Girl Guides are now GIRL ONLY!

[Iamwhoiamwhoareyou]

Following April's supreme court ruling, the Girl Guides have FINALLY made a statement and will remain GIRLS ONLY - Finally closing the door on admitting trans members or allowing BOYS to invade female only spaces/camp (which, would be done without informing parents that their daughter would be sharing a room with a biological male!) - I have a previous post in feminism chat for anyone wanting to read the previous thread on this

EMAIL RECEIVED HOT OFF THE PRESS 5 MIN AGO -

As the parent of a young member in Girlguiding, following April’s Supreme Court decision relating to sex and gender, we wanted to give you an update. Many organisations across the country have been facing complex decisions about what it means for girls and women and for the wider communities affected, including us.

Girlguiding’s governing charity documents set out that the membership and people who benefit from our organisation are girls and women. In April, the Supreme Court ruled that girls and women are defined in the Equality Act 2010 by their biological sex at birth.
Following detailed considerations, expert legal advice and input from senior members, young members and our Council, Girlguiding’s Board of Trustees has made the difficult decision that Girlguiding must change Girlguiding must change, following the Supreme Court’s ruling.

From today, 2 December, it is with a heavy heart that we are announcing trans girls and young women will no longer be able to join Girlguiding. This is a decision we would have preferred not to make, and we know that this may be upsetting for members of our community.

There will be no immediate changes for current young members but more information will be shared next week.

Most adult roles, including unit helpers, district helpers and administrative support, are already open to all, so we are confident that no volunteers will have to leave the organisation.

Girlguiding believes strongly in our value of inclusion, and we will continue to support young people and adults in marginalised groups. Over the next few months, we'll explore opportunities to champion this value and actively support young people who need us.

You can find our full statement and updated policy on our website.

We are proud to be the UK’s largest youth organisation dedicated to girls and is focused on creating an equal world for girls and young women. For over 100 years, we have been a welcoming space for all girls to have new experiences, support their communities, build friendships and grow their confidence.

While Girlguiding may feel a little different going forward, these core aims and principles will always be the same. We remain committed to treating everyone with dignity and respect, particularly those from marginalised groups that have felt the biggest impact of this decision.

If you have any immediate questions, we have our special support team in place, to give volunteers, parents and carers the best support we can. We are asking Girlguiding HQ, trading and country/region staff to refer any volunteer or parent who has questions about this announcement. Details below.

Contact [email protected] or 020 7532 3970
All calls/emails will be confidential, and the service will be open 24hrs, 7 days a week.
Find out more, including how this team will handle personal data.

Denise Wilson (Chair of Trustees), Felicity Oswald (CEO) and Tracy Foster (Chief Guide)

I have not argued at all that a boy’s needs take preference over any one else’s. You have interpreted that.

However, bear in mind that under 18s are still children, and I doubt that there is some kind of agenda, or ideology, among boys to try to invade girl's spaces.

Some teenage boys would absolutely do this. I say this as a retired secondary teacher with many years’ experience - and misogyny among boys has been increasing significantly in recent years. Some will go to great lengths to inconvenience, upset, intimidate and abuse girls. Give them an opportunity and they will take it.

You will definitely know.

How would you decide which men shouldn't be excluded from female spaces?

Personally I don't believe excluding all men from female spaces is too blunt an instrument to keep out the abusive men. If someone can invent a scanner to distinguish the good men from the abusive men then perhaps we could reconsider the blanket exclusion of all men from female single sex spaces.

Good news, but so sad that GIRL guides have 'heavy hearts' about encouraging GIRLS to have their own spaces and chances away from boys.
For anyone reading this, and not familiar with the language around trans ideology, a trans girl/woman is a male (not a female who is trans - that is a trans boy/man) - the language I think doesn't help people understand the issue. The issue being that girls and women should have a right to their own stuff...males have enough stuff of their own!

i am sorry if you think I have made judgements. It’s demonstrably true that most people don’t give up hours of time to offer these spaces, or there would be no shortage of volunteers, although I know some do.
my views are based on the actual transpeople I actually know, in real life.

the number of trans children accessing girl only spaces is tiny. I have never encountered this happening, except for the lady here with a 4 year old on her rainbow list.
what I have encountered, is an aggressive parent telling us we had admitted a boy, based only on the fact that one of our members has short hair.

