Transgender 4 year old wanting to join girls only group

[Helpwithdivorce]

So I’ll preface this by saying im very much a live your life however you please as long as you’re not hurting anybody kind of person. However I run a group, which is just for girls aged 4-7.

I’ve had a request from a parent for their child to join. The child is 4 and the parent said they are transgender. Now here is my predicament, which may be rightly or wrongly.

Firstly I feel like this mother is just out to cause drama, there are other very similar mixed gender groups, there is no reason this child needs to join a group only for girls.

Secondly I simply do not believe that a 3/4 year old child knows that they are transgender. I feel this is being peddled by the mother, again feeding the drama.

What would you do? I really don’t want this mother in my group, but the group is ‘inclusive’ so I can’t say no you can’t join.
Currently I’ve just ignored the request.

Sorry but a four year old can’t be transgender. Way too young to make an informed choice. Tomorrow they will want to be a dog or a banana….absolute madness.

And if the volunteers followed that they would be breaking the law,

They are being taught transideology in schools from nursery.

A four year-old child can't be transgender that's just not possible. Poor child, maybe the mother wanted a girl but got a son instead.

The mother sounds deranged, so I agree with other posters who suggested adding the child to the waiting list. Said waiting list continues ad infinitum in their case.

You need to follow the organisation’s policy and procedures. You do not get to exclude children from the group just because of your own beliefs.

Stick him on the waiting list and hopefully by the time he wants to join he's to old

It's illegal to have a single sex group and include members of the opposite sex. OP's 'beliefs' have nothing to do with it.

problem is the organisation's policy doesn't match up with the law. If the OP follows the law, the organisation may throw her under the bus, if she follows the organisational policies, she could be hit with a discrimination claim.

This!

This ⬆️. It's nothing to do with the OP's "beliefs", it's about a parent's unreasonable request.

You need to follow the organisation’s policy and procedures. You do not get to exclude children from the group just because of your own beliefs the law.

‘Transgender’ is not a protected characteristic under the equality act. Gender reassignment is but does not entitle you to be treated as the opposite sex. If ‘Thomas’ is male then they would not be discriminating against him to say ‘no he cannot join a female organisation’. If Thomas is female then it would be discrimination BUT the SC ruling also pointed out that there Equality Act contains an exception that allows females who identify as male to be excluded from female single sex spaces in certain circumstances (or vice versa).

I hope everyone paying for their daughters to go to Guides is happy for their money to be spent on court cases that GG can’t win.

If they still claim to be for girls only but allowing boys in, they are openly breaking the law.

That’s not true.

Exactly

Again: this is not true.

So she can also allow ALL boys in then.

It can't be both.

Yes you do, if the organisation is breaking the law.

This IS true

DS2 went up to Reception from school nursery, to discover one of his boy friends was now a girl in yr 1. They went all through Infants and Juniors as a girl. They must have moved away early in Secondary, or changed schools, as they've fallen off the radar.

Because one is a single sex organisation with a legitimate aim to allow girls to explore the outdoors and an informal education setting without boys who tend to socially dominate them. This might also be particularly important to certain religions groups.

And the other is a mixed sex learning opportunity for the outdoors, which does tend to be heavily dominated by boys despite allowing girls due to gender stereotypes.

Its actually really hard to keep girls within Scouting once you get to the Scout section. It can be fairly evenly split up to the end of cubs, but after that the girls tend to drop out at a higher rate. Our local scouts currently has about 1 girl for every 4 boys I think and the explorer group has 2 girls to 16 boys. It was about even at cubs for those age groups. So I definitely see why there is an argument for needing Guiding...

...Even though I have massive reservations about how it probably doesn't work in practice and only teaches sexism due to the way the organisations themselves work. To give an example on a very practical level Guiding has become overly risk adverse and beaurcratic - to the point that permits for adventure activities are ridiculously hard to obtain. Add to that the last I heard, on the subject, it had got to the point of absurdity because they were allowing Scout Leaders with Scouting permits to do those same activities with Guides, due to a lack of Guiding Permits - because Scouting's criteria for awarding permits is much lower and achieveable than the Guides own ones (thus undermining their own policies about being in control of risk managment). It makes no sense what so ever and is fuelling the decline of the organisation. There simply is not equal access to this type of activity between the two organisations. The net result of this has been for more adventurous leaders to give up on Guiding and for Scouting to take those type of leaders, leading to a massive gap in what is even possible within each programme - with Guiding becoming increasingly less adventurous. Both organisations struggle for recruiting new leaders but this has been a bigger killer for Guides compared to Scouts. If you want to do adventurous outdoor activities send your kids to Scouts. Otherwise you send them to Guides for crafting and cooking. There are exceptions to this in both directions, but its increasingly rare for Guides to be doing stuff as adventurous as the Scouts as they simply don't have the leaders for it. Its really sad.

This. It really doesn't matter if the girls are all prepubescent (why would that mean that they don't deserve privacy, anyway?). It doesn't matter if other parents 'don't care' (and that's besides the point, it's not their group, it's their girls' group, and yours). One thing that DOES matter is that the girls in your group will see a boy in what they know to be a 'just for girls' group and feel - what? Confused? Sad? Betrayed? Lied to? The dynamic will change. They are probably mostly at mixed sex schools anyway, they're not nuns, but this is a nice thing for them - a girls' only group. They will know this poor wee 4 year old isn't a girl, whatever his mum says.

And obviously this is ALL about his mum. Poor kid.

What's not true?

'Membership of an association of 25 or more people can be limited to men only or women only and can be limited to people who each have two protected characteristics. It can be, for example, for gay men only or lesbian women only. A women-only or lesbian-only association should not admit trans women (biological men), and a men-only or gay men-only association should not admit trans men (biological women).'

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/media-centre/interim-update-practical-implications-uk-supreme-court-judgment

It’s a group for girls. This child isn’t a girl.

No, you need to follow the law. You do not get to break the law because an organisations policy says so.

Do you think an employee should sack all pregnant employees if the organisations policy said so?