To ask you to sign our letter to Girlguiding UK?

[AgnesBadenPowell]

IMPORTANT! Deadline 9pm Thursday

We (me and the awesome team at Fair Play For Women and some others) will be publishing an open letter to Girlguiding in a national newspaper this Sunday. We set out the safeguarding concerns with their trans policy that allows a male child who identifies as a girl to share sleeping, dressing and washing facilities with girls, and that parents are not allowed to know. We also highlight that Females who identify as boys are expected to leave, disproportionately impacting lesbian girls.

We are now asking for our supporters to sign the open letter. I obviously need your name - you can PM me with your name, and indicate whether you are a parent, Leader, former member, grandparent, aunty, concerned member of the public etc. OR you can complete the online form here:

fairplayforwomen.com/add-your-name/

We can’t publish the full text of the letter but all the issues are summarised in this factsheet and can be seen in more detail this report.

https://fairplayforwomen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/FPFWGirlguidess_factsheet.pdf

https://fairplayforwomen.com/guide-leaders-call-for-halt/

Spread the word and the link and lets get as many signatures as possible. Girlguiding has made a big misstep with this policy. As a Leader, I don't do this lightly. It's not my intention to embarrass Girlguiding but they MUST listen to our concerns about this policy - concerns shared by legal and child protection experts as well as parents and leaders.

You can read about the Girlguiding policy question here (and click through to the specific guidance on residentials): www.girlguiding.org.uk/making-guiding-happen/policies/girlguiding-policies/equality-and-diversity-policy/transgender-gender-reassignment/

Girlguiding's most recent statement on this issue can be read here: www.girlguiding.org.uk/what-we-do/our-stories-and-news/news/coverage-of-equality-diversity-policy/

@onetworedblue well, quite but that's a decision for the individual child or young adult to make. GG is removing that choice. And they are breaching the equality act by doing so.

Scouts is a completely separate organisation with its own rules. It is mixed sex now but I understand that gender self identity is recognised. It also means that biological males and females can use the facilities of the opposite sex but in my view it's guidance is much clearer on how leaders should plan for residentials, gain informed consent from children sharing and their leaders, and makes provision for alternative, private facilities if needed.

In GG, any boy who says he identifies as a girl is treated as a girl. The other girls don't get a say in this and their parents aren't informed that the children will effectively be sharing mixed sex accommodation. As a leader, can I really take children away on holiday without their parents informed consent?

I would really love to sign it but I can't sign something I haven't read

Caridalet - your daughter sounds lovely and sensible and I tend to agree with her .

Titchy - I have had MH problems . Many times and have attempted suicide but never for the ‘pressure of being female ‘ . GG is a
Place to have fun as a child and explore and go camping . I truly don’t think that girls that age need a ‘safe space ‘ in the same way that abused women and female prisoners do . Let’s agree to disagree shall we ?

MH is a human wide problem and not confined to gender

cariadlet- our girls are respectful and kind, and will bend over backwards to accommodate vulnerable others, at their own expense. Does she feel equally empathetic to the girls who will be managed out, as they are no longer welcome? Even Stephen Whittle spoke eloquently about how important the same sex environment of guides was for him as a girl (and former queens guide). To remove the safe space that allows critical thinking from the organization, and to allow gender stereotypes to instruct policy for an organization that claims to want to free girls from the same is truly bizarre.

It would also mean that Muslim girls would be excluded. I wouldn't want my granddaughter camping in mixed tents without her parents knowledge. Signed.

But I also read of suicides , self harm and the horrendous time that trans children have . It’s a fucking horrible cross to have to bear and for that reason these threads really upset me
What upsets me is knowing how both trans and other children suffer with mental health issues that lead to any kind of torment. These children need love, help and the right support.

Allowing transgirls/boys to share tents & showers with girls, potentially putting the girls at exactly the same risks of allowing any boy to share a tent or shower with them, banning the parents from being told, does a huge disservice to everyone involved and drives a bulldozer through their safeguarding policy.

I have signed the letter because the GG need a better solution to this that ensures the girls' safety. Girls should never be at risk of coming back from GG camp pregnant.

Those suicide stats, the ones pushed by Mermaids are famously over blown and misinterpreted. Lots about this on many websites if you’d care to look.

Girlguiding is an important tool to create confident female leaders. Scouts takes both sexes. Girls who are GNC should be able to stay in Guides. We need to widen the bandwidth of the way genders are performed. Not narrow our minds to what we expect from boys and girls.

Sex matters.

I truly don’t think that girls that age need a ‘safe space

Really? You don't think girls struggling with puberty, sexual assault, self harm, anorexia, sexting and other issues that a lot of teen girls have to deal with can be helped or supported or have their confidence built by peers who understand? Wow.

I truly don’t think that girls that age need a ‘safe space

ironically, I have a daughter who wears boys clothes, and identifies as agender, she rejects all things 'girly' and anything that wants her to be one gender or the other. She would prefer that he and she were abolished and everyone used they.

