Girlguiding pushing stereotypes and reality-defying nonsense

[Fenlandia]

I couldn’t see a thread on this yet, but saw on Maya’s Twitter that Girlguiding have put out an article called “Rainbow Girl” about a child called Rainbow.

girlguiding.foleon.com/guiding-magazine/guiding-summer-2022/rainbow-girl

“Jane and her husband Mike started noticing that Rainbow identified more with female characters, toys and books when she was 18 months old. ‘Some people suggested we just say no, encourage her to identify with the male characters, but how can you explain that to a young child? To what end? No to playing with toys she loved or characters she loved to pretend to be? It felt cruel to say no, to the say the least.’”

[Or you could just let your kids play with whatever fires their imagination?]

The parents can’t deal with Rainbow’s desire to wear dresses or have long hair, until finally Rainbow comes out with this:

“One day she said to us in a quiet voice, “My real name is Rainbow”.
‘Until you’re in that position as a parent you cannot know how you will react. I could have laughed and said, “No it’s not.” I could have compartmentalised her life: “OK you can be Rainbow at home, but not at school." We didn’t take this route. Instead we asked, “Can you tell us a bit more about how you feel? There are some boys who like all the things that society thinks are for girls but know themselves to be boys, and there are some who feel like they are girls inside."

[I thought real trans wasn’t about adhering to stereotypes of what’s for boys or girls?]

Reading the whole thing, I’m aghast and would get banned if I said what I really thought of how this is being framed. This child just has a personality. They’re 7 years old and being imprinted with a fixed transgender identity by parents who seem confused, to be charitable. And then being put on a pedestal by an organisation set up solely to support women and girls.

Maya’s thread and the many comments on it are worth reading (mobile.twitter.com/MForstater/status/1549864649004285959 ). I’ll pick out this one:

“I am completely agog and aghast at an organisation that has spent so long saying girls can do anything they want now saying that if boys like stereotypically feminine things they are the same as girls.”

Jesus. I know we all predicted this, but seeing it written down like that is still shocking.

A few years ago those parents would have been referred to social services.

Now the bloody girl guides are endorsing it!

Totally captured. I sincerely hope that if Liz Truss wins the leadership bid, she tackles this with a bloody sledgehammer.

This is what I read (photo should be attached)
Adults sharing with children is not the norm in GG either and would also be risk assessed.

But it does happen and as pp pointed out GG leaders are required to help the girls dress/toilet ect and if GG believes a man can be a woman then they will be allowed to preform such tasks and sleep in the same room if required.

I'm astonished that GG thinks it's normal to police which fictional characters children are allowed to identify with. Do the leaders submit their own imaginative and fantasy lives for scrutiny during training?

My four year old thinks they’re a dog. And sometimes only talks in barks, which can go on for hours. They also believe that their teddies are real animals and will cry if I say they’re not. That’s so messed up that they thought that an 18 month old could be interested in the ‘wrong’ toys.

What is the point of a risk assessment if the men in that risk assessment are assessed on the basis that they're women.

Are they ever assessed on the basis that they might be, as Naomi Cunningham phrases it, erotic cross dressers?

And, it's my understanding that if boys say they are girls they can share tents with girls, and parents aren't informed. No one's consent is given or even sought.

That's down to whoever is doing the risk assessment though surely? So it comes down to how much you trust the leaders of your particular group to do the risk assessment, as it is with any other aspect of an activity.

Just reading the scouts training pack for leaders and interestingly it states that while on mixed sex residentials male and female leadership should be provided as appropriate but it is ESSENTIAL that a female adult be on the leadership team"

It's their use of male and female I find interesting instead of using man and woman.

The policy of the girl guides comes from the top down. They have been told repeatedly that the policy of pretending that boys are girls and men are women is a safeguarding issue. But they refuse to acknowledge it.

On the AIBU thread, countless leaders are saying that they simply are not allowed to make any kind of challenge to this policy. They say that privately, down the pub, lots of leaders are gender critical, but publicly, they can't say so. They are all gutted that if they are faced with this situation in their own groups, they will have to resign, rather than place children in danger.

It doesn't sound to me like they have much leeway in terms of risk assessment criteria.

