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)

no, they are not excluding girls with a trans identity. They’re excluding boys with a trans identity so keeping the groups single sex. You seem confused.

Who says they will close? Scouts are a lot more popular now. If somebody decides to challenge it, they won’t have a leg to stand on as what’s good for one has to be the same for the other. It highlights the petty world we now live in where marginalised groups of children are picked on and made scapegoats of by online bullies.

Set one up then.

Yes they do.

Some companies welcome girls, my friend Genny was in the BB in the 80s.

The people saying that because girl guiding is single sex that scouts cannot be mixed sex -

so you're saying if a girl has something that a boy does not currently have, it must be taken off them until the boy can have it, even if they have something different.

Women and girls - you must never ever have something that a man or boy does not already have for himself, even if he can't be bothered to go and get it.

Challenge it how? Are you suggesting a mixed organisation might be forced to become single sex because of the existence of unrelated, independent single sex organisations? If so, I regret to inform you that this is Not How It Works.

Plus ça change.

Awful that an organisation for GIRLS that is specifically supposed to exclude boys is forced to obey the law and give girls their basic human rights! The whole point of GIRL Guiding is that is supposed to be exclusive, not 'inclusive'.

It's too late. The Scouts changed their raison d'être: there would need to be a break-away organisation - and there are still other single-sex orgs for boys.

I fucking hated the email. They keep talking about marginalised groups...clearly the group they mean are trans girls. What about GIRLS AND WOMEN...still probably the most marginalised minority in the world!!!! Mental!!!

Wrong.

Scouts changed its charter to become mixed sex in order to survive. GG has always been single sex but stupidly went along with the lie that TWAW and therefore allowed a self selecting group of males to join whilst still claiming to be single sex

What would be the basis of any legal claim made about the status of Scouts? Scouts and GG are two completely separate entities

I asked for clarification and evidence that male people with transgender identities have the same risk as female people in harming female people and there has been nothing ever since. I can only assume this was another round of someone having views purely based on emotional reasoning and holding prejudiced views about feminist posters who disagree with them, while complaining that they get challenged on the misinformation.

plus ca change.

Presumably parents of boys didn't kick up a fuss when the scouts opted to include girls, and there is no appetite atm for a campaign to go boy only.

And the reason is that girls are generally not a threat to the boys.

They also aren't pretending to be boys.

Fact is that male to female and female to male trans are not simply the opposite side of the same coin. There are many, many more issues affecting girls expected to accommodate boys than for boys expected to accommodate girls.

We shouldn't try to equate them.

While these young boys do need support it's not up to girls to provide that support.

Because guides go camping. What Muslim parent would let their daughter share a tent with a boy? Because Muslim girls might prefer all female spaces where they can remove their hijab? Because after about 12 many Muslim parents frown on mixed sex groups.

And a breakaway all male Scouts or equivalent would be totally fine. Its a shame it wasn't viable, and if one would be now, fab. It just has sod all to do with Guides.

Girlguides are teaching girls to be scared of men?? What absolute rubbish! In my experience as a parent to girls, it teaches independence, builds confidence and affirms that it’s OK to build and share your opinions and beliefs.

You didn't answer my question, do you think that trans identifying people actually and literally change sex? Or is it a "polite" fiction you go along with to "be kind"?

I think you could do a lot worse than listen to some of the feminists who have been talking on this thread about the necessity of maintaining single sex spaces, in this case for young girls, because they make many excellent points.

One last big heaped plate of food for thought before you go. You know nice trans identifying males, many of us also know nice trans identifying males. That's all good and well. In reality even the nice trans identifying males are still male. They don't actually become women.

If we go along with a "polite" fiction like you, treating them as women in all areas, as I and others have said this leads to a number of things:

1. Firstly it's not at all kind to position women and girls as emotional support Non Player Characters (NPCs) as emotional support animals for men and boys. Women and girls feelings matter too, and lots of us aren't happy about including men and boys in previously female only places or groups.

