Those who back banning trans girls from Girlguiding need to take another look at Brownie Law

The Brownie Law states: “A Brownie Guide thinks of others before herself and does a good turn every day.”

Today, can we honestly say that is still the case? The news that trans girls will no longer be able to join Girlguiding, the organisation that oversees Brownies and Rainbows in the UK, has left me furious. Girlguiding says it has made the decision after seeking legal advice as a result of the Supreme Court ruling on gender earlier this year. May I say, as a parent, this is the wrong choice.

My nine-year-old daughter attends a locally-run Brownie group in London, and before that, she was a Rainbow. She loves Girlguiding. It is a wholesome, wonderful way for her to spend time with her friends, including girls from all backgrounds.

And neither she or I have ever had any issues with who was allowed to come along. We were proud of Girlguiding as an inclusive organisation. More importantly, it has until now been a total non-issue day-to-day.

Supporting people, no matter who they are, is something that we have already had many conversations about with my daughter. That’s the point of being a Brownie. Supporting trans people has never been challenging for her to understand but now I’m going to have some really tricky conversations with her. Opportunities for teachable moments are always a good thing in our family, but it is incredibly bleak every time we have to discuss and confront real examples of discrimination and bigotry happening to vulnerable people.

I’m not just appalled. I’m frustrated.

The more vulnerable you are, the greater the need to put additional things in place to achieve equitable safety – not take them away. I firmly believe that this movement against trans people is one rooted in misogyny in a way that will absolutely not make any women and girls safer.

This move has generated attention in a way that will only embolden people who support a world in which all vulnerable people are less safe. It feels like a huge step backwards.

I’m sad and angry about this choice. That this is affecting my daughter and her friends directly is part of that anger. But that anger would exist even if I didn’t have a child, and even if we weren’t involved with Girlguiding.

The people really negatively impacted by this will be children and trans adults who get real benefit from being able to volunteer, and maybe “the only real change” will be that girls are not encountering trans people in this formerly safe setting. They will still absolutely be encountering men. Male volunteers are welcome at Girlguiding, which remains a positive thing. This makes it an attack on the trans community specifically, not a bolstering, safeguarding policy designed to protect girls. It is an attack on children, and that is just such an anathema to what the whole purpose of the organisation is about.

I question the energy that is being dedicated to harming vulnerable people and children rather than tackling the much bigger and very real risks facing women and girls. That this news came out on the same day as the Sarah Everard inquiry’s latest report into violence against women puts all this in focus. There are myriad risks for women moving through the world. The evidence is clear that trans people and trans children represent a negligible percentage of those risks.

I consider myself to have an above-average interest in human rights, but I would not call myself a “trans activist”, as anyone who supports this community is often called. That is a weaponising word designed to make supporting human rights sound like an outlier behaviour. We are in a society that is increasingly demonising activism in general. We have new and stringent laws against many types of activism. By identifying people as “activists”, you’re making them sound extreme. And to me, there is absolutely nothing extreme about supporting basic equality, equity and safety and rights for all people.