This puts me off Girl Guides.

[NormaStanleyFletcher]

I always expected Girl Guides to be a fully female environment. And WTF about not telling parents if it isn't?

"Thanks for your email, and taking the time to read our updated equality and diversity policy. If an adult self-identifies as a woman then they are able to undertake all adult roles in guiding including becoming a Leader. This means that they may also, if they wish, make their Promise.

With regards to sleeping arrangements at residential events, it is important to work with the trans individual when organising accommodation rather than making assumptions or arrangements without consulting them. Some people may not feel comfortable sharing accommodation so in this case an alternative option should be provided. As membership of Girlguiding is decided based on gender identity (the way a person self-identifies their gender identity), there is no requirement to provide any documentation to evidence their transition. Please also be advised that it is not best practice to tell parents that a trans person will be attending a residential event.

You may find our Let’s Talk about Gender and Gender Identity resources helpful to support any conversations around this topic, should the need arise. At the back of each document, there are also some links to recommended external sources which will also provide some helpful advice on this.

I hope this is of help, but if you have any further queries, please don’t hesitate to get in touch."

Aren't we all non-binary anyway gender-wise? Nobody has total 'male' brain or total 'female' brain even if you believe that brains are differ by sex.

I'm not sure people who are only there because organisations are falling all over themselves to pander to aggressive activists and virtue signallers because they are scared of being accused of bigotry are likely to be called out for anything.

So that's your answer - there are 'bad women' too? I can't even be arsed to quote male sexual violence stats to you as opposed to female.

Tbh this mostly puts me off because of the shifty and underhand way the HQ has organised this.
A switch from a single sex to a single gender organisation is a huge change. At the very least, everyone involved should have been explicitly informed if not consulted, but it seems even local leaders aren't necessarily aware.
How can you sustain your trust in an organisation that does this, especially given the safeguarding issues that arise?

just to see a Brownie in their pants

I can appreciate that some are not taking the (small) possibility of a transperson commiting child abuse as credible.

However, lampooning child sex abuse as "seeing a child in their pants" is horribly dismissive and minimising.

Could we possibly not do that?

Tbh this mostly puts me off because of the shifty and underhand way the HQ has organised this.
This is not a change in policy. It's just that the website now has policy documents available to non-members.

A switch from a single sex to a single gender organisation is a huge change.
As other leader volunteers have stated up thread, GG has had male volunteers for ever: where attending residentials they have their own facilities and are DBS'd the same as everyone else.

According to the Guide's rules you would have to send him to the girl's showers. That's the problem.
According to GG rules you handle the situation sensitively and appropriate to the situation, just as you would for a child who needs lifting in the night, who starts their first period at camp, who wets their bed.
These things are planned and sorted out and no-one need be aware of an issue at all. I suspect in the case of a transgirl in the Brownies or Guides what would happen is that they would have some special friends who were aware of the situation and were prepared to share (with parental consent) or that the transchild/parents and leader would come up with a different solution to save everyone's discomfort..

The post truth era.

"Children are not stupid? "

Did someone really say that about safety of children? Wow.

All Savile's victims are stupid? All groomed kids are stupid? We tell children well I don't I teach my kids to trust themselves and say no, be rude, practice "fuck off" to trust people in positions of authority. A GG leader would have the perceived access to children as they are in a position of trust.

Personally I don't even allow my kids to be weighed at school as that tells them they can be with a couple of strangers in a room because they have scales.

Let's not start thinking that we can allow children to be the guards of their own safety by allowing trasnwomen role play as GG leaders because we don't want to hurt their feelings by telling them THEY ARE NOT WOMEN.

It is a change in policy. You can't tell me that when my mum was a guide back in the 1950s they would have admitted male bodied young people who identified as girls. At some point there has been a change. Think what you like about this but don't deny it has happened.

'As other leader volunteers have stated up thread, GG has had male volunteers for ever'

But not male members.

If there was more honesty and openness about all this I would be far readier to believe things really would be dealt with responsibly and with due regard for safeguarding. The denial is very offputting.

Twist, the difference between the male helpers and a female impersonator, is that only one is getting girls to confide in them based on subterfuge. Subterfuge that the parents are forbidden from querying.

It is not the same.

