GIRES advice for young people signposts to TransWiki:
"Finding a community
For all of us – perhaps especially so when we are feeling low, anxious or stressed – it can be very helpful to have a supportive network of people around us. Many young people who come to this service speak about the support they have gained from social networking and other online sites or resources, which have helped them talk to other trans people (see the 'Staying Safe Online' section below).
We also think it is important to make face to face connections with people in a similar situation. There may be local LGBT or other youth groups in your area, school or college – and organisations such as Gendered Intelligence hold regular meet-ups in cities around the country. If you are under our service, then we run a regular young peoples’ group that everyone can attend.
A good resource for finding groups across the UK is TranzWiki: www.tranzwiki.net You can also find out about groups by searching online, asking at your school or college or CAMHS, or speaking to your clinicians at the Tavistock Centre. You may even want to set up a group yourself!"
www.tranzwiki.net/
Yesterday I read a very concerning article about a trans youth group in Canada which had clear Safeguarding failings and exposed vulnerable teenagers to risk from predatory males.
It seems increasingly clear that there are significant numbers of influential adults within the transgender community who do not understand and/or respect established Safeguarding principles which should serve to protect children and Vulnerable adults
It is a systemic failure,
"My Trans Youth Group Experience with Morgan Page
Posted on January 26, 2019
by GNC-centric
GNC-centric is a detransitioned dysphoric lesbian. She lived as a trans man for most of her teen years in Canada. For many of those years she attended book readings and lectures on gender and LGBT events, and studied queer ideology. She now uses social media to speak critically about the harms she witnessed and experienced as a member of the transgender community.
I first met Morgan Page in 2012 at a conference for Gay-Straight Alliances from high schools in the greater Toronto area. Though I’ve since detransitioned, I identified as trans at that time, but I didn’t know any trans people in real life, only online. Morgan was a super nice, friendly person and invited me to the youth group she ran at The 519 in Toronto (LGBT Community Centre). Most of the time, the Trans Youth Group attendees were majority MTFs and “nonbinary” (NB) males. There was an upper age limit (somewhere between 21-25) but it was a pretty small group, usually fewer than 10 people; so when people aged out they just stuck around. I guess others learned that the age limit wasn’t being enforced because more and more older (30-40 year old) MTFs started to join.
I remember one day, there were three MTFs over 40 who were hitting on the teen FTMs, very explicitly. It was obviously making us uncomfortable, but almost no one ever said anything, only changed the topic or tried to engage them in a conversation away from us. (continues)
It was very common for the group to discuss the logistics of sex before and after SRS, kinky sex, and erotic fanfiction. I remember Morgan asking the three teens in the room, including me, if we were comfortable talking about this, but obviously we weren’t going to say no now that the conversation had already been started by these older people. I know of at least three FTMs who entered into relationships with older MTFs while in this group, all of which seemed very unhealthy to me. To me, FTMs under 18 dating or sleeping with (usually kinky) MTFs over 20 seemed very sexually exploitative. Healthy boundaries between adults and minors were foreign to this group, much like in the greater queer and trans community.
Morgan didn’t present herself as someone to emulate, but as someone to share her trans experiences with us. She spoke of her time as a teen prostitute, her SRS, her art, her writing, and her connections in the queer community. I think most of the teens saw her as someone to just give us advice and support, since she could recommend which clinics or doctors to see to start HRT and tell you what you needed to say to doctors so they’d sign off on SRS. She’d talk about what to expect after SRS. She knew the MTF side personally, but she also was intimate with a fair number of trans men so she told us about the FTM side too. At the time, to me, she seemed like the magic key to accessing all the medical transition resources I wanted. This was a trans support group, so one might assume this was normal—and it may have been for such a gathering—but in retrospect, I find elements of this concerning. (continues)
4thwavenow.com/2019/01/26/my-trans-youth-group-experience-with-morgan-page/
What Safeguards are in place to ensure that the UK groups that GIRES are signposting vulnerable young people to do not present similar risks as the Youth Group described above?