I run a unit for teens Swiss. We discuss that gender is utter bollocks and that each individual should be free to dress, act, and engage in whatever activities they wish. We discuss the rampant gendered ideologies that discriminate against women and girls, and we uphold bodily autonomy and create the unit as a safe space. I cannot for one minute envisage how I would a male in a discussion about how to deal with feminine hygiene at camp, (that’s a very sanitized phrase - we discuss blood and used sanitary towels, and hygiene in an environment without flush toilets etc) and we discuss how girls are routinely excluded from education and public life in various parts of the world (we use the millennium development goals to do so). We discuss how males oppress females. We discuss rates if maternal death, contraception, and all other matters pertaining to being female.
I have literally no idea why there is an attempt to centre male-bodied people in an organization specifically set up to break down the barriers that females experience by virtue of their sex.
Sex. Sex. Sex.
Gender is the tool of oppression. By welcoming and centring gender, we are removing the ability of the girl guides to name the very reason that the girl guides exists as a worldwide organization.
Centring gender makes the girl guides a pointless after school activity that cements oppression, rather than fights against it. It renders it utterly pointless.
What is the point of a ‘girls’ group that prioritises the rights of a male member over thousands of female members?
It is completely counter-productive to the entire ethos of guiding.
How do I discuss how utterly dangerous ‘gender’ is as a concept with someone who has decided it is his life’s work?
How do I encourage female members to uphold their own boundaries when the organization itself has forbidden them from doing so?
Accepting male members into guiding will change the face of it forever. It will exclude the vast swathes of girls who currently benefit most, and it will inadvertently render the organization a useful tool of gendered oppression, managing to cement both masculine and feminine stereotypes in one fell swoop. It won’t be long before we are back to the bad old days when the general public assumes that scouts are for the rufty tufty rockclimbers and robotics kids and the guides is for the glitter and baking kids.
The girls who live on mountains will feel less welcome.
Explain to me why gender should be prioritises over biology for a group who are oppressed due to biology. Please.
Because gender means bupkus. Except ‘this is how you are supposed to behave.’
And really, I’m trying to tell my girls that they can decide for themselves how they behave.
It’s fucking depressing having women fighting for female subjugation. Do what the men want, ladies. Be nice. Subjugate yourself at the altar of the mighty penis.
I already have girls confess they flunk maths tests deliberately because the boys patrol what fanciable girls are supposed to be like. This is not a problem that is going to be solved by the girls bending over further. Have some self respect ladies, and fight back.
Issues with toxic masculinity that are triggering boys to want to shelter in female spaces need to be dealt with in masculine spaces by broadening the bandwidth of acceptable masculinity.
We are working bloody hard to teach the girls they can do anything, but we can’t do that while males are present. It prevents openness and shuts down honest discussion.
Get those conversations going in make spaces too.
My priority is not males. It is the girls I choose to lead.