We use cookies where necessary to allow us to understand how people interact with our website and content, so that we can continue to improve our service.
We only ever receive anonymous information, and cannot track you across other websites.
View our privacy policy
Lead Counsellor at Anne and guest contributor, Marianne Oakes, responds to the decisions made by Girlguiding and the Women’s Institute to ban trans girls and women.
Marianne Oakes is a UK-based psychotherapist and counsellor who specialises in gender, sexuality, and relationship therapy.
“When a school, sports organisation, or club bans trans children from participating in the activities they love, it is not about safety, and it is certainly not about “simple biology” as biology is anything but simple. These bans are not motivated by concern for anyone’s wellbeing. They are political choices. They function like other historic systems of exclusion: mechanisms designed to separate, stigmatise, and deny a group of children access to the social life their peers take for granted. They send trans children one message: you do not belong here.
The Girlguiding announcement this week was not grounded in research, evidence, or risk assessments. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, showing that young trans girls pose a threat to anyone. You don’t need specialist training to see the statement for what it was: a decision shaped by political pressure, not safeguarding needs.
We should have no illusions about the stakes here. These escalating bans do not emerge from public demand, nor from data. They grow out of networks of influence, money, and ideology. They target trans people first, but their implications reach far wider.
“Policies built on fear rather than evidence erode democratic norms and put every marginalised group at risk.”
The same movements pushing anti-trans restrictions often align with those attacking reproductive rights, racial justice, and social equality.
Look around your town, really look. Compare your community today to how it was before 2015. Public services hollowed out. Leisure centres fading from neglect. People angrier, more divided, more suspicious of each other. The vibrancy, the sense of shared life, has been slowly stripped away.
This week’s announcement from Girlguiding was not only an attack on trans children; it was a warning to all children: step outside what we deem acceptable, and you will be pushed out of public life.
This is not just about trans inclusion. It’s about the kind of society we are becoming, and whether we accept a future built on exclusion, fear, and shrinking public spaces, or refuse it outright.”
If you’re trans+ and would like to contribute an article to the Anne website, email us at community@anne.health
Take the first step with Anne.
We’re here to guide and support you with inclusive, gender-affirming care built around you.