Praying With Johnny and Other Thoughts from Trans Day of Celebration

I’ll admit to kind of rolling my eyes when the idea of the Transgender Day of Celebration was brought up. I agreed to take part in the service and did my bit to invite folks but I kind of figured it would be a bit of a letdown. “Who was even going to come to this?” was my primary thought. Secondary thoughts included, “I have nothing of value to say” and “why does my voice squeak so much when I’m nervous?” Tertiary to those was, “crap, I have to iron a shirt.”

I procrastinated on writing. I angsted to friends online, I convinced myself anything I had to say was crap, and finally on Saturday night I erased everything and started from the beginning. It was only 5 minutes of talking, it wasn’t like I trashed a novel I’d was almost done with.

I walked into the narthex of the church and dutifully found who I needed to. We did all the run through stuff and scribbled down some cues and just went for it. There was surprisingly little direction; mostly I think we all just assumed that we’d done enough church in our respective lives that we could pull off this service with all the advance planning Jamez had done. Which was totally true; the main folks in the service have done a LOT of church between us.

My reflection went well I guess. You can tell it’s a queer service when people give you snaps to affirm what you’re saying.

So much of my time preparing for this service had been put into trying to figure out how to encapsulate my trans experience, in relation to Psalm 139, into under 5 minutes that I had completely ignored that I’d agreed to offer personal blessings during the service.

I walked up to the front and the first two people who came up to me were people I, at the very least, knew somewhat well. I knew their names, I knew their pronouns, and I knew enough of who they were and what they were doing with their lives that I could somewhat tailor the prayer to them.

And then Johnny Blazes walks up and I’m like, “crap. Really?” Not because I don’t’ like Johnny. I think Johnny is awesome. I’m basically in awe of Johnny. I don’t, however, know Johnny very well. We travel in a lot of the same circles but, being an antisocial grad student who leaves the house only under extreme circumstances like “I’m out of coffee,” I’m not sure we’d ever had an actual conversation. I may have complimented their hair once at Trannywreck.

So Johnny comes up, we hold hands, I ask their pronouns and just kinda went for it.

I prayed. I probably said the word community like 20 times, asking that they be upheld by the community that they do so much to uphold, and it was all over pretty quickly. I mean, it’s a prayer, not a dying declaration. Shortness is okay.

Nobody else came up to me. I was fine with that.

I keep realizing how much personal prayer means to me. I’ve posted about it at least twice before here and here. It wasn’t something that spoke to me for a long time but I keep realizing time and again how important it is to me to be able to sit with somebody and be prayed for or to pray for them.

It’s another fucking growth opportunity, okay? I’ll work on it in seminary.

The rest of the Trans Day of Celebration was awesome. It was like all the best of my community all in one room doing awesome things. Red Durkin did some of the funniest stand up I’ve ever seen. Liam and Johnny and Bethel and Evan and so many other people sang songs that spoke to all of us and Evan’s kid stole the entire show, no questions asked, by singing part of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with, I think… trigger warnings prefacing it. Evan’s kid is 2.

So basically what I’m saying is twofold: my thoughts are totally scattered and it was awesome.

The end!
Look, we sang This Little Light of Mine!

A prayer after communion

A friend was preaching tonight at the local Metropolitan Community Church and since he’s somebody I have a lot of respect for and whose ministry I value, I went. I figured “it’ll be a lot of Jesus” which isn’t a bad thing but it doesn’t really mesh with my theology. I was right; it was a LOT of Jesus.

It was a really small service, maybe twenty people in the room all told, and I think I was personally greeted by at least ten of them before the service started. I finally agreed to fill out a visitor card just so they’d stop offering them to me. When reading through the order of worship before service I noticed that they were doing communion and looked around for an explanation of their communion practices.

I’m not as stringently anti-communion as I was when the school year started. I spent a good part of spring break reading about communion practices and came up with my own “guidelines” about when I would and would not participate in communion. Suffice it to say I didn’t figure that an MCC church would have any issues with my participation in communion.

Most denominations that do communion have the same general principle behind it and then mess with it just enough to be “unique” and to “confuse newcomers.” At this church it is common practice to take communion and then receive a short prayer.

Honestly I couldn’t figure out how to not participate. Everyone else was and I was confused so I just made sure to step to the side where my friend was praying with people since, hey, I trust the guy.

