Girl Guides existing members

[magentafox]

Is anyone addressing the fact that boys who have already joined the Guides - or who join in the next few days before the policy comes into force - can stay?

One of the very few pieces of absolute power we have is the power to not spend our money at places that we do not wish to spend money at, whether we are doing so because we prefer the product somewhere else or for reasons of protest.

This is a very different thing to saying "I have volunteered at an organisation explicitly for girls, and now I cannot prioritise boys I will stop doing anything for girls". That is punishing girls because you don't like the law and oppose women's rights.

Yes....the social transition is powerful and if you validate your child as the opposite sex in every part of their life it does make me wonder whether the child would be able to convince you later that they now know that they are not the opposite sex? Or would you just convince yourself that your child is desisting due to transphobia.

Perhaps @saraclara would prefer that we vandalise property and threaten those companies instead the way the TRAs do?

But yeah, fuck those girls and have empathy for the boys instead!

Thank you for letting us know what a superior human being you consider yourself to be. It's a shame you have no humility or empathy for the posters you seek to condemn.

I apologise that I did not realise that before I could comment I had to prostrate myself and provide evidence of every single time I have expressed and felt concern for the male children who have been used and failed in this because if the adults around them had their best interests at heart they never would have been in this position. Was I supposed to add a disclaimer at the foot of every post lest someone like you turn up to throw stones?

Or does empathy only count if we prioritise the male children above all else? Of course it will be disappointing for them, but their parents and the organisation should never have put them in that situation. Children do have to leave activities and settings they enjoy. That is just a fact of life.

For most sensible people it goes without saying that transitioning these children out of the organisation which they never should have been allowed to join should and will be handled sensitively. Any parent who tells their child it's because people hate them is an abuser.

I see that we need to copy the delivery style of GG and WI and express our sadness first before entering a very serious discussion about how this happened, answering constant comments about why male inclusion was such a significant issue, and anger at GG for putting children and leaders in this situation to start with along with their abusive actions towards women who were leaders and parents who were raising alarm after alarm for more than 6 or 7 years...

What good will our expressions of sympathy do exactly in light of the discussions?

Maybe we should put bottles of piss everywhere?

Any parent who tells their child it's because people hate them is an abuser.

Absolutely!

For all the people who cry "what's the harm, let these children join Rainbows and Brownies, dont be weird and try to claim that these kids are a risk to the girls", I'm interested at what point they would be happy for trans identifying boys to have to leave?

Allow them in Rainbows from 4-7? Brownies from 7-10? Guides from 10-14? Rangers from 14 to 18? At what point are the girls priortised over the feelings of the boys?

Do we allow 4 year old Johnny who now identifies as a girl and has chosen Jilly as his new name to join Rainbows? What's the harm, he just wants to spend time with girls as he is uncomfortbale around other boys....

Well Jilly is now about to turn 7, do we allow him to move up to Brownies with all his friends, after all he has been part of the group for 3 years?

Jilly is now 10 and his shoulders have started to broaden and his jaw is markedly sharper. Does he get to move up to Guides? Can he be accommodated on camps with the girls or does he have to stay in a single occupancy tent/dorm room? Wouldn't that be 'othering' for him?

Or have we decided at puberty that he now has to leave because he cannot now be in a girls only organisation? We were happy to affirm him as a girl for 6 years but now he is clearly developing a pubescent male body and girls and developing as girls do during puberty.

I would imagine that most people who are on the 'what's the harm, be kind' side would start with allowing Jilly to be in Rainbows and Brownies but then what would their attitude be when Jilly turns 10? "Oh it's too cruel to expect Jilly to leave, all Jilly's Brownie friends would be hearbroken...."

Or do we go the whole hog at let Jilly move up to Rangers and stay there from 14 to 18?!

At what point would it be appropriate to remove Jilly from the organisation?
This isnt nice for Jilly and all the other boys but delaying tactics and giving them false hope that there will be a u-turn is worse. Parents and leaders can be supportive but still do the right thing and encourage all the Jilly's to join a mixed sex group. Lying to Jilly and going along with the deception that he is a girl and will be treated like a girl by everyone is abusive.

Not sure I could fill a bottle.....

You need to drink more water. From the looks of those bottles, I suspect that some of them were done over a day or two....

People - MPs and the HoC included - seem to be wanting now to start the conversation that should have been held as the GRA was being written, about how it could work, where the boundaries would be set and and how needs would be fairly balanced with women and girls' rights given the same priority as the wishes of people who identify as the opposite sex.

It wasn't. The experiment just rolled, and unfortunately men and activists destruction tested it. The disaster this was for women, many individually, and the many issues, were ignored and derided, and it ended with women fighting, for years, through courts, with mountains of evidence of the harm, until the Supreme Court re confirmed the law and re established women's rights.

Which should have been taken into account and respected in the first place.

