I don’t really know what the Girls Scouts are, but this was incredible to read.
A $50,000 donation is cause for celebration at the Queen Anne offices of the Girl Scouts of Western Washington. [The council’s CEO, Megan Ferland] came back to the office earlier this spring and announced that she’d just landed a $100,000 donation… Not only did it represent nearly a quarter of the council’s annual fundraising goal, it would pay to send 500 girls to camp. “We were thrilled,” Ferland says.
Except there was a catch. In late May, as news of Caitlyn Jenner’s transition was blowing up your Facebook news feed, she received a letter from the donor with a brief request: Please guarantee that our gift will not be used to support transgender girls. If you can’t, please return the money.
I don’t know how one reads that favourably. But that was Ferland’s response.
In a short letter, she informed the donor that she would, in fact, be returning the money. Her reasoning was simple. “Girl Scouts is for every girl,” she says. “And every girl should have the opportunity to be a Girl Scout if she wants to.”
Every girl. No matter what you or others decide they are.
You can read the whole story here, including the support they’re getting and, importantly, the support they need – it’s incredible reading that organisations reaffirming transgender people as belonging can do wonders to help the trans folk, since it helps combat stigma that leads to the awful situation so many live in.
Indeed, if you want an outline of what that looks like (at least in America), Last Week Tonight had an excellent segment.
Oliver and his crew are suuuuuuuch an SJWs.
The Girl Scouts, as I understand it, traditionally have a few legs up on their “separate but equal” counterparts. Good on them…
Is there any way the girl scouts could branch out into some kind of boys’ faction? It doesn’t seem fair that fearless justice and basic decency should be restricted to girls.
The US Girl Scouts seem to exist to kick ass and sell cookies, and they keep running out of cookies.
Callinectes #2
I might be missing the joke and you already know this, but, there is a boy scouts.
tkreacher #4
Yeah, but the Boy Scouts have a reputation for being as regressive as the Girl Scouts are progressive. Not cool.
tkreacher @4:
Yes, you are missing Callinectes’ (@2) point.
Given the Boy Scouts of America’s long and bitter resistance to allowing gay people to be scouts or scout leaders, they can hardly be accused of “fearless justice and basic decency.” BTW, I believe they also exclude atheists.
My own experience of the Boy Scouts half a century ago was that they had a very narrow and rigid (and old-fashioned even for that time) idea of what a Boy Scout should be like (one which I could not fit into) and were rather intolerant of anyone who didn’t fit. From what I’ve seen and heard since, they have done their best to cling to their old conception of themselves, which may be why they are on the wane in a lot of areas.
By contrast, the Girl Scouts have consistently changed with the times — more specificallly, changed to meet girls’ changing needs. Boys could certainly use an organization like that — one which was focussed on meeting boys’ current needs, rather than putting its energy into turning back the clock.
BTW, I read today that the council managed to raise the full $100,000 in less than 24 hours.
Yeah, I figured that might be the point there, just wasn’t sure. Also, I agree.
I thought it was possible that maybe, however, there was a non-american perspective who might not know if there was a boy scouts version or not, and wanted to make sure.