I’ve had some bad experiences with folks praying over/with/about/to me. Lots of praying out the demons of homosexuality, praying out the demons that cause me to be rude to my parents, the demons that make me cuss and, when I was 10, the demons that led to my owning a CD by Hanson (perhaps that prayer was justified). Two years ago I prayed with a chaplain at general assembly which sort of made me okay with the practice in theory but it really needs to be somebody I trust in order for me to really hear the prayer rather than focus on the ten kinds of awkward inherent in the situation.

Tonight I held the hands of a friend and minister and he prayed for me and, like I said, I trust him and I respect his ministry and he’s a good person. But the really touching part was that this guy knows me. He knows I don’t really do the Jesus thing much. So he fit the prayer to me. He didn’t end with “In Jesus name” he didn’t throw much (any?) God into the prayer, and there was no hierarchical “Lord.” He held my hands and he prayed for me in a way he knew I would find accessible.

I’m always collecting bits and pieces of what effective ministry looks like but I’m not some cyborg seminary student who simply collects information whilst ignoring emotional situations. I’ve had a pretty rough year and it was really touching to feel cared for and ministered to in a different way than usual.

Have you policed the trans community today?

For those unable to read the image:
Set up is a bingo board with a bluish purple background in a gradient from dark to light.

Title is “Have you policed the trans community enough today?”

Spaces read, from left to right, top to bottom
Real trans people aren’t excited about HRT
Born in the wrong body
“Trans Pride” is dumb
You aren’t trans if you don’t try hard enough
Genderqueer people don’t exist
Being trans isn’t something to be proud of
You aren’t trans if you didn’t hate your childhood
Living deep stealth is the only way to authentically experience
Real trans people aren’t gay/lesbian
Trans people don’t enjoy having sex “like their birth gender”
No real trans person would ever reveal their birth name
Trans people don’t belong at Gay Pride events
You aren’t trans without SRS
Nobody will take you seriously if you don’t change your voice
If you aren’t on HRT you are “just” a gay man/lesbian
You have to pack/tuck when you’re dressed up or EVERYONE WILL KNOW
Trans people are uncomfortable with their bodies at all times
All trans people hate swimming
You aren’t really trans if you like “playing with gender”
Trans men can’t be feminist
Trans women can’t wear jeans
Religious trans people are dumb; God messed up with your body
No real trans man wants to get pregnant
Real trans people want to date hetero cis people
Real trans people want to stop IDing as trans after they “fully transition”

My identity is the message I scrawl inside

I can’t write you each a thank you note
because there aren’t enough thank you notes in the world.
And I don’t have your address.
I think I lost it when I moved.
And a lot of you don’t have addresses any longer.
But let my body be that envelope
for that thank you note
and my men’s clothes the pretty picture on front
and let the simple fact that my identity exists
be the message I scrawl inside
thanking you
for all you’ve done for me.

For all the butches out there
but especially those first strong, fierce, bold women
who took their identity public
and political
and said “this is who I am” with their dapper hats and pressed shirts.
From the Beebo Brinkers
to the Leslie Feinbergs
to the unnamed women who kicked those stones out of the way
so those of us who came after them
didn’t have to tread quite as carefully.

Thank you

For all the femmes out there
who said, “oh honey, I love you exactly like you are,”
those fierce ass women who society loves to ignore
or fetishize,
for all of you who told the people I’d date in the future
that it was okay to date the girl
in the button up
and the ill-fitting men’s pants
and the too big boots
and thus led to too many flings and lots of loving embraces.

Thank you

For the drag queens
who said enough is e-god-damn-fucking-nough

Thank you

For the parents who chose love for their children
above societal expectations
and who dutifully plugged away in libraries and on websites
filled with outdated and incorrect information
only to make mistakes
and apologize
and still walk their kid down the aisle
toward her wife
or up the courthouse
after she was fired from a job she loved because other people were
too afraid of her.

Thank you.

For all of you who have been arrested
for being the fabulous queers you are
and for all of you struggling
to be fabulous queers while incarcerated.

Thank you.

For all my friends who didn’t outwardly flinch when I came out
and allowed me to have a life outside of being “the trans guy”
and who sang with me at open mics
and laughed with me while we crowded into our hallway
to watch bad TV
and who let me cry when the world got a little too tough.

Thank you.

For every one of the ministers
mentors
teachers
lovers in my life who has ever said “I believe in you”
whether they believe
in the current incarnation of me
or one of the many identities I’ve traveled through
to get to this spot.

Thank you.

For all my contemporaneous queers
who fight these fights
and accept these struggles
and lift each other up
when we get knocked down.

Thank you.

