To be told if a boy is sleeping with the girls at girl guides camp

[Babieseverywhere]

The guides have changed their guidance on boys attending meeting, trips and over night stays.

Previously the rule was no boys allowed.

Now all boys allowed but don't tell the girls or parents, unless the boy and his parents give permission !

There are already a massive amount of forms for attending rainbows, brownies, guides or Senior section which need signing, from permissions for photos to health and safety for activities but if a boy want to watch my 10yo undress that is ok and no one will be asking permission from my daughter or us !

How can this be legal ? Do girls have no rights in the UK in 2017 ?

Guides article online

Notwhatiexpected for you too. It's difficult to be in this position because of our love for someone and having to deal with all that entails.

Datun I've managed to get myself in a position where I can now afford an hour of counselling a week for my child so fingers crossed that will help a lot. You're right about the bloody activists leaving us with no help that we can't source ourselves, I wish they had never started fighting for rights they think we want, in doing so my child's life has got immeasurably harder.

Thanks venus borders and jiggly

HairyLittlePoet personally I would steer my child towards a mixed sex group. However if my child wanted to join a single sex group and had their heart set on it I would make an appointment and discuss it with the group organiser, discuss concerns, any health and safety issues, and see if we could come up with a solution to suit us both and take it from there.

I personally don't think that the rules should be changed for allowing transgender children into single sex groups, that leaves it too open for abuse, but I do think that guide leaders should use their discretion on a case by case basis and not have a blanket yes or no answer.

Personally I don't see guides as any sort of club where girls discuss anything biological or have any discussion about inequality or difficulties faced as a woman (please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, it's been many years since I've had anything to do with guides) to me it's a club to encourage friendship, independence and life skills, and I can't really see the issue with a transgender child being allowed to participate.

I always try to think what I would feel if it were my daughters who had a transgender child in their club/class/whatever and work my thoughts out from there, but in that instance it really wouldn't bother me at all, nor would it bother my daughters (very different from the camping/showering issue)

I believe that things like support groups or groups where female experiences are being discussed should be female only, same with males, and there should be separate support for transgender people as their experiences and feelings will be different again.

fish and not

In real life, my heart would hurt for a male child who felt he wanted to be with girls, play with them, enjoy his preferences freely and couldn't. I would be supportive of his freedom to express himself however he likes, and have friendship groups that he wanted

Thats my boy

He is a young man of 18 now (oh and he is so lovely ) but that was him as a child

And it was heartbreaking seeing him included with his female friends...but only up to a point, very sad

(Disclaimer...i am in no way, shape or form comparing my sons friendship issues to the struggles of trans children or their parents. The above highlighted passage just resonated with me)

Morphene

I was criticising your analogy of not being able to have a "non-Asian" environment. As Annie pointed out, you are reversing the power dynamic in comparing this with women (the structurally oppressed class) refusing entry, for the valid reasons of privacy, safety and dignity, to members of the oppressor class. It doesn't work, however you try to spin it.

I ignored your bizarre opinion about sexism being "privileged over racism". And it is entirely your opinion that in the oppression Olympics racism necessarily trumps misogyny/sex discrimination. It's impossible to quantify this. As a woman I have suffered both. That is why I am a feminist.

What about a girls' night out and a boys' night out? I can't see many women being very happy on embarking on a girls night only to be told that one of the husbands is coming. Nor can I see men getting up for a night out and then to be told that one of the wives is coming.

Whether you enjoy a night out with the girls or not, do you not see a problem been told it's completely unnecessary and you see no reason not justification for it.

'I cant see a reason for 'all girl' or 'all boy' leisure activities.'

Once again: boys being socialised to take up space. You dismissed my post about this as opinion but there is actually plenty of research on the subject.
I personally think girls have the right to some time away from that.
I found my time doing a doctorate at an all women Cambridge college immensely interesting in that respect. Despite the fact that relatively speaking we were a fairly confident bunch of women, it was still striking how much women found their voices in all woman discussions there which gave them the confidence to take up more space in the mixed environment where they spent most of their time.
A similar thing happens with girls when they do leisure activities that are usually dominated by boys. Without boys to take over and hog the equipment they discover they can in fact do things that boys have been telling them they can't.

I am guessing your response will be to deny girls ever get pushed aside by boys though so I don't know why I bothered typing all that.

Allowing a trans child into a single sex environment is taking care of that child's needs over the other kids. A trans girl is a boy, she may identify as a girl but biologically she is a boy and I would not want my daughter at a single sex camp with a boy. There are single sex camps for a reason, they are not related to gender.
While I have sympathy for the trans child and their need to fit in, while the child has the sex organs of his biological sex then he shouldn't be automatically allowed reside with the opposite sex.