I mean... if a trans woman is in my changing room, changing in front of me and able to see me change, that does have some impact on me, no? Imagine it's the same for the girls as Guides?

From today, 2 December, it is with a heavy heart that we are announcing trans girls and young women will no longer be able to join Girlguiding.

I hope all this hand wringing doesn't reflect the views of the rank and file parents, volunteers and staff of GG. Otherwise I don't know how anyone could be arsed sending their daughters there.

If you find a simple question like that too offensive or threatening to cope with, and feel it chases you away from the conversation, then really there's no point in you trying to post anywhere outside of an activist echo chamber, is there? When you tell women you think their legal rights should be destroyed, they are probably not going to chat nicely with you about how much more important men and their sense of gender and how their rights should be destroyed by only nice men. Are they? Reasonably?

The Supreme Court Judgment goes into this simply and is very well explained.

Has a resource been provided for a particular sex rather than mixed sex for a specific reason? ie that the same experience could not be provided if it was mixed sex?

If yes, then as soon as a member of the other sex is 'included' then it no longer provides what it set out to provide, and so no longer can justify being single sex. Basically if you're going to accommodate any males at all, then you have to accommodate them all because the benefit was in it being single sex, and now that benefit has been ended.

Even if it's just one lovely 4 year old boy - well seriously, are 20 four year old little boys going to do a bunch of Guides harm? Of course not. But they end it being a girl-only space with the planned intention of benefit it was set up as a single sex space to be.

You also cannot rationally ever gatekeep SOME men out of a space while admitting others. How are you going to do that? Who stands on the door reasoning with a man and working out if he's one of the nice ones or not? How do you know? Even a history of sexual assault does not keep a man from gaining a GRC. How do you say yes to some men and no to others and have any kind of system for managing this? How do men accept that he can but they can't?

And again... patiently.... when you've been lovely to men and met their inner needs and expression and supported their gender - what are you going to do with the women and girls who cannot use a mixed sex space?

Are you just excluding them from society as a bit too inconvenient?

Isn't this all a bit seeing male children and adults as holding a greater value and entitlement than female children? And frankly that's very binary sex based thinking suggesting that you don't think those boys or men are anything other than boys or men - or you'd downgrade the importance you see them with. If you really saw them as female rather than particularly special males, you wouldn't care.

Are you aware that prison statistics collected by a number of national governments across a number of years indicate that a significantly higher proportion of transwomen are convicted of sexual offences than the proportion of men? Needless to say (except the above and other posts indicate there is a need, because of bad faith misrepresentation of GC perspectives), this is not to make the absurd claim that all transwomen are sexual predators, any more than excluding men from single sex spaces is taken to mean that about men. It does, however, support safeguarding measures excluding transwomen alongside men.

https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/

Another thing. I'm confused by the refrain that GG is no longer "inclusive". Given that this decision will open up the organisation to tens of thousands of ethnic minority girls previously unable to attend, it seems a strange perspective to take. Unless, of course, "inclusive" applies only to when males are excluded. Again, you could think that is, itself, a bad faith take... except that the evidence, again, tends to mount up. For example, this schtick about the SC judgement being definitively anti-trans. I mean, it ensured that transmen receive vital legal protections re. maternity rights that they were previously denied! In other words, once again, there's a significant cohort of females who are actively benefitting who are entirely unnoticed or ignored, as the judgement is deemed A Bad Thing For Equality.

Hm. The above could almost give you the impression that sex-based abuse and prejudice is still a thing, couldn't it? So why on earth would we want to uphold girls' rights to single sex societies - and, in particular, their right to recognise and acknowledge sex-difference - in such a context? I can't begin to think...

I don't

I was quoting someone on the Facebook page who does volunteer

Maybe you missed the bit at the bottom where i said 'yikes - it sounds like brainwashing camp'

You see it as ‘aggressive’, I see it as challenged. You’re on a discussion forum after all.