©Andrew Coate. Please do not share in full without linking back to http://www.thoughtsonblank.wordpress.com

Corrupting the Future of America

I live with a couple of absolutely amazing kids.  DangerLad is 5 and AdventureLass (their parents’ picked the nicknames) is 3; I’ve known them since they were born and they’re tons of fun and I’ve lived with them for almost two years now.  DangerLad, at least, knows that I’m not a “regular” boy, or he did at one point but sometimes he wants it explained again.  It comes up really infrequently with him and is definitely not a part of our day to day conversations.  AdventureLass, frankly, is a three year old.  She just knows me as Andy and that’s enough for her.

Last night I took the kids out to dinner.  It was just a chain restaurant but they’re young enough that it’s still a big treat.  AdventureLass was sitting on my lap and asked what the button on the collar of my shirt said.  I took it off and pointed to the words as I read them.  “Trans Rights Now.”  DangerLad piped up with, “what’s that mean?”

It’s Transgender Awareness Week which ends in the Transgender Day of Remembrance so I wore my button from the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition to class.  AdventureLass, being three, is interested in anything shiny.  But DangerLad, at the ripe old age of 5, wanted to know what the shiny thing meant.

This is where I feel like people get hung up on explaining stuff to kids.  They’re afraid that they’ll scar the kid, or that the kid isn’t ready to have their questions answered.  This is how I’ve chosen to explain being trans and the fight for equitable rights to the kids; I know that they won’t understand every word but hearing a message of inclusion is important.  Their parents have never specifically asked how I’ve explained my identity to them but their kids seem no worse for the wear and they trust me to answer the other questions the kids ask… so why not these?

When people are born their parents or their doctors either call them a boy or a girl and usually those little baby boys grow up to be big boys and then men and usually those little girls grow up to be big girls and then women like your mommy and daddy.

Sometimes, however, those baby boys don’t want to grow up to be big boys or men; they feel like they aren’t really a boy.  Maybe they feel like a girl, and maybe they don’t feel like a boy or a girl, so they might dress differently or cut their hair differently than people think a boy should.  And sometimes those baby girls don’t want to grow up to be big girls or women so they might dress more like boys and maybe cut their hair.  That’s called being transgender, or trans.

Some people are mean to trans people because they think they look different or sound different but that’s not nice.  In church we learn that EVERY person is important and that we should be kind in everything that we do and that we should treat everybody fairly.  That is what a “right” is – treating everybody fairly and being kind to everybody and not just the people who are just like you.  So “Trans Rights Now” means that transgender people, or trans people, deserve to be treated fairly like everybody else.

This isn’t, of course, verbatim what I said.  I checked in with DangerLad a couple times to make sure he understood, and he asked a few questions that led to short tangents.  It was more of a conversation than a lecture.  But… yeah.  That’s how I explained being transgender to a 5 year old.  He’d heard most of it before, in various ways, but it never hurts to repeat it.  It also never hurts to answer questions.  And as he gets older I’m sure he’ll have more questions that either I, or his parents, will answer.
So yes, folks, this IS the gay agenda.  We corrupt children over cheap faux-Mexican food.  Be afraid.

Trans folks and porn and legislating identity

This post contains frank discussion of pornography, erotica, and trans* sexuality.  Also there’s some less than “Safe For Work” language, though I’m going to * it so it doesn’t get caught by filters.

You have been warned.

The definition of trans* I’ll be working with here is anybody on the trans spectrum, including genderqueer, transgender, transexual, cross dressing, etc.  People who do not necessarily or at all times identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

A few years ago I became kind of obsessed with porn.  There was nothing sexual about this, really.  I was obsessed with the trans* representation in porn or, more precisely, the lack of trans* representation in porn.  Porn acts almost as a distillation of society at its most basic; there’s no for nuance or dialogue or story.  You have to be able to pick up everything visually, in an instant, without needing back story or to think too hard.  And in mainstream porn there is very little trans* representation – and the trans representation that does exist only serves, really, to reinforce the gender binary.

Tonight a friend linked me to a tumblr that says it’s about FTM (Female to Male trans*) Porn; both actual porn and writing about porn.  I clicked over and scrolled down a few posts to find this post an FTM-person had written in response to a comment that has been deleted:

I don’t want support from the community. I don’t even belong to the community. I walked out when I realized how fucking stupid it was 2 months into my transition. I don’t want or need support from people who glamorize a medical condition and run around with your t*ts flopping around, being comfortable in your body when the only symptom of transsexualism is dysphoria. When you don’t show dysphoria, it’s hard for me to believe you’re not using testosterone as a beauty product. If you like your body, why alter it?

