To argue that this should is not a suitable topic for the Girl Guides

[MovedByFanciesThatAreCurled]

Girlguiding is for girls, aged 10-14. So why then do they feel the need to promote this on their social media?

This week is #AceWeek - a time to raise awareness and understanding of the asexual community. So here’s a shout-out to all of our asexual volunteers and members – thank you for everything you do in Girlguiding.

The reference to ‘members’ is quite clear. What on earth were they thinking in making reference to young girls’ sex lives (or lack of them according to the focus of the Tweet). How, as an organisation, have they strayed so far? I have two boys in the Scouts/Beavers and if this came up on either of their social media pages I would pull them out. Why is it seen to be an acceptable for Girlguiding?!!

Another one here who thinks that talking about being asexual to children is potentially damaging. Most children up until puberty, and even somewhat once they start puberty have no sexual feelings at all. This is normal and does not mean they are asexual. Tweens and early teens are very keen to think they are older than they are, and to apply labels to themselves. This should be discouraged. Normalising homosexual relationships in the context of family eg representation of families with homosexual parents etc is completely different and to be commended.

I suppose if you have no experience of asexuality it might seem confusing

Like many young girls of Guiding age in fact!

Normalising homosexual relationships in the context of family eg representation of families with homosexual parents etc is completely different and to be commended.

So why is normalising that you might never want to be in a partnership 'damaging'?

I'd just like to point out if this discussion was being had in school by adults in real time several posters would have been reported for safeguarding concerns.

That is just fact. I'm trained to spot them. They're there in plain sight here though.

And the poster who was abused should be relieved that safeguarding has improved tremendously since they were at school. I'm sorry signs were missed but very few staff had the robust safeguarding experience all staff should have nowadays. Funny enough when I was a leader in girl guides I realised how lax it was partly because I had a concern they tried to bury. I reported it to social services anyway and things started happening for that child.

But yeah, tell me I'm pearl clutching, hand wringing and wrong. Except I have flagged up abuse and neglect numerous times and have been right. But even if I wasn't you should know that the safeguarding philosophy is you report even if unsure. So the people expressing concern in the truest sense here are following safeguarding procedure. Hand waiving away is not a safeguarding tool.

I'm going to complain to girl guides myself and look up their whistle blowing policy. All the information I had on it was internal but I assume there's an external route to deal with it.
I'd encourage anyone who has similar concerns to do the same. And not just for this.

I just want to make it clear that of you have concerns about a child at any time you should always report it. Safeguarding works by catching everything and filtering out the nothing. It can't work by just looking for obvious things. It's about building up a picture.

I don’t think anyone’s advocating telling children they might choose to have sex without attraction, just as when talking about being straight we don’t mention that some couples will have threesomes even though neither person is gay/ bisexual and that the desire to engage in such practices comes from something outside of sexual orientation.

I don’t think anybody is saying every nuance of asexuality needs to be discussed with younger teens, however I do challenge the idea that just because some aspects of asexuality can be complex (as are some aspects of other sexualities, especially when it comes to the actual sex) it should be seen as a dirty idea that teens need to be shielded from. I don’t see that it is dangerous to discuss asexuality in the terms that some people might not fancy/ feel attraction to anybody and that that’s okay, the intricacies of what that means in terms of sex are no more relevant than the intricacies of what sex can mean if you’re straight/ gay etc. Obviously if someone is going into detail regarding how any sexuality may or may not choose to have sex that is an issue, but acknowledging the term exists and that some people feel like they may fall within it isn’t automatically going to push girls to feel like they need to have sex without desire. If anything it may stop girls like me from having to do that, I didn’t know it was possible not to feel sexual attraction so I initially didn’t realise it wasn’t normal to kiss somebody even though it felt uncomfortable and thought that everybody just had to force themselves into it to meet those milestones.

@Houseofmirth66

Any adult volunteer who wants to discus any aspect of their sex life with a child is not safe to be around any child.

Where does it say they did that?

Not sexual desire, sexual ATTRACTION. They are not the same thing.
I suppose if you have no experience of asexuality it might seem confusing. Education will help thay.

The dictionary definition of asexual is “without sexual attraction or feelings”.

This is the meaning that will be understood by most people. It’s more than a bit disingenuous to use a long standing definition and attach another meaning to it without qualification. What is the motivation here? Why don’t people who experience no sexual desire or feelings get their own word?

@Flapjak

Wheres the line though in terms of celebrating sexualities? Kink, furries, MAPS. My small children know that males and females can love either sex and have two mummies etc no further explanation required. Do we really need 'children' considering adults who for whatever reason will never need or want to be in a sexual relationship.

Furries are nothing to do with sexuality. Please educate yourself. My son's been a furry for years. It's just a hobby.

That was the whole point if the Facebook post/tweet @TheUndeadLovelinessOfDemons. Or have you not actually read it?

It so predicable that a thread about asexuality brings out those from feminism to moan about trans people. The reality here is that guiding hasn't done anything wrong by putting out a tweet about standing in solidarity with their members who are asexual. They aren't teaching it in units and they aren't grooming children simply by making them aware asexuality exists (and the people who liken asexuality to grooming are disgusting)

The issue is guiding is allowing trans people in and that has GC people up in arms. Otherwise this probably wouldn't have attracted such attention, but some people are ready to jump down guiding's throat for anything at the moment regardless of the fact that the thing they are decrying isn't actually a thing.

On the feminism board they talk about peak trans - the moment where you hear something about trans people that tips you over into being GC.

This thread is my peak GC - the point where I realise that if you are so willing to argue that simply acknowledging asexuality is akin to grooming, and taking children to LGBTQ groups and exposing them to trans people is bad parenting that really means you are just nasty bigoted people.

