AIBU about Girlguiding’s transgender policy?

[AgnesBadenPowell]

I’m the OP of this thread on feminism chat: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3185944-victoria-derbyshire-today-and-girlguides

I know this has been discussed before BUT the thread has far more responses than I expected. There are responses from leaders who’ve had their concerns dismissed and a number of parents seem unhappy.

Feminism chat is well known for its self selecting, gender critical audience. A lot of people will have that topic hidden. It’s obvious from my posts that I’m gender critical but I really would like to hear the thoughts and experiences of a wider group.

To be clear, my position is very much inclusive. But I do take issue with GG staying that it’s always been a single gender (not sex) organisation and that non trans girls do not get to chose whether they share accommodation on trips with a transgirl. The choice lies with the transgender child. Parents are not informed if their daughters will be sharing what is effectively mixed sex accommodation. It’s difficult because the transgender child must have privacy - but how can parents give informed consent?

As a leader, I’m struggling to see how I can safely balance the needs, privacy and preferences of all children in my care under the current guidelines. I have challenged GGHQ but not received any satisfactory answers.

For reference, here’s the official policy: www.girlguiding.org.uk/making-guiding-happen/running-your-unit/including-all/lgbt-members/supporting-trans-members/

If you have a view, do come and join us on the other thread. I’ll be offline for a while as I’m at guides later this afternoon but will be back tonight.

Again 4 years I'm not sure why your lovely trans friend is relevant. The issue is teen age girls sharing a tent with teenage boys, not people who after a lot of thought and distress undergo gender reassignment.

In fact, none of the issues are really about people who after a lot of thought and distress undergo gender reassignment. There are very few of them. The issue is people who want to keep their male genitalia, and can't understand why I don't want to share intimate spaces with them, see them in an occupation reserved for w9men, or agree that they are actually a woman.

For all those posters saying that they wouldn't have a problem with a boy identifying as a girl sharing accommodation at GG have you actually asked your children if they would be comfortable?

We are here to protect our children not force our views on them. If my DD was in GG I would be sitting down and having a conversation with her about it. I would then be saying that as her parent and an adult my decision is that she does not go on camp because this could be issue and we wouldn't be told.

I just can't get over how GG think it is acceptable to allow a teenage boy to join GG and share accommodation and not inform other parents.

I think this is wide open to some kind of legal challenge around safeguarding op. And personally I would resign. You can't safeguard the children in your care under these circumstances. And if something happens, and it will somewhere, you will be found liable along with this insane policy.

*@AgnesBadenPowell * Could you post the age groupings for the GG. In different areas, I've heard that some of the age groupings are 10-14 and 14-18 or 14-25.

I think some people think that a bunch of 14 year olds together wouldn't pose such an issue. Would they feel the same considering 14 and 18 year olds being bunked together or such, especially without parental (or girls') consent?

@TheMonstrousRegiment

Can't say I'd be happy with a 10 year old and 14 year old who were physically of the opposite sex sharing.

Just another example of everyones feelings being taken into account as long as they have a penis.
Yet again women & girls don’t have the right to a say, only people with a penis get choices

Exactly Nancy and posters on mn don’t see it. I just don’t understand why they don’t.

For those who don't know:
Rainbows age 5-7
Brownies age 7-10
Guides age 10-14
Rangers currently called Senior Section and14/25
but changing next year to
Rangers 14-18.

And the zzzzzzzzzz responses.

That just translates as 'I don't care about safeguarding young girls'. Nice one. Lovely.

How many kids need to be harassed or abused or get pregnant or just simply not be allowed to go ANYWHERE NEAR this organisation which could have been so empowering to them before it's too many? Because for those of us engaged in challenging this madness the answer is one - one is too many. And I'm so proud to stand with people like the OP on that.

So you can take your snoring and stick it really a very long way up your arses.

So an 18 year old with a dick and a 14 year old girl.

Or a 14 year old with a dick and a 10 year old girl.

And parents can't be told.

No, all sounds fine and dandy to me

I'm a Guider too and my main issues are around:
Nobody asking us or parents
Not being allowed to tell parents or girls that there is a biological boy in the group.
In particular, not being allowed to ask them if they mind/mind their daughters sharing accommodation or changing rooms e.g. at swimming with boys.
In my son's class there is a boy who wears pink, dresses etc and says he wants to be a girl and that he doesn't like his face or how he looks.
Fortunately his mother has her feet on the ground and is shocked at the US early transition movement. These children are 6. So in another family the parents would be embracing this and putting him in Rainbows.

To whoever asks why is Mumsnet so full of threads about this, I think there are two reasons:
It's anonymous
It is not just made up of your friends and your friends' friends so is not an echo chamber unlike Facebook.
I recognize some names that are regular posters but I don't actively 'follow' anyone like I might on YouTube.

My son wore a tutu to nursery last week. But luckily his chromosomes were entirely unaffected by this exciting sartorial decision...

Agree with pp saying this is a major safeguarding issue.
Families have been rehoused because otherwise their teenage son and daughter would have had to share a room.
But it is apparently okay for an 18 year old biological boy to share a bedroom and changing room with a 14 year old girl guide.

And yes to those who say this is an easier place to talk about it. There is no other forum for Guiders to even ask why we weren't consulted.

For those saying about the Trans hate on here - can you back this up ? One example of such as post will do.

MNHQ delete any such posts.

Also for people that have read the other thread, GGHQ implied that this came about due to a lot of people enquiring about volunteering.

That sounds very TRA

You also have the possibility of a 14 year old trans person sharing with a ten year old girl

Guides starts at ten years old..goes up to 14. My daughter is in guides and is ten, I would not be happy at the thought of my daughter sharing a room with an unknown 14 year old male

I know this is off-topic but why is there so much more anti-trans sentiment on MN than any other forum? The views here are so unreflective of what I see on news sites, facebook, other online forums. I'd just be interested to know what it is about MN that makes it flourish.