I don’t want to see t*ts and v*ginas in the ftm tag, sorry that’s a crime.

You can all spread your legs and rub your p*ssies all you want, but if you’re showing it publicly, I will not treat you like a man.

And that, my friends, is what we call a problem.

I know that there are a lot of transexual folks who do not consider themselves part of the trans community.  Once they’ve transitioned they’re done; they’re happy to finally feel whole or right or whatever term you’d like to use and they’re happy to identify as whichever gender they’ve transitioned to.  That’s fine!

When people try to push that off as the only way to be a trans person?  That becomes way not fine at all.  The only identity you can legislate is your own identity.  When you try to tell other people how to live their gender identity we end up with this gross oversimplification of gender and we end up with a lot of people who don’t or can’t fit into that binary getting shoved to the sidelines.

It begins

My minister has a framed picture on the wall of his office at church – it’s the Tichh Nhat Hanh meditation “I have arrived.  I am home.”  Since I’m in his office a fair bit, between meeting with him individually and for Pastoral Care Associate meetings and such I have stared at this picture a lot.  I love it.

 

I started seminary today.  I was a nervous wreck for the past few days and then… I got there.  And in all of its fluorescent lit, mediocre bagels and bad coffee glory I had arrived.  I took a seat and started talking to people.  People, mostly people close to my age, doing the same thing as me.  This thing none of my college friends understand even though they’re being really nice about it.  It felt so right.

We did all the normal orientation things.  It was explained what a venerable and esteemed institution we were at, the multifaceted, and I’m sure very unique, benefits were tossed around, and we mingled.  I met new people and old people and I laughed and I felt, well, blessed.  To be there.  To be able to be there.  I felt like I belonged.

After lunch four of us ended up outside playing Frisbee and already we have inside jokes (they involve me aiming at freshmen).  We went on a hideously long walking tour of Boston immediately after which we had to go to a fancy hotel to meet our professors.  We ate fancy-ish hors d’oeuvres and laughed at how underdressed almost everyone was.

It was good.  I returned home happy, and content, and thrilled, and all kinds of other adjectives.

And it was good, too, because when I posted a happy status about being in seminary over FIFTY of my friends “liked” the status on Facebook.  These friends who have been following me from when I first declared I may, possibly, be interested in seminary to today, when I started.  Friends from college and friends from church and minister after minister after minister saying “Good for you.  I’m glad.”  It was such a fun, good feeling.

Not everything was perfect.  Almost nobody got my pronouns right, and while my name was correct on my nametag it was incorrect on my folder and my advisor letter.  I am pretty sure there’s no gender neutral bathroom that’s easily accessible in the building.  I was too scared to correct people much.  I am incredibly dehydrated because, well, if you don’t think there’s a place to go to the bathroom you don’t drink enough water.

But I have arrived.  I am home.  It’s not perfect and there are going to be speed bumps and awful bits but, right now, in this moment, I’M THERE.  That’s what matters right now.  I am THERE.

“That Queer”

It’s Saturday night and I’m sitting in a coffee shop at 10:30pm sipping a “direct trade organic” latte with hormone/antibiotic free milk and eating a “brownie” that I’m fairly certain doesn’t contain chocolate or sugar.  I’m wearing black leather boots with my dark wash jeans and a button up; not because I thought about it or planned my outfit carefully but because that’s simply the majority of what I own now.  I’m ignoring everyone around me, listening to Indigo Girls at ear-damaging volume, and tapping away at my keyboard pretending I have very important things to do so I don’t have to acknowledge this is how I’m spending my Saturday night.  I’d estimate I’ve spent, oh, 85% of my weekend nights doing this.  Conservative estimate, mind you.

I’m basically a giant stereotype.  A stereotype I would see in high school and think, “Wow.  That person’s life is so much more exciting than mine.  I will never be that cool.”

I’m not that cool.

My life is profoundly boring most days.  I spend too much time home, alone, watching Netflix and reading political blogs.  I have a terrible relationship with almost everyone in my family, not really by anybody’s choosing but that’s that.  I’m constantly worrying about money and employment and whether I’ve chosen the right career path.  My dating life is fairly low key which is fine until I see my friends get married and having children and I’m suddenly thrown for this, “CRAP! THAT is what I’m supposed to be doing?!” loop.

In other words I’m basically a mess.

