Area Brownies Support Transgender Girl Scout
Learning that Girls Scouts is about caring for people and including people.
March 22, 2012
http://montclair.patch.com/articles/area-brownies-support-transgender-girl-scout Maplewood mom Laura Booker was skeptical when her daughter wanted to join the Girl Scouts organization:
As a kid, being a girl scout was the last thing I had ever wanted mostly because I couldn't fathom wearing the dress, and as an adult, I want to raise a kid who is progressive and feminist and not stuck in the 1950s (which was the assumption I made about the Girl Scouts).
But Booker found the Girl Scouts to be a broader-thinking organization than she had anticipated:
I couldn't have foreseen that joining the Brownies would be such a rich opportunity for Emma and a couple of her friends from the troop to show support for a transgender girl named Bobby Montoya who is a Girl Scout in Colorado. This was a story that Emma could relate to – a little girl who wanted to be a Girl Scout – and therefore was the perfect example to teach her about being an ally and accepting people for who they are and who they say they are.
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Feb 04 2012
NJ Brownies Support Transgender Girl Scout in Wake of Cookie Boycott
http://queeringthemind.com/2012/02/04/nj-brownies-support-transgender-girl-scout-in-wake-of-cookie-boycott/Watch their you-tube video:
When my seven-year-old daughter Emma told me last September that she wanted to be a Brownie (the younger troop in Girl Scouts), I was apprehensive at best. As a kid, being a girl scout was the last thing I had ever wanted mostly because I couldn't fathom wearing the dress, and as an adult, I want to raise a kid who is progressive and feminist and not stuck in the 1950s (which was the assumption I made about the Girl Scouts). But Emma wanted to do it, and so after making sure they don't have the same homophobic policies as the Boy Scouts (which they don't) I gritted my teeth and said, "yes, honey, of course you can join."
It helped me that around the same time conservatives were flyering the internet, warning parents that the Girl Scouts are pro-lesbian, pro-feminist and pro-choice. I thought "well, I can only hope." That said, I couldn't have foreseen that joining the Brownies would be such a rich opportunity for Emma and a couple of her friends from the troop to show support for a transgender girl named Bobby Montoya who is a Girl Scout in Colorado. This was a story that Emma could relate to – a little girl who wanted to be a Girl Scout – and therefore was the perfect example to teach her about being an ally and accepting people for who they are and who they say they are.