2. It changes any previously female single sex whatever to mixed sex, so no female sport, health care, rape crisis centres, refuges, prisons, groups, awards, sponsorships, scholarships, schools, hospital wards... and so on and so on.
   2a) As an aside, did you know that a lot of those things previously single sex for males are still actually single sex? So still single sex for males - male sports (because what woman has a hope to win against top male athletes? Especially when they have gone through hormone "therapy" and surgeries which take a massive toll on their female bodies), prisons, and primogeniture laws which don't allow female children to inherit peerage and still only benefit male children. There's probably more that I'm forgetting right at this moment.

3. Lots of girls and women will self exclude from things if men and boys are included, for a variety of reasons, none of which are bigoted. ND, conservative religions, previous sexual abuse, privacy and dignity etc. This is not conducive to inclusion of, or supportive of the really vulnerable women and girls out there.

4. Speaking of schools, are you aware that there is an alarming amount of sexual assault and rape that happens in schools, as in peer on peer, male on female sexual violence? I'm sure you can see the immediate increased risk to girls that mixed sex toilets brought. Girls self excluded from toilets too because of this, holding it until they could get home and not drinking as much as they should. This is a further risk to their bodily health, UTI's and kidney infections result.
   Review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges - GOV.UK

5. As well as increased risk of physical or sexual assault, hidden cameras, voyeuristic crimes and exposure are all increased risks too.

6. Finally, if you let the nice trans identified males we all know and like/love into female single sex spaces, you have to also let in the not nice ones. It's not like the bad ones wander around with signs around their necks, so we can't tell the good from the bad until something unthinkable has happened. It's safer for women and girls if we just stick with the safeguarding we have now and keep all the men out, even the nice ones.

Google Isla Bryson, Karen White, and Barbie Kardashian if you want to see how this "be kind to the transwomen, I know some really nice ones!" thin end of the wedge kind of thinking goes at the other end. They and all the other men who would be a threat to women and girls are the ones you invite in when you handwave female single sex spaces to "be kind".

I could go on, I've gotten caught up in my thoughts so have surely missed many points I could have made, but I think you get the point.

I really do hope you chew over all this food for thought stuff. It's ok to realise that actually we might have a point. You can still support the trans identified people in your life, and they can still participate in all areas of life, without running roughshod over women and girl's rights and single sex spaces.

The charitable aims of the Guides are to further the interests of girls. That's why they are stuck now the Supreme Court has decreed it means biological sex. They have clearly been looking for some loophole to get out of it but have had to admit defeat - and they are not happy about it. The Scouts presumably have different charitable aims so can include boys and girls.

I used to love the fact that GGUK were a girl-only space (I dislike that scouts had to bend and allow girls in but that's a separate issue).

GGUK however lost me as a supporter when they decided their new strapline was "Know Your Place". Grim

Most trans women just want to live a peaceful life in the way that they choose, and they aren’t joining women only organisations in their masses with intent to cause harm.

Tbf, there is little evidence that this is true. These mysterious men who identify as women but have zero negative impact on women and girls seem few and far between.

In fact, evidence to date points very much to the opposite, we frequently see male entitlement, aggression and sexual fetish in the vast majority of men who identify as women.

I have come across two men in public life that even attempt to speak up for women and those that I know personally definitely have a fetish for themselves as women in a very particular style.

Where are these gentle, harmless ‘Hayley Croppers’ who are not encroaching on women’s spaces (although Hayley/Harold did exactly that)?

Do they actually exist?

I looked it up - girls make up 30% of Scouts. In some groups it’s much higher.
how many organisations can afford to lose 30% of members overnight and access to funding.

They allow mixed sex sleeping but parents have to be informed
In reality I suspect very few do this.
I have 2 DS in Scouts. They definitely have single sex sleeping, so much so that on a recent indoor camp some boys had to sleep on mattresses on the floor in the boys dorm. The mattresses came from the girls dorm as obviously they couldn't sleep in there.
One year the only girl coming on Cub camp could only stay for one night as she had to share with the 2 female Beavers who were only camping for one night.

Does anyone understand the reason that biological females can attend squirrels, beavers, cubs and scouts
but biological males cant join rainbows, brownies and guides? If we let our daughters do the typical
"boy" groups, why won't we let our sons go to the "girl" groups? Or can boys do brownies etc, just not trans women?

I've not read every comment on this thread so apologies if I'm asking something which has already been discussed