For a long time I wondered if I’d done it wrong.  Why I wasn’t That Queer with That Exciting Life?  I ran into a friend tonight.  She happened to be at the (admittedly very queer) coffee shop I was camping out in and came over to my table to say hi and give me a hug.  We both noticed a younger-looking person wearing a “Class of 2015” sweatshirt from a local high school and a rainbow friendship bracelet, glancing up at us then ducking back behind their copy of “And The Band Played On.”  We had to smile.  We WERE that kid.  And now, we realized, we were Those Queers.  It was then that I really noticed my outfit, the crap spread over the table I was sitting at, and the friend I was talking to.

We started talking about those days of anxiously looking for anybody “like us” and trying to appear just as cool and together and adult.  In that conversation we realized something about Those Queers, one that surprised us both to some extent.  THOSE QUEERS WERE GIANT MESSES, TOO.

And, also, they were in those coffee shops at 10pm on Friday and Saturday nights, TOO.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me then that they were doing the same thing my friends and I were doing and, therefore, they probably weren’t that much more exciting during the rest of the week.  They were exhausted college and graduate school students who were finishing papers, reading books on queer theory, or just hanging out online and simply looking for a way to not be in their rooms, alone, on a Friday night.  They weren’t doing anything big or special or different.  They were just THERE.

I think it’s ok, though, for teens to see me, to see us, and think “wow.  They are so cool.”  Even if we’re not cool, or together, or at a better place in our lives and even if we’re spending our Friday nights sitting in coffee shops writing blog posts about queer identity simply in order to not be home, alone, writing blog posts on queer identity.  Non-queer folks have people everywhere to look up to, to see in every facet of public life.  They can look at their teachers, their congress people, their parents and their grandparents and people all around and, by and large, see successful people like them.

As a 13 year old that wanted nothing more to shave my head, wear combat boots and confidently proclaim my awesome queerness with my appearance Those Queers were amazing simply because they existed.  Who CARES if they were in a constant stream of dead end relationships with mountains of student loan debt, cars that constantly failed inspection, middling grades in college and no parental figures to speak of?  They were THERE.

In 10 years that teenager at the coffee shop will be that 20-something at the coffee shop.  I’m willing to bet with a shorter haircut, a computer to replace the book, and coffee replacing the orange juice because 10 years of being queer taught them to tolerate coffee.  That Teenager will “escape” Boston because “escaping” wherever you grew up is an essential part of being That Queer no matter how open and liberal your city or origin was.  That teenager will have long-ago scoped out the gayest coffee shop around; no longer going there to prove that survival was possible but maybe because that was the place where there are gender neutral bathrooms and nobody thinks twice about your haircut or gets confused about their new, non-binary name or the friends you bring with you.

Ten years ago I was just about to turn 15 and I was beyond terrified.  I stole hopeful glances of any older queers I saw because it was proof I’d survive my teenage years mostly intact.  It is its own perpetuating “It Gets Better” project without words or any proof beyond existence.

I guess what I’m saying is “God bless the gay coffee shops.  Every one of them.”

All this gay stuff

Last week a North Carolina Baptist pastor went on a 55 minute sermon-tirade about amendment one, gay people, and most notably what to do if you think your son is acting “gay” or “effeminate.”  Though any parenting book in the world would tell you otherwise, this man recommended breaking the limp wrist of young boys and punching your son if he acted too effeminate.  Young girls, in contrast, are not to be allowed to get “too butch;” dress them up and make them objects of attraction.

The outcry from the queer community was immediate and intense.  Child abuse is bad; that’s just a baseline standard most all people operate under.  Moving on from that those in the queer community either personally know the pain of being “different” as a child or they have friends or partners who know that pain.  Allies in the fight for just treatment in society heard the sermon and said “no, that’s wrong.”  We united.

This pastor eventually issued an apology – sort of.  He apologized if we were offended.  He didn’t say he was sorry he said it.  He justified it by saying he was using hyperbolic speech to get a point across like in the bible.  He didn’t elaborate on which parts of the bible he found hyperbolic but I know I’d be interested.

This sermon-tirade occurred in North Carolina before the Tuesday vote on Amendment One, an amendment that passed and therefore reinforced the ban on same-sex marriage in North Carolina but also took scores of rights away from not married couples, same sex or heterosexual, that live together.  It’s an amendment that had no purpose whatsoever and passed only because of fear, homophobic, lies, and scare tactics.  I know what it is like to lose these fights; to sit around as your rights are voted on all day and then watch the polls come in not in your favor.  It’s heartbreaking.

