Global Boyhood Initiative: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle slammed for teaming up with controversial group that promotes gender 'fluid' childhood
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's Archewell Foundation has partnered with Equimundo’s Global Boyhood Initiative (GBI), a group that wants boyhood to be seen as “fluid.” The Duke and Duchess of Sussex teamed up with the initiative that promotes “gender equity by fostering positive masculinity in boys and men.” The organization is already working in UK schools via a curriculum pilot where they have asked primary school children to question what they describe as “gender norms which are not tied to sex organs.” However, a few have slammed the initiative with one saying, “Schools should not be lying to children about gender 'not being tied to sex organs’.”
According to Meghan and Harry's foundation website, the partnership "works to achieve gender equality and social justice by transforming intergenerational patterns of harm and promoting patterns of care, empathy and accountability among boys and men throughout their lives." While the organization lists several resources on its website, in collaboration with the duo.
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What is the Global Boyhood Initiative?
As per DailyMail, the initiative states that its curriculum for seven to 11-year-olds is "about gender equality, developing healthy masculine identities and challenging limiting gender stereotypes." The organization also "hopes to widen and deepen its work on boyhood across the UK - including promoting the uptake and development of the curriculum nationally." Lifting Limits states the organization "aims to create long-term systemic change by engaging with every level of boys’ environment – home, school, the media, and so on." GBI supports boys aged between 4 and 13.
A report, published by the group, named The State of UK Boys suggested that families "can be gender 'factories' by 'enacting gender roles and identities' and that parents can 'gender' their children before they are even born." Commenting on it, Miriam Cates, the Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, told DailyMail, "Attempting to 're-educate' small children for reasons of political activism is indoctrination and an abuse of the trust that children place in teachers and parents place in schools. It is also concerning that the Global Boyhood Initiative says they have widened their net to include 'children of all genders', which suggests they hold to an extreme position on gender ideology."
'Gender ideology has no place in schools'
While a spokesman for the Family Education Trust, which researches family breakdown, stressed that the initiative is trying to "undermine parents." The individual said, "The suggestion by the Global Boyhood Initiative that families may be 'regulating and policing' gender and sexuality is an attempt to undermine parents and the family unit. Parents are best placed to teach their children about relationships and sex, and schools should not be lying to children about gender 'not being tied to sex organs. Gender ideology has no place in schools as there is simply no evidence to support it. While boys and girls must of course be treated equally, the reality is that there are biological differences between males and females and it is unwise to pretend otherwise. A better approach for schools would be to ensure that boys have appropriate male role models who embody positive masculinity and can teach boys how to be respectful to women and girls."
Journalist Dan Wootton said, as stated by GB News, "During the Oprah Winfrey interview, Harry announced to the world he was having a girl. When Archie was born, they used the colour blue for the picture which is terrible for this organisation because blue is considered a boy colour. They don’t believe it when it’s their own family, so why do they push it on us?”