That camp sounds lik one my dd went on - they spent the whole time in a marquee doing crafts. This was less than ten years ago. And a regional camp not just a unit one.

Was your DD as disappointed as I was? So sorry if that was the case. Bit sad really that some GG camps haven’t moved on with the times.

Units I am aware of (not just the one I used to run) vary from doing very little out of the meeting place, to camping (I took my Rainbows camping), rifle shooting, SUP-ing, going to the Big Gig, campfires with marshmallows etc. etc.

I did go to a Brownie event while a leader where some leaders complained that it was all crafts (TBF it was Thinking Day which, being in February, is not ideal or reliable for outdoor activities).

No adult would be doing those things alone, male or female. Basic safeguarding is never to be alone with a child, especially if doing something which could be construed incorrectly. Even helping a Brownie to wash her hands we have the door propped open, tell another leader where we are going and bring a third person along. Would you decline a male first aider?

Very. She left GG and joined scouting and went back to the same campsite with them a few months later where she built fires, climbed trees and the climbing wall, built rope bridges over the river, played wide games, got soaked, went on night hikes and had a great time. But she will still mention how awful that Brownie camp was.

This is why it's regressive.

My experience of guides was equally sexist. The scouts were all making rafts to play on the lake, and having fun on the zip wire, whilst the guides were identifying leaves and fashioning makeshift washing up stands.

The activities were imprinted with gender stereotyping.

I was under the impression that the guides had progressed in the last few decades, and were feminist in outlook.

And now, overnight, trans ideology has turned back the clock.

Toy preference and sartorial choices dictating actual sex categories.

oh god no, please keep it to this corner of MN. We don't give a fuck and it's great to be able to ignore you all.

It is always great when people respond to a post in the middle of a thread to point out how actively they are ignoring us.

oh god no, please keep it to this corner of MN. We don't give a fuck and it's great to be able to ignore you all.

Too late Frazzle there was an AIBU thread posted yesterday which I think has reached around 6 pages so clearly people are interested and do give a fuck about the safety and welfare of children.

I wouldn't want a volunteer male adult doing intimate care on my daughter, no.
Girls are entitled to privacy (even if they don't think they need it - many 5 year olds would strip off in public if not prevented).
It is irrelevant whether a male Guider is with a female or alone with girls if they are viewing naked girls at the pool because the Rainbows are messing about in their cubicles, or wiping a disabled Guide's bottom.
It is also irrelevant whether there is another adult there asleep in a church hall where girls are sharing with an adult male.

Looks like the AIBU thread is going strong.

This is a parenting website, and I think you'll find that parents are absolutely concerned about males involved in their daughter's intimate care, and boys sharing tents with their daughters without informing them.

The guides policy is a regular topic on AIBU You might want parents to ignore it, but I'm afraid they don't.

Good for her!

What I find really sad about kids like "Rainbow" is that it all seems very straightforward when a child is 7, but in a few years their "daughter"' will shoot up in height, develop a low voice, facial hair, broad shoulders and massive feet. Transing a pre-pubertal child is easy because changing hairstyle and clothing will be enough to pass as the opposite sex. But it is so short-sighted and foolish because once pubery hits there is no way to hide your sex.

Jane and her husband Mike started noticing that Rainbow identified more with female characters, toys and books when she was 18 months old.

because at 18 months they can just about recognise themselves in a mirror, and possibly use a fork, and undress themselves.

It would have to be a really advanced 18th month old child identifying with various genders and deciding they wanted to try out different genders😒

Sounds remarkably similar to what is happening in breastfeeding support. Top down, worry about it turning up as an issue in local groups precipitating resignations of volunteers and closure of local groups. I wonder if this is a common story across voluntary groups for women and girls. Sometimes I wonder if the goal is simply to destroy these groups not to make them more “inclusive” but just to destroy and turn the clock back to a time when women and girls had no organisations of their own and were severely limited outside the home.

It is a shame there is no poll on the AIBU.

But it is so short-sighted and foolish because once pubery hits there is no way to hide your sex.

One of the ambitions behind stories such as this is to persuade healthcare systems to implement pre-pubertal medical transition.