There’s the heartbreak of those voting against you but there’s the added heartbreak of the “liberal” community who have decided they are “too liberal” or “too radical” or “above” marriage equality.  These are folks who tear down the victories many of us have fought long and hard for by telling us that we’re not being radical enough, or liberal enough, or that we’re buying into the system too much.  And when we lose something we fought hard for we’re told by these people not to be sad.  We were fighting for the wrong thing anyway.  Immediately articles about how we only car about marriage when, for instance, the prison industrial complex still targets LGBTQ prisoners and nobody cares pop up all over social networking sites.

The message is clear: if you fight for equality that buys into preexisting systems you are being naïve.

Today, less than 24 hours after Amendment One passed in North Carolina, President Obama came out publicly in support of full marriage rights for same sex couples making him, obviously, the first sitting president to do so.  I, along with hundreds of others, was elated.  We had a president, finally, saying something beyond evasive answers like “that is up to each state” and “civil unions that grant all the same rights and protections are comparable…”.  We had a president saying “I believe gay people who want to get marriage should be able to.

It’s a big moment.  We shouldn’t underestimate that.

Almost immediately those “I’m more liberal than you” folks came out, posting articles titled things like “Barack Obama’s Bullshit Marriage Announcement.”  Saying, again, “You’ve bought in.  It’s pathetic how much your bought in.”

This is an issue I’ve been passionately fighting for for years.  Marriage equality DOES still matter; we cannot wait for everything to be perfectly aligned, for all other injustices to be healed before we celebrate any wins.

I’m happy that Obama came out in favor of marriage equality.  I’m going to celebrate that.

“Cookies Support the Transgenders”

At least according to one young girl in California. Recently a video was posted by a young teenager from California who says that she has been a Girl Scout for 8 years and is really upset that the Girl Scouts have a policy in place that welcomes transgender girls (she repeatedly calls them transgender boys) into full inclusion and community with the Girl Scouts. She encourages us to boycott Girl Scout cookies, either by not selling them if we’re a member of Girl Scouts or by not buying them if we’re just part of the cookie loving masses.

Thankfully most of the response I have seen from my friends has been “let’s buy extra cookies this year to support the Girl Scouts and their policy of inclusivity.” That’s great! That is positive activism, that is change through love. There have been the few comments I’ve seen on Facebook calling this girl stupid, calling her a bitch, calling her things that NO parent would want to see their kid called. Names I don’t want to see any kid called, either.

She is a kid. She’s 14 I think, and it’s clear this movie wasn’t totally her idea. The editing is a little too sophisticated, her reading a little too stilted, everything just a little “too” to be completely written, planned, filmed, edited, and posted without adult intervention somewhere in the process. None of that is to say it might not have been her idea, or something that she mentioned at dinner that a parent latched on to. But more than likely she’s a girl who was put up to something by her conservative parents who were upset about the possible inclusion of transgender or gender varient girls in Girl Scouts. That kind of thing CAN sound scary if presented in the wrong way to a young girl (or, frankly, to anybody) and I have no doubt that she does believe what she’s saying.

It’s scary when something is presented to you in a way that makes it sound like something you know and love is changing. If a young teen is told “we’re going to let boys into your Girl Scout troop!” I can see how that could freak a kid out. The problem, of course, being that boys aren’t being allowed into Girl Scout troops. There’s a good chance that this girl has no way of knowing that; if she’s been fed the typical right-wing rhetoric about what transgender means then… yeah, she has it wrong and it probably does sound scary. That rhetoric usually goes something like “unstable men who like to dress up like women so they can use the girl’s bathrooms and possibly hurt girls.”

I have no doubt that this girl was raised in a conservative Christian household; every sign is there. She wears a cross, the video was immediately up on a very Christian-centric website, and even the script she was reading from was very “family values”-centric. Read the terminology they use… all those words are carefully chosen and come from the same place as Focus on the Family, the American Family Association and other innocuous-sounding-but-hateful groups.

I feel bad for this girl. I feel bad that it’s clearly going to be awhile before she has any actual chance to explore the world a little and meet people not in her religious, social, and political demographic. I feel bad that she’s probably getting a lot of hate directed at her right now from liberal folks and that that is just going to enforce the points she has been fed. I feel bad that she was used in this way to push an agenda that she clearly doesn’t know much about. I just feel bad for her.

Let’s keep this boycott-of-the-boycott positive. Let’s buy a ton of cookies and let’s send letters of support to Girl Scouts, thanking them for being inclusive and forward-moving. Let’s not demonize a 14 year old girl for something I have no doubt she’ll regret at some point. She really is just a kid.