I live in an all male household. It's amazing how the dynamic changes when a girl walks in. It ripples through the atmosphere. Sometimes we take a glass of wine into the garden and just chat, the boys popping out every bloody 10 minutes asking 'what ya doing?' They are simply not used to not monopolising me (or me centring them, in other words).

babies GG have never lied? This has always been the policy, although prior to them writing it down it was just given to leaders who asked (either out of interest or because they had a trans member requesting to join). Leaders saying it's 'girls only' are not lying or being lied to, GG is girl-only, but in this definition they include trans girls and young women. As I previously stated, nothing has changed other than you now know about the policy, your girls' units could have trans members already, and you wouldn't necessarily know.

Datun my experience of a girls night out has plenty of biology and female experiences being discussed

I think dynamics being changed in a group setting could be a concern. That's why I think it should be a case by case basis. My child, for example, has been presenting as the sex they present as for about the same length of time as the sex they were born as. You would genuinely never know, and very few people here do know. In that circumstance I don't think it's an issue. If my child had just started presenting as the opposite sex last week, went to school with the children, possibly 'gone out' with one or two, and was really unsure and new to it all, and was a lot older when the 'transition' happened, that would be totally different circumstances.

I'd rather address boys behaviour and make sure they aren't dominating in a mixed environment.

surely the answer is to address their behaviour and teach the girls life skills if say they start 'pushing the girls aside', rather than saying 'girls have a right to play in a girls only environment for an hour a week'?

'surely the answer is to address their behaviour and teach the girls life skills if say they start 'pushing the girls aside', rather than saying 'girls have a right to play in a girls only environment for an hour a week'?'

But without doing the lifeskill teaching in the course of single sex leisure activities because according to you those shouldn't exist?

Seriously, I think boys need to be taught not to dominate rather than applying a girl deficit model but it isn't happening except in a few very rare situations where things are being piloted.
And again, if this had already happened and the boys were already not taking up space that would be great, but we're not there yet and until we are, there is a clear need for girls to have that space away from boys.

Sorry, phone playing up there.

I dont agree with what was historically boys clubs being open to girls and boys, but the same movements girls clubs staying single sex. Seems a bit unequal to me.

If it helps, in school at least, what studies I've heard about say that girls thrive best in a girls-only setting, and boys thrive best in a mixed setting. So all those girls joining the scouts are doing the boys a collective favour by turning it into a mixed-sex environment, whereas the male children joining a previously female-only group will be hampering the girls who wanted to benefit from a girls-only setting.

There seems to be a hair's breadth between "girls should not be allowed time by themselves (unless for pre-approved reasons) without the presence of a male. Why should they need it? I dismiss their need as irrelevant...

And

The stuff that goes on in Saudi.

That's it, isn't it, Hairy? Plenty of girls clearly want girl-only space. Why should they have it taken away just because someone else thinks it's a Wrong Idea?

Oh, and this is why so many of us are huddled in private female only Facebook groups just to get a breather away from the constant intrusion of people who find it so dreadfully uppity of us to NOT WANT TO BE FORCED INTO THEIR COMPANY.

How about this for a compelling justification for girl or women only space.

Because we want it.

Those that oppose it - what would you propose doing to those groups that refuse to accommodate male inclusion? Close them down? Financially penalise them? Criminalise them?

itsmine - presumably girls join the girlguides because they want the all-female environment. In the same way that there are all women colleges as TheCountess reminds us - there is a need and a space for oppressed sectors of society to organise separately if they so choose.

We live in a patriarchal society where white men have most of the power. It is absolutely vital (in my opinion) for those groups who don't - be they women, disabled, BEM people or any other marginalised group - to meet among themselves. They can build networks, share lived experiences which are often hidden, gain strength and support and learn from one another.

While there are not equal opportunities for everyone, regardless of sex, race or disability, I'm never sure why sex is always considered the one factor that it's acceptable to dismiss as unimportant.

A trans child is no more likely to be a "pervert deviant bully weirdo" than your DD's are.

Whilst this is of course true..this also goes for all children right? So...why separate males and females to begin with?

It is striking me as a little bit ironic that while people are worrying about girls being allowed a little bit of single sex space in the Girl Guides, Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Westminster, St Pauls and other very effective bastions of male privilege and the old boy network are not even thinking about admitting girls.
I wonder if they would let transboys in.