Girl Guides... and another win for the PC brigade

As a transgender parent, I despair of the latest politically correct stance from the Guides, which you revealed last week. The organisation says that merely identifying as a girl is sufficient for a boy to be admitted. Similarly, if a man self-identifies as a woman, adult roles within Girlguiding would be available. This is simply wrong.

A realistic test for a child before puberty is that they should have been assessed by a specialist psychiatrist and be living as a girl. For a transgender woman the threshold should be much higher. They should have completed their transition, with a significant period on hormones and operations behind them.

Trans-women can have much to offer to the Guides, given their grit in transitioning, their acute perception of issues of gender and their varied life experiences. They may also be parents themselves. But for Girlguiding to also take the position that it is unlawful for leaders to inform parents that their daughters are being looked after on overnight excursions by a transgender woman flies in the face of both good management practice and the rights of parents.

It would be far wiser to anticipate and defuse any potential issue by introducing the woman concerned to the parents in advance. Despite what bureaucrats imagine, it is parents who are mainly responsible for protecting their children.

Julie Bentley, the chief executive of Girlguiding, is really doing transgender people no favours with these politically correct guidelines. She should think again.

Penny Ponders, Edinburgh So boys can now share tents with girls and go in girls’ showers at a Guide camp just because they think they are themselves girls? Sam Turner, Sandown,

Isle of Wight You report the change in policy ‘marks a major departure from the 107-year-old organisation’s origins as a “movement for girls”’. So transgender girls are not girls then? Your story reinforces people’s fear of transgender people through the perpetuation of the myth that perverts will pose as females to get to young girls.

Emily Taylor Kent, Bristol The story about boys now being able to join the Guides seems too ridiculous for words. Even dafter is that if men ‘self-identify’ as female they are given the right to undertake all adult roles in the organisation without informing the parents of the situation.

These rules seem to take the place of usual common sense.

Boys and girls should be left alone to find their own way in life.

The world has gone mad with this current thinking. John Kirby, Driffield,

East Yorkshire What Gwyneth is suggesting is not all that different from how many of us live anyway. People tend to fast for 12 hours around the time they sleep and many find yoga is a fantastic way of helping to get a good night’s sleep. Well done her for talking about these things.

Katie Fremantle, nutrition adviser, London