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?

And my problem is any girls who don’t confirm to stereotypes being under scrutiny and discussed by new children, parents and leaders. Not ok.

Nope.

Cubs are mixed sex.

Guides/Brownies are not

Nope. Parents self register their child, date of birth, emergency contacts, medical
needs etc. This has caused issues in the past where additional needs are not declared because the parents don’t want a girl to be ‘different’ and if you knew about them you could plan better to support them. You can only go on what’s on the form (actually now a database). It leaves leaders, who are volunteers, having to have some fairly awkward conversations with parents!

I suspect this is something Girlguiding will look to change.

I also think we need to remember that the fuss over the boy issue is disproportionate to the number of young people it actually affects, and one ‘side’ is definitely more vocal than the other. In nearly 30 years of volunteering this has never come up as an issue and wasn’t mentioned by any of our girls or parents when the recent announcement was made.

That little girl - silenced for telling the truth.

OP, you need to escalate your concerns to the District Commissioner for your area.

Your post had typos so made it a bit difficult to follow.

However if there weren't boys being allowed secretly into Guiding there wouldn't be all this suspicion. It is the behaviours of the leaders and the parents in having permitted this whilst not being open with other parents and the girls that are causing issues.
It is not the fault of the now concerned parents of girls

It’s still the modern way. Brownies and Guides are hugely outdated and more dull for it.

There wasn’t a stereotyping mentality. Boys didn’t claim to be girls because they weren’t into football and girls didn’t claim to be boys because they had short hair. Why not have the ambition to return to that rather than say the issue is organisations not letting “non conforming” children into single sex groups for the other sex? That’s WAY kinder in the long run.

Which has nothing at all to do with boys and men pretending to be female to access denial only spaces.

I'd raise it for sure.

I noticed that there was a child always getting changed in the toilet cubicle at swimming, which meant you couldn't access the toilet for 10 mins after swimming lessons. This was so inconvenient for my DD, who drank half the pool in her lessons... I raised it with the swim teacher and said that someone is always blocking the toilet every single time. The teacher said the other child was a trans girl, biologically a boy, so they allowed them to change in the girls changing rooms - but in the toilet for safeguarding the trans child. I was HORRIFIED, because that child is still a biological boy... Surely for safeguarding a child 8+ should be in the changing room of their biological sex ...never in that of their gender preference. Needless to say, we stopped lessons then. Imo the trans child should've been told they had to follow safeguarding protocol with boys 8+ in male changing rooms, or chosen a different pool with different changing room setup.
I'd definitely raise it - Brownies is legally supposed to be girls only.

There aren’t oodles boys being sneaked in. The numbers of trans pupils are tiny let alone the numbers who’d want to do something as dull as Brownies.

We hear your hysteria and witch hunting loud and clear.

Why do so many still go then?! Maybe different people like different things and your idea of dull isn’t everyone’s?

So why was it such a big deal for the organisation to begrudgingly accept the Supreme Court ruling? If it barely affected them then why the song and dance about it? Maybe you don’t have the stats right?

Op says that this is a boy - why are you assuming it is a girl? My post was expressing surprise that op was unaware that boys have been allowed in brownies and guides - I could not really believe that she was unaware of this. Non conforming girls come under scrutiny a lot more now since men have been allowed in women's spaces. When brownies was all girls and the organisation could be trusted to keep boys out there wasn't any need for scrutiny of individual members. However now that organisations are freely breaking the law and allowing males into female only spaces you cannot trust that everyone in a female only space actually is female.

Wasn’t an issue until boys claiming to be girls started joining. You must be really angry with those guys I guess.

Other way around for us in our local area - we have lots of girls who went to scouting groups because they thought they would be the more adventurous ones and found the leaders did a lot of craft and cooking, so came to Guiding where we do more. It depends on the skill and preferences of the leaders, who are all volunteers.

