To feel weird about Brownies because there’s a boy there?

[ElizaDolittle124]

Was invited to Brownies tonight to see my daughter do her ‘promise’. Was a bit awkward as it turns out there’s a boy in the group. Another parent turned up with a younger sibling who immediately said loudly ‘mummy why is there a boy here?’ The mum was v flustered trying to explain he wanted to join in and the child just said ‘but brownies is for girls’ until she told him to be quiet.

I just feel a bit weird that I didn’t know. The whole reason we joined brownies was for the girls only environment, which my daughter was really excited about. Feel like I should have just put her in the scouts instead now (which would have been more convenient). But my friend is one of the brownie leaders and she encouraged me by promoting the idea of a girl’s only space.

There’s a brownie camp sleepover thing next month where they sleep in dormitories. My daughter can’t go anyway as we have other plans that weekend, but it’s got me wondering how they’re going to arrange that? Surely they can’t have the boy sleeping separately in a room on his own, but equally he can’t go with the girls?

Then there won't be too many upset 'trans' children then, will there. So what's the problem by keeping Guides and Brownies to biological females then! Why all the pretend hurt for not allowing boys in.

Really creepy isn’t it. Teaching girls they have no right to have boundaries.

Very creepy.

Any parent that tells a 6 year old they can change sex needs looking at. They are children. Whats wrong with their bodies as they are. The ridiculousness stereotypes to suggest boys do this and girls do that so.....must be in 'wrong' body..no one is in the wrong body, they are in their own body.

Stuff like Guides is just about all these parents could offer their confused sons, since they obviously can't actually change sex. It is why they push so hard.

They could join The Scouts.

Well....that's EXACTLY how I felt when my son was in Cubs and then Scouts. There were more girls than boys.

Yes but that's not affirming them. They are in agreement with their sons that they really are girls. They call them their new names, let them wear girly clothes and paint their rooms pink, then what? They can't turn them into girls - They are too young for hormone treatment or surgery and you can't get puberty blockers. So they need other ways, like Guides. Scouts doesn't cut it for them. When puberty kicks in, it gets even worse, as the child is becoming more male, so Guides is like a life raft. They are all delusional of course.

Got it. Interesting that gender affirmation seems to involve a tumble into the very stereotypes feminism challenged and rejected - frills, pink etc.

What's exactly how you felt? Your son joined a mixed sex organisation so you felt weird (?) that there were both sexes there?

Tbh I think that girls being allowed to be Scouts has a negative effect on Boy Scouts (as well as the positives for the girls who join). I think boys/ men deserve their own spaces too. The best solution imho is to have mixed sex scouts and boys only groups.
And exclusively girls only brownies, guides. However tiny the number of so called trans girls there are in the Guiding movement it’s wrong that they were ever allowed to join.

Oh no your kid is around a boy whatever will they do.

Scouts went through a time they were struggling for numbers hence admitting girls.

Lots of group struggle for leaders, and hall time trying to run separate sessions and camps for an all boys group and a mixed group would be far too much commitment for lots of leaders

Relevant BBC article today.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2rn250ddjo

Scouting wouldn't have survived without opening up to females. It was an issue that was democratically voted on in the organisation. It's clear it's a mixed sex organisation and members and their families can make an informed choice about that.

Girl Guiding have always had strong enough demand and membership of young people and volunteers to remain single sex gender.

What GGHQ have done is use "transrights" to allow some biological males into a "single gender" organisation, and not declare if it has now a mixed sex space. This has denied members and their families a choice, and dissent gets cried down as "transphobia".

I found that my Brownies and Cubs units had very different personalities. Same catchment. Same activity range. But being single sex allows girls to take up more space than they naturally do in mixed sex environments where boys tend to dominate. There is a gap for quieter, gentle boys (my DSs are more like this), but that's not a problem for GGHQ to resolve.

The numbers in the article sound realistic based on my experience of "trans" identifying young people in schools and ratios of Girl Guiding sections.

I disagree that male "transgirls" and "transwomen" should have been allowed to join Girl Guiding as "females" and it should have remained a single sex organisation not single "gender".

It shows that the amount of handwringing over this issue by GGHQ has been disproportionate over the numbers of members affected. GGHQ is also misled on the scale of support of their policy as the trans-lobby and their allies are more vocal online than gender critical members.

How much money have GGHQ wasted on pandering to this issue than having to legally U-turn at a time when cencus has risen and units have struggled with their costs and had dilemmas over passing that on to increasing subs to their members (plus a climate of fund raising being much harder since 2020).

I wonder if GG will now formally apologise to the leaders who were forced out over this in the first place?
That needs to be their next step.

Oh I doubt it

Your probably right. But it would certainly be nice and show they are sincere.

Although the cynic in me can't help wonder if their insurance company has forced the issue. Hence the date.

I'm a leader and commissioner. This is not OK and not allowed. If you want to give me the unit details I will take it forward

Yep I agree with this. Of course its nice for boys to be able to have just boy time? And vice versa

What is it you think is not allowed?

What was the outcome of this ? Did we find out why a boy was at a Girl only activity

I don't think we found out that there was a boy at a girl only activity did we?

What we have reported is a 7 year old child dressed in a brownie uniform who was apparently "very obviously a boy". At 7 years old this can only means short hair can't it? OP never clarified if she'd asked a leader about it.

I used to get mistaken for a boy all the time until puberty as I had cropped hair and wore shorts everywhere. I'm now a 5' tall massively top heavy old lady so it doesn't happen these days!

If it was a boy then he shouldn't have been I'm the brownies obviously.

op could have asked her friend the brownie leader if male or female

maybe was a Grl and too embarrassed to come back

Exactly.