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

Even in my son's very small (100 pupils) school, they change for PE in separate sex segregated changing rooms, and when they go to their Yr 6 excursion they are split into male and female dorms, and a member of staff of the same sex has to attend to make sure they have appropriate privacy.

As for 'they wouldnt be interested in them' - there are a huge number of transwomen (I believe it is around 80%) who NEVER chose to lose their male genitalia, and a fairly large number who identify as lesbian, so they are sexually interested in girls and women.

If a girl doesn't want to share sleeping and changing facilities with a male bodied child, how can that be facilitated according to the current Guides policy? Can you as a parent inform the Guide leaders that should there be a male bodied child attending, that they need to arrange alternative facilities for your daughter so that her privacy and dignity can be maintained? That would seem to work given that it's not appropriate to tell parents whether any of the children attending are trans.

archery but are trans girls actually sociallized as boys?

Yes, Morphene. The available evidence is that boys and girls are treated differently from birth.

a trans girl turning up and acting like a stereotypical boy is basically a nonsense isn't it?

Like trans women never in a stereotypically male way. Never colonise our spaces, never take away the language we use to describe ourselves, never rape us, never insist on being at the absolute centre of every bloody thing we do.

Funny how trans men don't do that to men. It's almost like they've been socialised not to.

Actually titchy, it is correct. Trans women are WOMEN by definition, and trans girls are GIRLS by definition. You see, I can use caps too.

And I don't think spaces should be sex segregated. How does it work? Who gets to inspect your genitals to decide whether you're allowed in?

Oh, and anyhow. I am not a woman 'just' because of my vagina, yes.

But there are unique struggles associated with having one.

Sex traffic doesn't impact men at the same rate as women. Neither does FGM, forced marriage, rape or pregnancy complications.

So much of the struggles women face are because of our bodies, because certain people feel like they give them the right to mutilate, rape, use and destroy.

So, claiming that being a woman has nothing to do with your sex?

It's ridiculous. You may see it that way, but the rest of the world sure as heck doesn't.

So, do I want to empower trans children? Sure, they're children. They deserve to be loved, empowered and cherished.

but girls deserve the same.
I think one could have unisex camps or special trans camps?

Unisex camps and sleeping quarters are imo not necessarily bad things.

But girls need places where everybody has the experiences associated with being seen and perceived by the whole world as female. Not where a trans girls tells them how lucky they are for having periods and not feeling 'period dysphoria' when their periods are accompanied by stabbing pain, cramps and vomiting.

And Morphene on socialisation, this that I posted earlier still applies:

I would say someone with a penis, however they identify, who insists on colonising female space despite opposition from girls who are threatened by this is doing the very opposite of what you describe as "acting in a female way".

You cannot be in the wrong body strong it's the only body you have and the body you were born with. You know nothing different.
Also doctors determin the sex of a child based on the genitalia a child is born with, you make it sound like the doctors just decided for themselves

This sort of thinking destroys lives Strong as the rights of women and girls gets pushed further aside for the desires of men and frankly the encouragement of children to take body altering drugs is child abuse imo.

@FishInAWetSuitAndFlippers I told him that liking [sterotypical list of activities that are linked to being girly] doesn't make you a girl. You can do all that stuff and still be yourself. Having a penis makes you male, if you want to join a group, join cubs....so he did.

OP quite apart from stereotyping all boys/males as ram stam women hating mansplaining idiots, the girls at this fictional brownies group for all intents and purposes wouldn't know that the child they were playing with may have a penis under his clothes. There's also no reason to suppose that the addition of a trans child will suddenly necessitate your daughter getting naked in all her menstral glory in front of anyone. What is your idea of a brownie camp where there's no privacy to change? protecting your privacy is a separate issue. Protect your privacy regardless of who or what is there.

I think this is a road to nowhere though.

archery I do take your point about invading space being a male attribute...but is a child who wants to join in activities they enjoy in an environment that is supportive with other children they get on with and identify with actually 'invading' a space?

Everyone wants to hang out with their tribe...the people they feel they understand, empathise with and just generally feel comfortable with. I wrote about this on MN the other day in terms of hanging out with the only other mum at soft play wearing a tracksuit and joining in with there kids as opposed to all the glam mums sat chatting and fiddling on their phones. If the only other person in a tracksuit had been male, I still would have joined them and not the glam mums.

I would be horrified as an adult if I wasn't allowed to find my own tribe because of genitals, and I wouldn't feel I was invading anyones space if it happened that all the others in my tribe of choice happened to have penises.

if a girl doesn't want to share sleeping and changing facilities with a male bodied child, how can that be facilitated according to the current Guides policy? Can you as a parent inform the Guide leaders that should there be a male bodied child attending, that they need to arrange alternative facilities for your daughter so that her privacy and dignity can be maintained? That would seem to work given that it's not appropriate to tell parents whether any of the children attending are trans.

So, you'd single out a girl, for potentially being traumatised and unwilling to deal with seeing being around a penis when changing?

No.

I know OP is talking about her 10 year old, but can I just point out that GG is for ALL ages from 5+. So 16, 17, 18 year olds too.

