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)

Just googled. It’s not been called the Boy Scouts since 1967!!! Before I was even born…

It is not bigoted nor outdated to believe in biology /scientific fact.

can you be specific about exactly what beliefs you claim are bigoted and outdated?

See this is where you will lose some sympathy from readers who might have initially sympathised with you. Calling womens rights 'fear', 'bigoted' and 'outdated beliefs' is very offensive. You seem very ideologically captured to the extent you want to erase all rights of the female sex just to suit your child. That's not fair to women. Womens rights to our hard won single sex spaces is not outdated or bigoted. Your comments are misogynistic and very insensitive. You've obviously forgotten what it's like to be a girl yourself, if you have so much disdain for womens rights.

And yet, human sex is an established proven scientific fact. It is not outdated at all.

Neither is the fact that sometimes sex matters and should be prioritised above someone’s gender identity. Single sex provisions, including single sex groups, is one of those areas where sex matters. Someone’s gender identity is irrelevant when sex matters.

Again, this is not outdated at all.

Seriously - what, then, are the up-to-date, right-thinking beliefs? Logical extrapolation from the post to which you're replying suggests you think the following?

1. It's wrong to retain an awareness of male/female physical difference - that evolutionary skill necessary to our race's survival must be suppressed.

2. It's wrong to retain an awareness that males are stronger than females and responsible for 98% of sexual crime - that statistical truth must be denied.

3. It's wrong to share these universal facts about our world with children in a gradual, age-appropriate way that will support their ability to navigate it safely as they mature - to do so is to "raise them in fear full of bigoted, outdated beliefs".

I understand the issues that could come up with taking a trans child camping etc.. but my son does cub scouts with little girls. It does seem like a double standard for a boy not to be able to join brownies when little girls can do beavers and cubs.

If you don’t see the value in single sex spaces, why are you so desperate for your child to benefit from (and in doing so, destroy) them?

If it’s outdated and bigoted for girls to want space away from boys, why do you want this for your own child?

Either there is a purpose in having single sex spaces, which means trans people of the opposite sex (regardless of their gender identity) cannot access or there isn’t - in which case it isn’t a problem for trans people to access spaces that align with their biological sex.

I know it's a material reality - obviously all genitals are a material reality. They just don't solely define the gender of the person they belong to. That's a bit more nuanced and complicated for many on this thread to understand. My "ideology" comment comes from slavish belief in one aspect - ie: biology.

A significant safeguarding fail was that parents and the guides themselves were not to be told at all that there was a male child present. There was an expectation that GG was female only when it was in fact, mixed sex.

If GG was marketed as a mixed sex organisation, then it would be comparative to the Scout groups. But it was not.

No it’s not.

one is a mixed sex organisation and the other is single sex.

Ask for the birth certificate, as is usual in these things.

HTH

Two totally separate organisations.
One Scouts decided many years ago to go mixed sex for various reasons.
One Girlguiding stayed single sex.
If people want a boys youth organisation they can set one up but Scouts tried it and it wasn’t popular with falling numbers and lack of male volunteer leaders.

What exactly is it that you think differentiates boys and girls?

I know, I know, you won't answer honestly. But the idea that you need to undress a child to see if they're lying isn't something we espouse on here. Because it's batshit and creepy.

Single sex organisation. No one is talking about gender ( which is just regressive stereotypes and bullshit).

You don't see the bigotry in lying to a boy that he's not really a boy if he identifies more with feminine tropes than masculine ones? A good parent would have given their son courage to be proudly and wholeheartedly himself, embracing everything he loves about things that are culturally associated with femininity, and also the courage to accept that his body is as it is, and is not wrong or bad, and does not require him to accept any cultural stereotypes associated with that body type but sex change does not ever actually happen. It is cruel and unkind that you pretended otherwise. Your child has not benefited from these lies.

You have also been lied to about suicide stats. Yes mentally unstable people do think about suicide sometimes. Transition does not stop a mentally unstable person from being mentally unstable and does not appear to have a significant effect on suicide risk comparing incidences before and after. If your child did have a significant risk of suicide then transition has not reduced that risk. If your child doesn't appear to be at risk now there was probably never any such real risk. threatening suicide in order to emotionally manipulate and control is certainly a thing that entirely non-suicidal people do sometimes though, especially if they've been told online that this is a good strategy.

I really wouldn't patronise a lot of the posters here. Many, including me, are responding directly but often sympathetically and have an extremely developed understanding of this issue.

In the above, you seem to conflate sex and gender, while also misunderstanding most posters here on a fundamental level.

We understand sex to be a biological reality, with inevitable variations in the standard binary - absolutes rarely (if ever?) exist in nature. We understand gender to be, to a greater or lesser degree, a social construct, with opinions varying on the degree to which nature and nurture interact, but the onus on the latter. As such, your second sentence above is utterly fundamental to our beliefs and arguments - of course sex doesn't "define" gender (many of the posters here have been fighting that old patriarchal chestnut all their lives!) Like the 40% suicide stats, you believing this does seem to suggest that you're relying on activists' misrepresentation of a hugely complex issue.

Don’t be silly.

There’s about 74 “genders” aren’t there? Sex is biological and immutable. Gender is just personality (or, in very young children, the projection of regressive stereotypes on them from parents).

You're appalled by women and girls having sex-based rights? Well I'm appalled at your callous disregard of our needs and rights.

They just don't solely define the gender of the person they belong to. That's a bit more nuanced and complicated for many on this thread to understand.

I would bet that you're not enough of a true trans ally to give a clear example of what differentiates boys and girls, @SolidMam

I really don't wish to erase women or girls - and I don't believe that raising my child in this way does that. But I do believe women's rights need to sit as stronger allies with trans rights. I mean no offence, I just really don't think the two are mutually exclusive - and Brownies seems like a good place to begin.

Looking in anyone's pants is a trans fantasy. Society has operated on the basis of certain single sex spaces with no problems because people respected (and taught their children to respect) the laws and the social contract. Men and women, boys and girls, respected these. The few who didn't were seen as a problem and removed / sanctioned.

You can't bully people out of reality to suit your own personal fantasies. The GG has a long history of working for the benefit of girls. If they want to become mixed sex then so be it. They simply have to be honest about it.

Edited to add: in response to Mam, 2 posts above (plus a few other quibbly bits!)

But you must see that they sometimes are mutually exclusive. To say they're not is to deny the experience - the existence, one might even say! - of rape survivors taking their employers to court for retraumatising them, and sportswomen fighting professional organisations for removing their right to fair competition.

Many posters here would argue that calling Brownies single-sex while accepting male members is, indeed, "a good place to begin" in the project of pressurising girls to accept these risks and indignities.