Six year old trans girl ‘tries to cut off her penis’ after Guide ban

[JonesTown]

Quite a disturbing article in this morning’s Observer regarding the impact of the Guides’ ban on trans girls following the Supreme Court ruling.

It reports on the experience of one six year old trans girl named Emily after hearing she could no longer attend Rainbows:

Emily’s parents decided to be honest with their daughter about the situation, and explained that she was no longer able to take part in Rainbows because she was trans. A few hours later Curt said they found her “sobbing in her room” and were “shocked” to find her holding a pair of plastic scissors to her penis.

AIBU to find this a distressing consequence of campaign by anti-trans activists or is it a natural result of allowing such young children to change their gender identity?

Why the heck are this child's parents allowing such harrowing, personal details become common knowledge?

Poor child.

I don’t think fibbing to create magic surrounding Father Christmas leaving presents in their house for about 8 years is remotely comparable to telling children or adults alike that they can change sex for life. For a start one doesn’t impact others whilst the other one does.

What an awful group of parents. Cult-like.
Anyway what girl? That's a boy.

Girls should be banned from scouts. When I was a kid boys went to scouts and girls went to guides.

It’s not that complicated, surely. Your friend is a boy. Rainbows is for girls only.

It’s interesting how often these parents arrive just in the nick of time to find their child attempting to remove their penis with scissors.

This boys friends may well be, probably as their parents have all lied to them as well that he's a girl. They can all go join the Scouts together and let the rest of the girls at Rainbows enjoy their single sex provision safe in the knowledge that now that is exactly what it is.

Wouldn’t the sensible solution be to send this child to a mixed sex group that already exists ie the scouts?

A number of years ago both girl guiding and scouts asked their membership to vote on whether they should remain single sex. Scouting, I assume due to falling numbers, voted to open membership up to all, whilst girl guiding chose to remain single sex. Are you suggesting girl guiding should ignore the overwhelming majority of its members to pander to a small number of parents that can’t say no to their male child, especially when there is another organisation (scouts) that they can join instead?

I think the problem then is you're into the area of eroding female only spaces which we know are important.

Personally I have a lot of empathy for any children affected and think the entire situation has been handled really badly by girlguiding UK and I feel sorry for the leaders left to navigate such a hot mess with a lack of clear leadership and backing.

However I also think in this instance the parents made an inappropriate choice to put issues into a 6yo that were more than the child had the capacity to handle. There's lots of things that happen that are unfair in life and I see it as my job to shield my child from that as much as possible until he's at the right age to understand certain things. The parents in this case didn't do that and I think that was a really poor choice on their part, it's no surprise that the child had a huge reaction and was extremely distressed as a result. But that could absolutely have been avoided by a different conversation from the parents. It doesn't sit well at all even outside of the trans aspect of the situation.

I don’t believe this story or trust the guardian / observer (whatever). I won’t click links because ideologues on here can have some of that back when they moan about links to media they don’t like. It will be either completely exaggerated or a total non story. Like a lot of bilge they spout.

Should we move towards a situation like the Greens and Zack Polanski are advocating where trans women are legally recognised as women, and have access to all ‘female’ spaces?

Alternatively, all spaces could simply be made mixed gender.

This would blunt the impact of transphobia.

Also in mild hysterics that ‘girl cutting off her penis’ is even a legitimate sentence at this point. There’s a clue in there somewhere.

Then it would be just like the Scouts, so why not join the Scouts? Besides, it's not a straightforward solution to change the entire charter of a charity. Plus, these people wouldn't accept an openly unisex organisation because the whole point is to use female spaces for validation.

Oh, and as a Scout I once inquired into a connected sailing organisation but was told it was only for boys. Does anyone give a shit?

And would girls who require a single sex environment be allowed to create another one or will that be forbidden too?

The problem isn't the existence of a girls' organisation, it's this hideous ideology and the parents who pushed it.

This response is so so silly, I actually can’t believe anyone can be dim enough not to see the problem. And I genuinely mean that.

the problem is the root. The problem is ever telling this boy, or pretending to this boy, that he can be a girl. OF COURSE he can’t be. He isn’t.

yes, there are many child victims in this. And all caused by the complete imbeciles who pretended trans is a thing. You have caused much damage.

no, terfs are not to blame. Terfs are right, terfs are the real kind ones.

I notice that whenever people mention the poor trans girls being banned from Guides they talk about 6 year old boys being sad hoping that you won't think about the 16 year old boys who may be sharing tents and changing facilities with girls

Why? As a mixed sex group for this type of activity already exists, why is another necessary? Why did this little boy's parents not enrol him in a mixed sex group in the first place?

Why is it not ok to have a girls only group?

A 6 year old boy waved a pair of plastic scissors in the direction of his penis because he wasn’t allowed to attend an all girls group. That is more accurate than the wording in the article.

The child has been made to feel rejected because of the warped views of his parents who have made him aware at a young age that his penis is the problem. Poor kid. Imagine having parents who make you feel ‘other’ rather than accepting that your preference for glittery stuff and dolls (or similar) is completely fine and isn’t because you were born in the wrong body. Those parents should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

My DD grew up believing in Father Christmas, the Tooth Fairy etc. She also spent four years believing she was a boy at the height of this social contagion, presenting as a boy, and on the GIDs waiting list.

Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy didn't cause lasting damage. She'll never get those four years back to be able to repair the social isolation that came with the school bending over backwards to cater for her social transitioning.

I’d prefer that too tbh. Though I recognise the reasons why they went mixed sex and it did probably save the organisation.

But there already is a mixed sex organisation like that. So why didn’t the parents sign him up to brownies to start with? The reason the parents signed him up for brownies was because they wanted a girls only organisation for validation.

Should we move towards a situation like the Greens and Zack Polanski are advocating where trans women are legally recognised as women, and have access to all ‘female’ spaces?

No. Thats not transphobia.

The Greens are as extreme and insane as Reform these days, fuck them 50 ways to Friday.

And no, men and women should both be allowed to form single sex spaces for reasons nobody struggled with until five minutes ago. Sex exists, sometimes that matters and sometimes you don't get everything you want. Nobody had a problem telling women and girls that and they still don't while they try to dismantle their rights!

While you can't change biology ...I think calling him
"a strange child " is unnecessary and cruel. Body dysmorphia is real and I believe in rare cases there is a disconnect between the sex of the body and the sex of the brain, in intersex people the physical presentation can be at odds with the sex the person identifies with. Dismissing the feelings of the child and saying you are a boy is too simplistic.
He very well may change as he gets older., be a feminine man, gay or it may be a phase. It also may not be ... But right now he's a scared frightened child who's head is telling him one thing and his body is showing another.

The boy is 6.

6

He is being lied to by the adults in his life.

His parents are responsible for this. They should have been truthful with him from the very start.

He is a boy, that will never change.