So many echo's of what people have said about homosexuality over the years in here. And I feel so sorry for the asexual people on the thread who have come in and carefully, thoughtfully tried to educate posters on what asexuality actually is only to be told that children shouldn't learn about it, its groomy, it should be hidden away, etc.

If you have genuine concerns about safeguarding raise them, don't come and whip up a fury about a non-thing on here. At least one poster has said they are going to raise it, so fair play they actually care about safeguarding. For the rest of you claiming to be such experts, if you are an expert then you will know that having a paddy on mumsnet is not the same as actual safeguarding,

And for those telling me my ideas around safeguarding are terrible - given I suggested actually getting involved with the guide organisation and getting safeguarding changed/updated etc instead of sitting on mumsnet and moaning about it, if that makes me the one with bad ideas around safeguarding then you are very very wrong.

I am much more worried about the FB post than the tweet (it's NOT just a tweet) as it not surprisingly attracted loads of replies from adult leaders sharing their sexuality where young girls can see (and even if sticking to the rules 13 is young).
They were all also doubling down on "this is FINE to share" "of course our safeguarding training is great" etc etc.

Surely "Miss Brown is having a baby" is sharing their sexuality? Or Miss Jones mentioning her girlfriend?

Well cats, without this thread I wouldn't be able to report GG would I? So it's done it's job there.

Please don't give up your day job because speaking as someone with 10+ years experience, you know less than nothing.

@TheKeatingFive

Normalising homosexual relationships in the context of family eg representation of families with homosexual parents etc is completely different and to be commended.

So why is normalising that you might never want to be in a partnership 'damaging'?

According to posters up thread ace people can and do fall in love/have partners.

That’s the problem with varying definitions.

By some of the logic on this thread women who are pregnant and work with children should have to go and hide away from the moment their bump is showing and should never announce to any child they are expecting a baby because to do so is basically screaming from the rooftops ‘I have had sex with a man’ and therefore discussing sex lives with children.

Honestly, saying ‘I don’t have a partner and don’t want one I’m asexual’ is not the same as discussing your sex life. It shouldn’t be seen as disgusting, grooming or inappropriate to state your sexuality. I bet nobody on this thread would think it inappropriate if somebody asked a straight woman, ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’ and she said, ‘No, I’m single but also I’m not gay, I’d want a boyfriend.’ Most straight people would not want to be automatically assumed gay/ bisexual in every conversation and would no doubt see no issue in correcting the assumption of it were made. Why should asexual people just have to put up with it because to stare otherwise could be seen as ‘discussing their sex life.’

Excellent, you can tell us the correct channels to go down.
Thanks in advance.

No, it’s because the term is an umbrella term and includes people who have sex with people they have no sexual attraction to.

Fine for adults, if they are comfortable with this. Pretty fucking groomy thing to make a child “aware” of though.

But they're not making them aware, they're simply saying that not being attracted to someone is fine. In the same way we say that finding that opposite sex attractive is fine and not mentioning to kids about ONS or how some heterosexual folk enjoy pegging or BDSM.

I still don't understand that having enjoyable sex with someone in a loving, respectful relationship is wrong just because you don't fancy them.

According to posters up thread ace people can and do fall in love/have partners.

That's a complexity that it's not necessary to go into as a starting point. Just as there's lots of complexity around hetero/homo sexual relationships that we don't use as a reason not to acknowledge their existence.

My assumptions were made based on your responses.
I'm actually shocked at your attitude. But then perhaps if you are a paper pusher you don't realise how important work on the ground is.

Surely "Miss Brown is having a baby" is sharing their sexuality? Or Miss Jones mentioning her girlfriend?

But they could be asexual, couldn’t they? In order to know this students would need to hear about how they werent actually sexually attracted to their partners.

Boundaries

Furries are nothing to do with sexuality. Please educate yourself. My son's been a furry for years. It's just a hobby

Furry can absolutely be about sex.

www.webmd.com/sex/what-is-furry-sex

A large majority of our sample reported non-heterosexual identities (84%) and some degree of sexual motivation for being furries (99%). Male furries also tended to report a pattern of sexual interests consistent with an ETII involving anthropomorphic animals. Both sexual attraction to anthropomorphic animals and sexual arousal by fantasizing about being anthropomorphic animals were nearly universal. Furthermore, male furries tended to be sexually aroused by fantasizing about being the same kinds of anthropomorphic animals to whom they were sexually attracted, with respect to gender and species

From

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1303-7

Plus look up furry porn and some of the chat sites. It absolutely is sexual!

Oh, I wouldn’t have a problem with this. Letting kids know it’s ok not to be interested in sex seems fine to me

I don’t suppose they’re going into detail

According to posters up thread ace people can and do fall in love/have partners.

That’s the problem with varying definitions.

Because it's about sexual attraction, that's it. Every definition has said it's about the lack of sexual attraction.

It doesn't mean that our genitals don't work, or that we're incapable of loving someone or having a partner or the act of sex. Asexuals range from those who have never had sex and don't want to, to those who enjoy the act of sex and are married.

Heterosexuals range from those who have never had sex and don't want to, to those who enjoy the act of sex and are married.
Homosexuals range from those who have never had sex and don't want to, to those who enjoy the act of sex and are married.

@nolongersurprised

Surely "Miss Brown is having a baby" is sharing their sexuality? Or Miss Jones mentioning her girlfriend?

But they could be asexual, couldn’t they? In order to know this students would need to hear about how they werent actually sexually attracted to their partners.

Boundaries

So it's fine for them to be assumed to be heterosexual/homosexual but correcting it would be wrong?