Thursday, January 12, 2012

Tough Cookies Won't Crumble

DEAR TAYLOR THE GIRL SCOUT,
I see from your video you wish me to boycott Girl Scout Cookies this year.  Your video was very well made, and your speech was succinct.  As an American who believes in the strictest letter of Constitutional Freedom of Speech, I fully support your right to voice your opinion on this matter.  
Now I am voicing mine
And I might not be nice.  Because you seem to be a young woman, not a child, and appear to be indignant to point of excluding several important factors when considering your opinion, chief among them reason, humanity and compassion.
You are a terrible Girl Scout.  I know girls your age are very concerned about Rules and Fairness.  What the hell else do your parents hear about day and night?  “It’s not FAIR!!!”  
What is really not fair is to be born a person whose genetics placed them in a corporal body drastically out of step with their mind and spirit.  I have seen interviews with transgender individuals from ages 6 and up and not one of them casually or cavalierly gazed into the camera and stated they just did it for kicks.  They were born that way and get nothing but kicked.  Often.  Usually by people like you or the people incited to do so by your words of condemnation.
Even in the blessed instance where their transgender nature is obvious from an early age and a supportive family recognizes and celebrates them for who they are, these individuals have a long and rocky road before them until gender reassignment surgeries can be undertaken.  The first step is legal and social recognition
This means the parents have to subject their beloved child to a battery of psychological testing and petition to have the birth certificate changed to reflect their offspring’s true inner gender.  By this time the child has already dressed and presented socially as that other gender.  Sometimes it means simply changing the way they dress and coming up with a new name if they’re young enough, but mostly it means a painful and awkward series of changes-- at the least a new school, but sometimes moving the family to make a clean break.
Yah, this is sooo easy.  And to support their daughter--yes, their daughter-- as a girl, to affirm her nature and place her in a nurturing and educative environment with other girls, they sign her up with Girl Scouts.
OOOPS!  Sorry, I have it all wrong.  They just did it so their 7-year-old could jeopardize your safety.  So in ten years, when she is 17, and has already taken all the abuse you could not possibly imagine in your righteous little ivory tower, some other girl just like you could discover all this and raise the alarm because obviously the other poor kid’s lifelong plan was to take a kicking just long enough to sleep in the same tent with her.

Safety?  Safety????  I have also visited The Honest Girl Scout site you have affiliated with, where Girl Scouts are lambasted as Pro-Lesbian, Pro-Abortion, and, for some reason, Evil-y Pro-United Nations, among other things.  There are so many breathless hyper-link screeds on the front page alone, I cannot fathom what deeper danger lies beneath while the presenters still claim to be Girl Scouts.
The atmosphere this site seeks to create encroaches on the safety of those who are different from you.  It’s that simple. You have aligned yourself with misogynists and bigots.  It’s not FAIR.
As a Human, as an American, when that transgender child enters the world, they are one of Us.  Deserving of compassion, respect and equality under the law and as part of the social contract that binds us as a human society. As a Girl Scout, when that little transgender girl joins your troop, she is LEGALLY a female, and she becomes your sister. You should be standing up for each other.  When the rest of the school, the rest of the town, the rest of the world come to knock her down for being different in a way that is deeply painful, personal and was in no way her choice, your job is close ranks and defend her.
Instead you want her outed. Purged and smacked with the label “OUTCAST” so everyone knows she doesn’t belong on either side.  You poor, sad girl.  To defend your right to speak your mind I will stand up to anyone who says you should stay silent.  But when you come to knock that little girl down, you just watch.
I will stand in your way, I will take the kicks, I will give just as good.  You will see what a real woman does for her sisters, her daughters, her fellow humans.  I was never a Girl Scout but I can eat a cookie like a mofo.  I will buy every box I see and order more.  I have already spread the word to my friends on FaceBook, Google+ and Twitter.  You just watch.
That little girl is one sweet little cookie, but we are one bunch of tough cookies, and we will NOT crumble.
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