Fugitive for the billionth time, none of this is "anti-trans".

The reason you don't see it much on other sites is because anyone who deviates in the slightest way from the Approved Position, however batshit that Approved Position is, is banned. Sating "a penis is a male reproductive organ" can have you banned in all sorts of places. Is that how you think we should all live? Is that really how you think major political decisions should be taken, without the facility to discuss it? Whatever you think of trans issues, we should all be grateful to NM that at least we're allowed to talk about it here.

I have three sons - a Beaver, Cub and Scout, all of whom have been on mixed camps - we have male and female leaders and the accommodation is segregated.

One one hand, I have no idea what the instances are of teenage pregnancy or inappropriate conduct on such camps nationally, but I can't say I've ever heard of any hitting the headlines, so it must be extremely rare/non-existent? I'm happy to be put right if there is some massive underreporting of such things going on?

However, on the other hand, I've been pondering what I think about this issue since I first saw the thread on the feminism board this morning and I've got angrier as the day has gone on - because over there, one of the leaders said that the GG had more or less advised that if the girls/parents/leaders didn't like it, they could leave. And that's the problem - IF a boy identifies as female, 'she' could join the Cubs or Beavers or Scouts and as there is usually allowance made for the fact that those camps are mixed sex, and there is a way around sleeping arrangements. With the girl guides, there is no alternative to a single sex organisation, so the GG are effectively turfing girls out of the organisation - one which was expressly set up to champion girls' rights because they weren't allowed to join the boys. WTF is going on?! WHY should the rights of the (probably?) less than 1% of the population trump the needs of 50% of it?

To those that find this a snooze please also consider that the GG policy combined with Self-ID means that a deviant male could ID as female (I am not talking about trans). The GGs could not ask or challenge him on his sex (he doesn't even have to show up presenting as a woman - no dress, no heels, etc). If he is either turned down as a Girl Guide (Please note the ages currently go up to 25 which is fully adult) or as a Guider this would become a legal matter, so the Guide policy would be to allow the inclusion of this male.

Also under the policy NO ONE will be informed. That means the Guiders, the girls, and the parents. If anyone is uncomfortable with this once they realize there is a male in their space, the girls are the ones that must leave. And if this male is a predator there are no safeguarding protections in place against this type of situation. The only protections now in place are to protect TWs from girls.

Panic - that's exactly it

I’m a scouter and very glad that we don’t have this mess to deal with.
Everything is open in a mixed group. I ran a camp the other year with 6 Scouts aged 10.5-13(no older ones going) there were 3 of each sex. We had a meeting with parents and said would they mind if we used one tent with two sections for the camp as getting kit to camp is always a back of parents cars job and space was tight. They were all fine. Changing took place in the shower block and they were all very respectful of each other spaces. The boys wanted to sleep with their door open and were firmly told by the girls no.
I think the issue is around informed consent -it is horrendous that as a leader in the guides you can’t give your parents or girls this basic right.
I have, in the past, had fantastic boys do young leader training but not be allowed to help at our guide unit struggling for leaders because they were male. But Self Id as female and off you go.
As for not worrying about sexual contact in this age range - you haven’t spent time around teenagers have you!!! As guides we always snuck Scouts into our tents at night - stuff did happen in a full patrol tent. Naivety.
We discussed appropriate contact, we’ve discussed relationships on camp etc with our scouts and parents. Licking the group I took that year included siblings of opposite sex and age and no relationship or even ideas of them and believe me you do know, as a leader, you know if there is.
The aggressive TRA lobby has always made me uncomfortable and the agenda makes me nervous.
I couldn’t care less about mixed toilets - showers another issue.
I feel labelling children as trans is damaging. Why label except to prove a point. I know numerous children now and growing up who didn’t conform to gender norms, some have since come out, some were just experimenting now I wonder if they would have been pushed down the trans route.

I'm a guide leader and mother to a brownie and a guide.

It's a massive massive safeguarding issue and I don't understand how GGHQ can fail so badly to see it. Girlguiding is no longer a "safe space" for girls and it's an absolute travesty.

I can't decide whether I should leave in protest or whether it's easier to try and fight against it from within.

Accommodation aside, as a Brownie leader and as a parent of a Scout , Guide and a Brownie (who's also a cub!) my biggest issue is the contradiction of message being given.
Message 1: Girls can do anything, there are no pink /blue roles, breaking gender moulds
Message 2: being a girl is a feeling, not biology. If you feel you should be a girl because you prefer not running through the woods with a stick because that's a boy thing, then you should be a girl and transition. (lame example, I know, and actually that's one of my units many favourite activities)

What are we teaching? That gender is a social concept, and we shouldn't let it restrict us as women, but hold on, it's ok for boys to decide to conform to societies gender restrictions? Surely we as a society should be allowing these children and young adults to find out who they are without the restrictions of gender expectations?

Also, I truly believe girls need that safe girl only space. They need a space where they can be themselves without having to worry about the sexism that exists in everything, all the time.

Finally, and this worries me as much. Guiding is a safe space for girls, and girls who are going through a tough time, be it at home, exam stress or identity confusion, they need that constant. It worries me that for a girl who is a drift and needing to work out who she is then loses that safe space.

I do think trans at the level it is well only ever be a fad. There was one when I was a teen, and there always will be, teens by the very nature of the teenage years are under so much change and turbulence. We as an organisation need to not allow a fad to do irreparable damage to an organisation that is over 100yrs old, and has such standing in peoples thoughts.

Spot on Panicmode1.