I find it baffling when proponents of gender ideology which is showing to be harmful as fuck, come on to a discussion forum made up of mainly women, with views that go against science and logic, and act all surprised when they receive robust push back. I notice valid questioning goes unanswered as per.

You have ignored the posters who have said ‘men can live, dress and call themselves want they want, but no one can be forced to believe they are women because they present in regressive stereotypical ways associated with women, or be accepting of them in spaces where they have no right to be’.

What is authentic about claiming to be something you’re not. You’re a trans woman? Fine! Youre
a woman? No, you’re not, and forcing me and anyone to lie about this is the furthest thing from kindness, tolerance and authenticity.

This whole ‘othering’ as well can never be answered. How does one tell the difference between a man with no nefarious intentions to a man with nefarious intentions? Because he declares himself a woman and chucks on a dress?! How does one explain trans woman offenders? I have met a few personally through my job. It’s because they are MEN.

Which brings me onto - actually the majority of men without special feelings (the ones with willies) won’t harm you either statistically, they have to stay out of women’s spaces. So why is one ok and not the other, because they say they’re a woman?!

Make it make sense.

Fab news. Stonewall seem to be curiously silent?

I think there needs to be more tolerance in society more generally for people living their authentic lives
Um what does that even mean?

..............as long as they are not causing harm
But they are causing harm. A great deal of harm.

I do think that we need to prevent sexually abusive men from accessing female only spaces, and we need to find a way to protect women from them.
Yes, one way is to ban TW and TGs from accessing women's and girls' spaces.

What I don’t believe is that trans woman = abusive man, as the GC
movement would have us believe.
Loads of them are though.

And excluding trans women just to keep out the abusive men, is too blunt an instrument.
No it isn't. It's 100% necessary.

Most trans women just want to live a peaceful life in the way that they choose
If you say so.

..................and they aren’t joining women only organisations in their masses with intent to cause harm.
Oh yes they are.

Awful that an inclusive organisation has been forced into this

How someone lives their life has no impact ????

do you exist in a bubble ???

most of us do not live in a bubble and boys / men masquerading as female characters s fine, but accessing one of the very few female only spaces in society is a damn insult

of they don’t want to play with the boys, that’s fine, there are many venues and youth groups that are mixed sex - but to go to a female only space is a violation

I hope our dual responses to that post won't be deemed too aggressive, Wes. I found the post quite distressing in its absurd suggestion that my concerns for girls having single-sex spaces somehow equates to transwomen/girls "joining women only organisations in their masses with intent to cause harm", but felt able to overcome this to present a solid counter-argument. I hope PP feels able to respond to our posts in kind. (NB. I may not actually be around to read said response for quite a while now - but would still appreciate it).

So what do you mean? Do you believe in girls' only spaces, except for Girl Guides?

Why?

They aren't truely 'inclusive' as they exclude most men.

All that has happened is they have been told that to be a women and girls organisation they have to exclude all men even the ones who think they are extra special.

Girl guiding is by definition not inclusive !!!

it should be unapologetically a female only space - a rare one but precious !!

One can be 'supportive' of trans people and still believe in allowing girls to have female only spaces. You don't seem capable of understanding that nuance.

I am sure you know that it is not the question you asked, but all the assumptions you made in it and the way you asked it.

As you have made an assumption that I can’t cope with it, or found it offensive. The whole tone of this post to me is not curiosity, or giving any sense you are open to discussion, or even interest in what I think or what my experience might be. You have been rude, made assumptions, and told me what you have decided I think. That’s why it’s pointless to engage.

I remember this and thinking how bonkers

How???

Then explain, please, I genuinely would love to know -

how do you add a boy into a girls' single sex facility or group without prioritising his needs above all of the girls for that facility or group?

If you prioritised the girls, surely the answer would be that the boy needs to go to a mixed sex facility or group?

The reason for a boy (or his parents) wishing very much for him to have the experience of being a girl in a girl only space - is seeing the girls and the facility as a vehicle for his gender expression. It is not only unkind to the girls and sees them as less important than him, and ends the provision for all of those girls, it is a false situation for the boy too. He does not have the experience of being a girl in a girl only situation: it has become mixed sex as he walks through the door.