Girlguiding is a home for trans people
Girlguiding UK issues a statement:
We have been involved in a legal case with a former volunteer since 2018 and we have now reached a settlement. Please find our statement below.
Girlguiding’s full statement regarding its legal case with Katie Alcock:
Girlguiding celebrates the ever-growing diversity of its membership. We are committed to balancing the views, needs and wants of all of our members in a complex and changing world. It’s important that we do this in a thoughtful and respectful way, reflecting our volunteer code of conduct. So we have a diversity and inclusion strategic plan which underpins our commitment to inclusion.
Define diversity. Define inclusion.
Diversity meaning girls from all backgrounds, excellent, keep doing that. Diversity meaning boys, then you’re not Girlguiding any more. Same for “inclusion.”
Girlguiding recognises that gender critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act and that there are girls and volunteers who hold gender critical beliefs within our membership. We respect and value their right to do so, and to express those beliefs. Girlguiding is also, and shall remain, a home for trans people. Whatever their protected characteristics, all our young members and adult volunteers are welcome within Girlguiding.
All trans people? So male trans people as well as female ones? Then it’s not Girlguiding any more.
Our priority is to ensure that we offer a safe space where all girls are welcome to have fun, learn, and grow, and feel that they can be who they truly are.
But when they say “all girls” they mean…?
Girlguiding has evolved for 110 years and will continue to evolve to ensure that it remains a forward-thinking, inclusive and diverse organisation where all girls, young women and volunteers feel welcome and belong.
But when they say “all girls” they mean…?
On another subject – I would love to know why on earth the image at the top is of a girl’s hand holding a pen incorrectly.
In their mission statement they claim to be “for girls only.” >> https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/about-us/what-makes-guiding-special/our-mission/ Whatever that means. We all used to know what it means.
Along with the word “girl” maybe they are having trouble with the definition of the word “only” too. Maybe we are all experiencing a global paradigm shift in semantics. :P
On “another subject”, I used to hold a pen like that. It took some practice, as an adult, to learn a different way. I was never taught how to hold a pen. I’m left-handed, and I was given almost no instruction on how to write in a left-handed manner; the teacher at the time thought a brief comment about “tilt your paper this other way”, once, was sufficient. I was penalized for having poor penmanship, but given no instruction in how to improve it. All my life I’ve hated writing by hand, and I’ve never been any good at it (certainly part of the reason I hated it). I avoid writing by hand now, and I refuse to use cursive for anything other than my signature. I print, and I avoid doing even that. I knew quite a few fellow students in my young days who held pens in a variety of manners, some of which (I know now) were even worse than the depicted grip; I don’t know why they weren’t instructed to try a different way. It’s possible that changing someone’s pen grip was frowned upon.
That’s almost exactly how I’ve always held a pen, my handwriting has always been atrocious, and I get a cramp if I try to write more than a couple sentences. My half-hearted attempts to change went nowhere. Fortunately I took a typing class in 7th grade, which was about the only skill I learned in school that I’ve actually benefited from!
That’s interesting; I actually like writing longhand. It works differently from typing somehow. When I write for publication I have to write the draft in longhand. I don’t really understand why, and wonder about it every time, but it just feels necessary.
I think I (very faintly) remember being taught the correct grip in first grade, and finding it quite alien and tricky at first.
My husband often holds his pen that way – and his fork.
I like writing in longhand, too, but I can’t anymore because of arthritis. I thought I couldn’t write on the computer, but when necessity forced me to do that or give up writing, I discovered I could. I do still like to edit by hand, though, because I do see things differently.
I’m not seeing the pen-holding image. What’s it look like?
maddog1129, it’s the stock photo at the top of the the statement in question.
That girl is holding a pen exactly the way I do. I have EDS; if I attempt to hold a pen in the conventional manner of people whose joints don’t bend the wrong way and dislocate, the pain is too great for me to continue.
Well, these days, what with the arthritis too, the pain starts almost immediately; but when I was young, I could write all day holding it just like that. Either hand.
P.S. My husband holds his pen in the conventional manner; his handwriting is atrocious. People always commented on how beautiful my handwriting was, and I did a bit of calligraphy as a hobby. My handwriting is on the labels of boxes in the South Australian Government Archives, after floods damaged the original boxes. I was part of the team which rescued thousands of documents, carefully separating them and sending them off to be dried out, and when the boss saw my handwriting on the worksheets, he asked me to write the new labels.
The fact that a person with EDS has to hold a pen the way the hand in the photo does doesn’t make that the universally correct way to hold a pen.
I cannot see where in that photograph it claims that this is the correct way to hold a pen.
Is there a universally correct way? I think it’s results driven. The fist grip works better for sidewalk chalk, the two fingertip grip works better for writing with a tiny brush. Artists use various techniques.
We must respect the diverse ways children pick up a pencil for the first time. If they begin writing with the eraser end of the pencil…then that’s just their special little way of being JUST AS CORRECT as anyone else.
Since an eraser is used for correcting, that’s probably correct. :P
Yes there’s a correct way to hold the pen or pencil. Holding it in the fist is not that way. It’s a fine motor skill, and holding it in the fist isn’t fine motor skilled. Needing to do it that way for physical reasons is an exception, not the rule.
@Peter N #9
For some reason, the stock photo isn’t there when I click through to the statement.
Thanks, OB, for the image.