OP I have only got this far ...

1.I am afraid that my daughter (s) will have no opportunity to experience the joy and companionship, women gain by being in an women's only group...Plus another billion other reasons...I am afraid but I so totally, totally agree with you. This is about safe and dedicated spaces for girls where girls and girls' needs, lives and selves are made central. It is also about girls' feelings about their developing selves and bodies. Sad to see that the Guides has well and truly jumped the shark.

Racoonbandit please therefore explain transsexuals. We live in a patriarchy. Why would a male to female transsexual want to become a second class citizen unless there was something incredibly profound and primal making them do it? Or do you think they just enjoy freaking out feminists?

Borpborpborp I am not sure what point you are trying to make by your repeated posts about inspecting genitals - single sex spaces have existed without that so far. Mainly they operate on trust.

One of the things that actually makes me sad is that I think these kind of extremes about how if you've ever had a penis you will be an affront to the basis AFAB right to piss in a cubicle with multiple stone walls between you and a penis are actually totally poisoning a conversation that should happen.

I started off wanting to be supportive of my trans friends, but feeling like I wanted space to discuss reproductive rights with other ovary holders, and a bit anxious about how we manage male socialization in female spaces and concerned that gay male spaces, for example, continue to flourish, while there are no lesbian spaces left and most queer women's spaces are now "anyone who isn't a cis man"...

...and then I realised that it was impossible to have those conversations because every single fucking conversation that even touches on it gets taken over by a bunch of bullshit about how if you were born with a penis you are a BAD BAD BAD MAN and THERE IS NO FEMALE SPACE FOR YOU EVER and ONLY BIOLOGICAL SEX MATTERS and normally FUCK IT IF MULTIPLE TRANS WOMEN ARE DYING EVERY YEAR! And I've since come to the conclusion that I'm not willing to be a part of a side that would kick a terribly vulnerable minority that hard. I increasingly just think that single sex spaces are going to ultimately be terminally poisoned by this because we can't have a sensible and sensitive conversation about to manage socialization and varying gender identity without this kind of bullshit.

Plus or minus gender dysmorphic issues, surely the whole point of a trans girl is that she identifies with the female stereotype....so a trans girl turning up and acting like a stereotypical boy is basically a nonsense isn't it?

'fraid not, morphine. I once worked with a man who was just like that and, to use a 70 expression, I thought him a bit of an MCP. One day he turned up at work in a skirt, said he identified as a woman, and from now on wanted to be called Shirley. ( name changed, obviously)

Borp a women/girl/female are because their DNA states they are. Anyone born male will never be a women/girl/female because it is impossible to change your sex.

They can dress/act/name themselves what society deems to be feminine or girly which is fine but they will never change sex. Why is basic biology being disregarded in favour of a lie?

I will be writing to the Guides head office and asking them for more information.

The worse bit is that fact they were in tenting to hide this change of policy from parents but thank goodness with the Internet everything is more open now (Too open in some ways)

Shame that girls safe spaces are not valued in any way. If things continue my daughters will grow up never really experiencing women only spaces and that makes me very sad.

Raccoon sadly there is a choice to be made with a transgender child. You can access so much counselling and then you need to decide whether to allow blockers and hormones. If you allow it then you continue getting help. If you don't allow it you are dropped. No help, no counselling, nothing, but with a child who is still struggling a huge amount.

Blame the doctors, and the trans activists who campaigned for this, for the huge rise in blockers and hormones being used in children. The parents are being put in a hugely difficult position, they aren't abusing their children, they are trying their upmost (in most cases) to do the best by their child.

but is a child who wants to join in activities they enjoy in an environment that is supportive with other children they get on with and identify with actually 'invading' a space?

If they are male and they are going into a girls-only space then yes, it is invading.

I would be horrified as an adult if I wasn't allowed to find my own tribe because of genitals

Many (most? all?) women have been denied the right to find "their own tribe" at various points because of their genitals - eg just look at the issues of women in STEM. The Guides are girls-only precisely because girls in a girls-only environment thrive in a way they are less likely to in a mixed-sex environment. To prioritise children with male bodies in "finding their own tribe" is just more of the same, which shoves children with female bodies to the back of the queue, once again.

Racoonbandit please therefore explain transsexuals.

What exactly do you want me to explain? It is impossible to change sex. You know it is so why are you refusing to admit it?

I'm afraid for better or worse, that I feel the current generation of trans women may not be representative or the current generation of trans girls.

I think trans women have made a lot of fuss, have (very occasionally) raped, have put themselves at the centre of everything.

But I don't think this has much to do with trans girls. They are doing this much earlier in their lives and much more quietly. The only fanfares I see with them are when they get denied access to opportunities on the basis of nothing but their genitals. And I would fight that if it happened to me too!

Part of the increased profile of trans girls over trans boys is that there are very very few male exclusive clubs etc. these days and rather more female exclusive clubs. As a feminist I understand how this situation has arisen and why, but it isn't the trans girls fault that female only clubs exist and male only clubs basically don't.

Babieseverywhere being genuinely transgender is far more than stereotypical likes.