Current trans rights, demands and campaigning can only progress at the expense of female rights.

Trans rights and womens and girls rights are at odds with each other. The demands for access to female spaces, groups, positions, sports, prisons, scholarships etc - no matter how this affects women and girls - just shows that transactivists have trans rights and wants in their sights - not what's best for women and girls.

That women are supporting males wants over female needs is wuite shocking - how did we get here!

I've read posts where women have told other women who've been attacked and/or raped in a toilet by a man that they need to get over it or stay out of public toilets, just so a man who wants to be a woman can be validated

The issue isn't safeguarding.

It's that a group that used to be single-sex is now all about gender, and gender is bollocks. The GG used to be and should still be all about how gender stereotyping is a load of rubbish. But this current situation means 'being female is all about what you feel like'. Now if a MTT decides to become a leader (or helper), they are introduced as a woman? This person could simply have self-ID'd as a woman but still present as a fully intact, male-appearing male. If the girls say "But that's a man!" will they be told by the other leaders "No, that is a woman because they feel like a woman" [whatever the hell that means].

I don't get how some commenters here cannot appreciate that it is Orwellian to tell children that "yes, that person who is biologically and visibly male is actually female because they feel they are, and if you say they're not, then you are hateful and wrong."

Biological girls used to have a social space where they could enjoy each other's company and do stuff - not "girly stuff", not "feminine stuff" or "womanly stuff" - just stuff that was fun and interesting and educational but for once, without boys or men being in the picture. Now they no longer have that space and are not allowed to object to males being in their single-sex space. That is what is wrong.

I think we have always been here Bambanini. It used to be because some women didn't want to upset the men or not be 'respectable'. Now it's 'progressive' and they can be all proud of themselves. Either way, speaking up for women's rights is still rather to be frowned on. By some

It's the self-certification that causes every single problem.

While that persists there will be endless clashes between trans rights and safeguarding effectiveness, between trans rights and women's rights, between trans rights and the penal system, and so on.

It's a logical nonsense to have self-certification and still expect the trans community to blend smoothly in with wider society. There are too many insoluble clashes of policy and priority if one key identity is determined that way but everything else in our society runs on external proof.

You might as well have self-certified DBS checks or self-certified professional qualifications.

"You might as well have self-certified DBS checks or self-certified professional qualification"
^^ This! Exactly!

So true, Manumission. Excellent way of putting it.

"The issue isn't safeguarding"

Exactlu - and it is Orwellian. Being forced to accept an intangible ideology and forced to adopt speech that you just don't believe in. It's upsetting, bullying and insulting. Like being made to adopt a religion and abide by it's rules, say you believe in god or that the earth is flat etc- when you don't believe that at all.

It's gaslighting women on a grand scale.

I agree it's like being made to accept a religion. It's this new ideology that we must adhere to, no questions allowed or we are bigots.

At least we can post about it on mumsnet. Even if we get shouted down here too #notshuttingup

I've been reading up on Jordan Peterson, a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto. He seems a bit of an ass but his position and argument against laws being created to force people to use language (such as gender pronouns) that they just don't agree with - Is quite interesting - and the reaction he has gotten for raising this and taking a stand.

I find it really offensive and upsetting on a personal level. And I don't see why my feelings as a woman and a survivor of domestic violence and emotional abuse should be dismissed out of hand while people fall over themselves to pander to a lot of bullying narcissistic misogynists and a tiny minority of people with a mental health condition which may or may not be improved by the rest of the world colluding in a massive lie. It really feels similar to be gaslighted by them. If I didn't hate the overuse of "triggering" by internet warriors so that it is basically meaningless, that is what I would call it.

But unlike them I do realise it's not all about me me me and my issues.

Bambambini
He does have some good points re the pronoun/free speech issue but he's def anti-feminist. Canada seem to have gone quite nuts over the pronoun thing. I am seriously not going to call someone 'ze' without putting another word afterwards which will be sure not to please the recipient

Mercy

Well yes quite - even a horses ass can have point now and then! It is interesting and though in relation to free speech snd the law coercing people to use certain words, especially from dodgy ideolgies. I can't understand why folk can't see how potentially serious this is.

No me neither, Bambam. They do really need to read 1984.