Testimony from someone who was a Brownie, Guide and Young Leader
I was a brownie, then a girl guide for years, back in the late 80s and 90s. Guides for me was one of the havens away from school where - mostly - kids were better to me than they were in school. As a deeply unpopular and badly bullied child, organised fun was the only way I really got to interact with other children at certain times in my youth. It enforced a certain amount of conditional tolerance that let me go on camps, and be part of events as a member of a group.
It also taught me loads of skills, in particular outdoor skills, which I otherwise might never have picked up, as I wasn't very physically adept and so avoided exercise, and I wasn't popular enough to feel able to do anything like the Duke of Edinburgh award. I still have a real love of wild camping, and I still remember how to start a fire, build a shelter, and square (or tri!) lash just about anything together in a pinch. Guides was without exaggeration one of the things that shaped me into the person I am today.
Every guide troop is different, of course. I loved my troop leaders and they were incredibly tolerant and supportive of me. I was a difficult child for adults to love: smart and creative, but insolent and chaotic. In my guide leaders I found adults whose entire focus was on nurturing and encouraging creativity and exploration rather than focussing on a curriculum, and that was transformative for me. For a certain kind of little freak, girl guides can in my experience be a rare semi-safe space where the rules are just a little different from at school, in so many ways.
You can perhaps imagine, then, how sorely disappointed I was to see Girlguiding UK change its policy to ban trans girls from being brownies and guides. I'm not trans, but I am a lesbian, something I didn't know until years after leaving guides. More than that, I have never been gender conforming, not even as a kid, and so along with everything else guides gave me it was a space to be myself, somewhere I never felt like the way I looked and acted was wrong. It breaks my heart to think that trans girls are to be shut out of that space and that opportunity, one they may so badly need.
I still have my guide sash. In addition to my trefoil, I got my blue, yellow, and green trefoils, my World Badge, the usual collection of activity badges, and a bunch of pennants. My patrol badge is a thrush. I nearly got my BP but fell short at the end. I will be very sorry to feel like I have to unpin my trefoil and send it back to Girlguiding UK. But I'm not sure I can keep it if this policy is not changed.
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