The SCJ was the end of all this mess. Years of it. It's too late to re negotiate now. There cannot be a do over. People who are only starting to realise the issues are a decade behind the times, and the experiment happened and is done. There cannot be any more exploring of 'some men/boys in some special circumstances', it was tried and it failed, hence women needing the law that protects them to be clarified and to become something that forced others to grudgingly and very unhappily permit them their legal rights. If not the equal respect, care, consideration and empathy that is poured upon the boys and men in this situation. Hence proving why this law is needed.

It's over. It's done. It was not women who broke the system. The harms are there to read about for anyone who is unaware of it, there's mountains of evidence from the court cases and the judgment freely available to download and read online. But the time for all this was over a decade ago and the opportunity is now lost.

If men and activists had been more generous and capable of caring about others as well as their own interests, less misogynist and less extreme, then there might have been ways to make this work, but they weren't.

The similarity with the proposed puberty blockers trial is rather grimly similar thinking about it.

"We've fucked things up badly for thousands of people, with much harm done, through a lot of badly thought out and rather dodgy practice. But it's going to be really inconvenient to have to stop. (As a lot of ethics and inconvenient law and policy and reports are pushing us to do.)"

"Well let's erase all that, pretend it didn't happen, frantically try to shut up all the people harmed in the first round and all the people who noticed and minded about it, and let's re run the experiment again while we try and prove, hopefully, that this time if we tweak it a bit, it might end better for the vulnerable people we're er.... using ...?"

My point was more that it goes far beyond “social transition” like using different names or pronouns. It’s actively creating barriers that make it harder for the child to change their mind later.

For example, if a child suddenly decides they are a boy after all, which is quite possible, they would then have to leave all their single-sex groups as they are no longer "trans girls".

Whereas if it were something mixed sex like Scouts, they could simply say, “Actually, I’m a boy and I want to be called Jack instead of Jill,” and carry on as before.

I don’t think it’s really in any so-called “trans kids’” best interests to let them join a single-sex group, rather than a mixed one.

Absolutely agree - the affirmation model is damaging. I agree with you 100%

Was it on a thread here on or X that I read the case of a young girl who attempted suicide because she had been completely affirmed at school and at home as a boy and she couldn't face the reasction jhat she thought she would get when she desisted and reaslied that she want a boy after all?

I recently happened to be on a call where a lawyer was desperately trying to talk someone down from saying something that would most likely come back to bite them on the bum in future.

It makes me think of how the lawyers who got lumped with took this case must feel having to try and repeatedly explain that the law is not optional and they can't fudge it, or wait for the fuss to die down, or openly defy it, or take some contrary reading of it, or add in endless whataboutery or anything.

They either tear up their charitable charter and start over just so they can keep their beloved men in; or they follow the law.

It's always about the poor trans people isn't it? Never about the women and girls and what they have to endure or what this toxic pollution is doing to women's rights.

Totally agree. All these people still trying to 'be kind' - and of course force others to be kind - are idiotic virtue signallers extraordinaire. It's a bullshit argument that women need to be kind by letting men and boys invade our spaces and identity.

I agree with every word. And it is for that reason that I believe GG will drag its feet and boys who are existing members will never be expelled. And even if they are, so much damage has already been done. The counterfactual may seem obvious to some of us but it won't be possible for the children who no longer understand why sex matters.

Are you really arguing that all groups should be mixed sex so that trans identifying children can switch back and forth at will??!!

Time people started taking individual, personal responsibility again. Collective responsibility hasn't worked. It just lets everyone blame each other - from the lawyer who 'let me say the stupid thing', to the designed by committee policy which everyone and no one is responsible for. We need people to come forward into positions of power who are willing to lead, including taking difficult decisions, saying things which people find 'triggering' to hear, and, most important of all, are willing to personally face the consequences like being publicly sacked if they cock it all up.

I feel very sorry for those unfortunate boys who were told that they could be girls and now have to be told that they can't. But the responsibility for leading them back down the garden path lies with the people who led them up the garden path in the first place.

But that’s on the parents. They lied to these children. If the children are distressed and hurt, look to the people who inflicted that hurt by lying to them.

People - MPs and the HoC included - seem to be wanting now to start the conversation that should have been held as the GRA was being written, about how it could work, where the boundaries would be set and and how needs would be fairly balanced with women

And never forget they did have a conversation when they realised the GRA could affect male primogeniture and that they took steps to protect men.

No not at all sorry for misunderstanding.

No that it's irresponsible parenting to allow a "trans identifying" kid to join a group of that single gender.

So boy who decides to be girl, irresponsible to let them join Guides etc, irrespective of views on social transitioning of kids.

They are quite likely to want to change their mind, I think something like 80% do so but by then Guides may be an important part of their life.

And Guides lets in transgirls, not boys.

I also think parents or someone need to be honest with these kids.

They can't change their biological sex.

Transitioning is not easy and will always be limited. These rules may change.

There will be services and people (dating etc) where they will always be legally excluded.

Many kids with gender dyshoria and end up loving happily as their biological sex as adults.

I agree. I think they and their parents should be obliged to sign a statement saying they understand this by law.