surveys. I have now completed it, including providing somewhat robust detailed answers in the free text boxes.

Who knows what it will achieve but please consider doing the same if you have been sent that email.

Look, if Guide leaders are actually prepared to refuse to allow trans girls to join the Guides on the basis that GG's policy is against the Equality Act, that's great.

I'm just wondering what the consequences would be for those Guide leaders if the trans girl in question complained to the head honchos.

It might go against policy, but no policy can force a volunteer to do something that could get her into legal trouble. I do not believe the policy is compliant with the Equality Act. Nobody under 18 can legally change sex. If I admit one boy on the grounds of what they say they feel they are - not a protected characteristic - then I need to admit every boy, regardless of feelings.

I have control over my waiting list. If the next person to come up for admission transpires to be a boy - which may be apparent from their personal record - then I will take advice from my DC. If I am advised I need to admit him, I will resign, and leave it to my successor to deal with. If I admit a boy inadvertently (ie no prior notice of their perceived gender status), I will resign and let my successor and the DC deal with it (the reality is the unit will probably fold - not my problem). I will not in any way make the child responsible. I will make the adults above me who are in governance and power responsible; and I will make myself responsible for my own feelings about the matter by removing myself from a situation I do not believe should be happening and which is illegal.

All these organisations are governed by guilt. The guilt of women in particular is strong, we find it hard to walk away. But that is the only way they will listen.

It's impossible to follow a policy which says we only let girls in, but also we let some boys in.

When it's logically incoherent nonsense, there's no point in trying to follow it.

Besides which, some policies, when they are exclusionary and sexist (like this one) should not be followed. We should not use obedience as an excuse for discriminatory behaviours.