She goes to an all girls school. We thought long and hard about which school, the decision was not helped by the girls being a grammar and the co-ed being a comp. We chose the all girls in the end because we felt it was a less sexually pressured space and she would ahve the freedom to be herself.
That has proved to be the case, and so, yes I think girls spaces are really importnat for kids who are questioning their gender.

However, she left guides and has gone to scouts, nothing to do with gender and everything to do with activities that our particular guides and scouts do. The scouts are all outdoors and camping, the guides here aren't.

Signed

No thankyou. Not at all interested in any of this. If this is what Guiding has become, then I'll say goodbye to it. Thankfully, you appear to be a minority.

Guiding is inclusive. It could do better, as Scouts have, but it is an inclusive organisation and that is the organisation I was and am glad to be a part of.

Sorry I agree with newt lover, it is impossible for me to agree to sign something I haven't read.

I understand. It's tricky because the editor doesn't want the content published before Sunday so I can't put it here. If you've read the Fair Play For Women articles then they explain our concerns although the letter is briefer.

I would add that we are asking for the policy to be suspended pending a review. No one was consulted on the change to policy - no girls, leaders, or parents.

GG was already inclusive in that girls of any gender identity could be members and trans women with a gender recognition certificate could make the Promise and become leaders (men did and still can be volunteers but only in non-Promise making support roles - leadership is female only)

This policy a is a massive step backwards in that it excludes a whole group of girls, who should be free to join us / stay with us if that's what they want.

GG, an organisation that has fought gender stereotypes for over a century, is now basing its membership criteria on those very stereotypes.

GG was a single sex organisation. By extending membership to boys who identify as girls, they now discriminate against boys who don't identify as girls.

The policy needs to be reviewed by independent experts in equality law, data protection and child protection. The membership needs to be consulted.

If the outcome of the process is that the policy stays as it is, then that's fine. This isn't about "winning" or scoring points. I have no grudge to bear against GG. I just want to be sure that the policy is the best it can be.

is there any way the letter can be shared privately without being published?
I really will not put my name to something being published in a national newspaper that I haven't read

Guiding is inclusive. It could do better, as Scouts have, but it is an inclusive organisation and that is the organisation I was and am glad to be a part of.

Scouts is MIXED SEX, GG is not, it is invoking a schedule 16 single characteristic exemption for associations, or what the charity commission calls the 'charities' exemption'. GG is FEMALE only. That actually has a very specific meaning in law.

Girlguiding is breaking the law. Girlguiding is also breaking its own byelaws. Girlguiding is also, from reading their website, utterly and totally in a sexist muddle about the difference between sex and gender. Which for the 'ultimate feminist organisation' is a bit ironic.

A single characteristic association, for the female sex, CANNOT LAWFULLY include some legal males (transgirls) and exclude some females (transboys).

It also cannot lawfully chuck safeguarding out the window.

It needs to make its mind up what it is, if it wants to continue being a single sex female only association, IT CANNOT include males. That's the top and bottom of it.

As a female only association, it cannot ask females who are transgender to leave, that's the law. That'd be like saying, we are for females, but not black females, or muslim females, same applies to transgender FEMALES (transboys).

If it wants to be mixed sex, it cannot exclude some boys on the basis of not feeling like a girl, and admit some boys who do feel like a girl, as that's discrimination against some boys on the basis that they aren't transgender.

The law is actually really clear, so is GG's Royal Charter. They can't just willy nilly run around taking no notice of the law of the land, and if they do, they'll get in trouble, which is what has happened.

Signed

Newt

The letter cannot be shared, she's explained that. If it's such a big deal, don't sign it.

For those of you who are concerned about signing something you haven't read - I hear you. I'd have similar concerns if I hadn't written it!

But, we can't risk a leak of the content - the paper loses is scoop and won't publish.

The letter is brief but contains nothing that we haven't discussed here in terms of our concerns - the conflation of sex and gender, the discrimination against gender non conforming girls and gender conforming boys, the safeguarding aspects, the fact that the policy disregards informed parental consent.

I appreciate that might not be enough, in which case I understand and am grateful to you for reading this post and considering signing.

let us know when it's published, we can send follow up letters agreeing

Signed. I'm so grateful for calm voices of sense in the craziness. This is not anti trans, it's pro women.

presumably quite soon if the deadline is thursday.

It will be published this Sunday - I will post a link here.

I am looking forward to finding out which paper.

I support the principle, but can't put my name to something without sight, sorry.
I've asked my daughter,, who is a Guide, what she thinks about this. In context, she is a very fair and open minded child, who is very pro equality. So, I asked her if she'd welcome a trans child to her group (a boy essentially) and without hesitation, she said yes. Would you welcome this child on camp etc? Again, yes, but looking a bit doubtful about sharing/changing, etc. But when I explained she wouldn't be told this child might be biologically a boy as this is his/her private information and she's not entitled to know this (unless they told her) and that my consent as her parent would not be required or asked she was actually very shocked. Her next comments was - but the thing I like about Guides is that it's only other girls.
Many Guides do not and will not want boys to join. She was truly appalled when I said girls who thought they might be boys could be asked to leave.

Great post UrgentScurryfunge