Open letter to Girlguiding published in Sunday Times

I signed a letter on girlguiding published in the Sunday Times on the 15th April 2018 as follows:

“We are Leaders, parents, and women’s rights advocates who share a love of Girlguiding and the empowering female-only space it provides. The current transgender policy of Girlguiding UK (GGUK) compels units to accept boys who self-identify as girls for camping trips and other activities. This poses safeguarding risks, reinforces gender stereotypes and denies informed parental consent. A boy who identifies as a girl is still legally and physically male. Trans inclusion, whilst laudable, must not sacrifice the privacy, safety or inclusion of female members.

Our key concerns are:

Male children who identify as girls can share sleeping, changing and washing facilities with females. It is estimated that 65,000 cases of child sexual abuse are committed by other children each year. Most perpetrators are male, most victims are female. Segregating by sex, regardless of gender identity, is safeguarding common sense.

Leaders are banned from disclosing to parents that their daughters could be sharing mixed sex accommodation, despite no law saying they can’t, contravening GGUK’s own policy of informed consent.

Girls who identify as boys are expected to leave. This disproportionately affects lesbian girls, who are most likely to experience gender confusion, and are impacted when they most need support.

If Girlguiding is now based on an ‘inner sense of being a girl’, girlhood itself is reduced to feeling, looking or behaving ‘like a girl’, which reinforces the very stereotypes that GGUK’s own research shows are harmful.

This policy breaches Equality Law. We are calling on GGUK to suspend it pending an independent review. Girls matter, biological sex matters, and the law agrees”

The Full List Of Signatories are here

Factsheet here and full report here