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BY PAM LOBLEY
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
NOW THAT’S FUNNY
A teenage girl from Ventura County, California is trying to launch a national boycott against Girl Scout cookies. She is protesting the Girl Scout’s decision to admit a 7-year-old transgender child to a troop in Colorado last year.
The protesting girl, who is identified as Taylor (an ironically gender-free name!), has made a YouTube video stating her case.
She argues that Girl Scouts should remain an all-girl experience. She says that only then can families trust that girls will be in an environment which is safe, nurturing and sensitive to girls’ needs.
Then she tries to sell her new cookies, “Snootie Pies,” which are bitter little pastries trapped in a stiff upper crust.
Actually, I agree that Girl Scouts should be all girls. My boys are in Boy Scouts, and it’s all boys, and that is just the way they like it. The question is, when is a girl a girl, and when is a boy a boy?
The decision in question centers around a 7-year-old child, Bobby Montoya (Bobby – an almost gender-free name!), who was admitted to a troop because, although he was born male, he is living as a girl. His mother believes that he was born in the wrong body and said that “no one would know he’s a boy unless they pulled his pants down.”
I wish she would have put that a little more delicately.
The Girl Scouts of Colorado explained their decision this way: “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”
Given the uber-sensitivity in our culture right now about LBGT issues, there is no way the Girl Scouts could refuse her.
It’s a whole new world, and we all have to figure out how to live in it. When this decision was reached in Colorado, three leaders in Louisiana resigned and dissolved their troops in protest. That seems a little extreme. They’ve denied all those Louisiana girls a great scouting experience just because they’re freaked out by some 7-year-old that lives halfway across the country.
This is a stressful situation, and when Americans get stressed, they eat sweets. We don’t need to boycott cookies – we need to create some new Girl Scout Cookies to get through this rough time of adjustment.
And then we have transgender cases like this little boy. I admit that 7 years old seems very young for a child to make this choice, however, his feelings must be very strong and his parents seem accepting of his feelings and want to help him. I am sure that the parents of this child did not just say "OK, want to be a girl? Here's some dresses and dolls." There were probably a lot of doctor's visits and psychotherapy done before beginning to reassign gender.
I have a cousin who is gay - even as a small child you knew she was different from other girls. She came out as a lesbian a few years ago, so it was not really a surprise.
Our brains are wired from birth to be who we are. My son is autistic - that's just the way it is. My cousin is gay - that's the way it is. Accepting how people are inside rather than how they look outside is a new way of thinking, and I think that's better to accept these children and adults because it's how they are wired. It's better than having a frustrated teen commiting suicide, isn't it?