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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Zoe Williams

Girlguiding didn’t have to do this to its trans members. There was another way

Guides and Brownies stand in a row outside in a field
Guides and Brownies from the 22nd Walthamstow unit in London, 2018. Photograph: Doug Peters/PA

Great work, Guides; you’ve taken some members you had no idea even existed, and expelled them from your organisation with effect from September. This gives trans girls a humane half-year to extricate, because that’s definitely what kids want: to participate for six months in a uniformed, voluntary, social organisation that has explicitly kicked them out, while they look for somewhere more welcoming.

“Like every charity, we have to follow the law,” Girlguiding says in an online info pack whose FAQs are almost comically Stasi-lite. “Will volunteers be expected to carry out additional checks or ask for proof?” (The good news, folks, is that they won’t; the mind boggles at what those additional checks might be that didn’t breach at least some safeguarding protocols.) “How should volunteers check that trans girls have left?” (Some sort of dunking stool? In actuality, again, they won’t check.)

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