(This massive thread could have been cleared up hours ago if the OP had just messaged her friend the leader to clarify the situation.)

It's not unreasonable to feel weird, though you'll need to talk to the leader for any clarity.

The reason the other parent and the child who made the comment were there was because they had been invited like me as family of new joiners taking their promise.

But wouldn't you also see the kids during pick up/drop off? That was my experience with my older DD.

On the whole, I think it's clear.

A child's sex is not always clear in my experience.

My older son chose to have long hair for most of his childhood, and we had adults thinking he was a girl until he was 12ish. He used to get really upset about it because he wanted to be seen as a 'cool dude', and even shaved his head at one point to reach that aim, before he chose to regrow his hair out shortly after.

My younger daughter has been shaving her head since she was 10, and at 16, I still regularly get adults who see us together discussing her as my son. She even gave a big speech in front of the school trust last year, and I had people come up to me afterward telling me how well my son had spoken. I would have thought her voice gave it away (and the very feminine name). She finds it funny.

But then at her age, I have amused memories of adults calling me 'young man' when I dressed the same way she does, so being androgynous seems to run in the family. People might have been better at it back in the day, but I still recall some getting it wrong.

Also a boy in my daughters brownies group which I thought was odd!

But there shouldn't be any and definitely no sneaking .

Every 'transgirl' entering guiding impacts the rest of the pack who no longer have the single sex space they chose. (Anyone who wants mixed sex can choose Cubs, or Woodcraft folk, or various other clubs).

Furthermore there will be some children whose families only let them do Guiding because they are single sex. If that can't be guaranteed then they won't be allowed to join.

Why is the boy more important than the 20 girls?

It impacts the whole integrity of Guiding and their basic safeguarding.
Let the boy be a gender non conforming boy and join a mixed sex club.
If single sex spaces aren't kept single sex then they are no longer single sex.

Their peers know.
It will become apparent if they aren't mant to be there.

They will have to ask for birth certificates at registration for all girls. That way, no 'boyish' looking girl is singled out for scrutiny and no parent needs to fear someone has misrepresented their child's sex to gain entry, so would feel no need to scrutinise any child in the group. It's a simple enough solution.

Safeguarding is easy - if you want to do it. Schools do it every day so quit with the safeguarding lies.

And as regards integrity. Guides didn’t want this. Few people do. It’s outdated and akin to what we’re seeing in the USA , leads to anybody who doesn’t conform being scrutinised and is hugely unpleasant.

Guides probably need to bring in checking of birth certificates as part of entry.
Those can't be falsified for children.
It is a shame, but it is partly of their own making.
Of course you'd hope parents wouldn't lie, but sadly these days that doesn't seem to be possible to assume.

Yes, I did mean to quote you, however I may have misunderstood your point. As a gender non-conforming girl, you must see the problem with identification at the age girls are when they become brownies.

That's what I'm addressing. The OP has looked at a child with short hair in a brownie uniform and determined that child was 'obviously a boy'.

We're going to see more and more of this, aren't we? Pretty soon, us 'gender non-conforming' girls are going to have to show our birth certificates to get in the toilets. The idea of being so far down the TERF rabbit hole that you'd look at a child (no evidence the OP spoke to the child, even) and decide its gender based on appearance and get into a flap about it is more than a little worrying.

As a GG leader (with a giant waiting list, I could open another whole unit just with the girls on my waiting list so at least here no one thinks it’s dull or outdated!), it’s absolutely important to have single sex spaces for girls. Anyone who has been in a classroom or around mixed groups of young people can see the dynamic totally changes with mixed sex. Boys often dictate the way the group runs, I see it time and time again with my DDs’ classes and activities.

I have girls as young as 9 in my units talking about boys, boyfriends, impressing boys, etc. Having those boys in the unit would make the experience totally different for the girls there.

This sounds like a very weird scenario. Leaders’ children do sometimes have to come along but it’s very odd that this child is wearing the uniform etc.