A pretty horrible video went viral a few days ago, but the thing has legs and it just won't stop. The message is undeniably awful. Taylor doesn't like that GSUSA includes trans girls. She argues that it creates a safety hazard, which is horrifying, because the only safety hazard I can see is the personal safety of trans girls among people who think the things in the video. She laments the death of "a place to be yourself and who you are, and not something you are not," which, ironically, is exactly the environment being created by letting both cis and transgendered children be what they are. She clearly doesn't understand that a trans girl IS A GIRL. Her video was co-opted by HonestGirlScouts.com, a bunch of horrible adults for whom the trans issue is tangential to their larger goal of hating Planned Parenthood and the UN(?) but, you make your bigoted hay while the sun shines, right? She calls for a boycott of Girl Scout Cookies to protest equality and inclusion, thus ensuring that cookie sales this year will be gangbusters in counter-protest. Every Girl Scout I see will be selling me as many boxes as all the money in my wallet will buy.
The reactions are shrill: Jezebel calling her "Stepford-esque." Gawker being, well, Gawker. But even Elephant Journal got snarky! The video is private now, presumably because of all the vitriol she suddenly found flying in her direction--surprise! All appropriate reactions if this were, say, an old lady ranting at a Tea Party rally that Obama wants to force everyone to have abortions so he can sell the stem cells to China.
But she is a child.
What she needs, and what will go a long way toward there being one less bigot, and maybe by ripple effect save the lives of transpeople, is a community of articulate and open-minded adults to take her under their wings, educate her on the nuances of gender, and empower her with the wherewithal to change her own mind. This is not your ordinary, closed-minded, run-of-the-mill bigot. I cannot allow myself to believe that her mind is totally closed off to change, because she is a child. She is obviously smart. She obviously thinks long and hard and logically about the things she feels. Her logic is so, so dangerously flawed, but she's capable of articulating it calmly and with intention. Which means she's probably capable of processing new information, once it's made available to her, to develop a more realistic view of transexuality. Basically, I'm pretty sure once she has a gender-studies class or two in college she'll look at this video and wish it had never happened. Because she is 14.
Do you remember when you were 14? I was kind of a jerk. I mean, I look back at some of the things I believed, some of the things I said (I had really weird ideas about affirmative action for absolutely no reason) and I want to crawl into a hole and die. But I'm looking back through eyes that have a much better understanding of the way the world really is--there are years and years of formal and informal study of sociological and gender theory rattling around in my brain. Those are valuable resources I didn't have when I was still a child. To my limited, simplistic, sheltered 14-year-old mind, the (horrifically incorrect!) argument that penis-equals-boy-end-of-story probably would have made perfectly logical sense. Because at that point in my life I didn't have the tools to see just how wrong I would have been. I feel like if someone can explain to this confused child what it's like to be a transgendered girl (which I make no claim to be able to do), the final piece of the puzzle would snap into place for her and she'd have a completely different view.
We always whine about how it's all screeching and Hitler accusations in the discourse today, and no one will bother to present a reasoned argument and have a reasonable discussion. Well, boom, we got it, terrifying as it may be. This young girl laid out her opinion and her reasoning behind it very clearly and very rationally. The reasoning is deeply flawed, and the conclusions terrible and dangerous for trans girls. But being reactionary is going to entrench those ideas and make them even more dangerous. The video is gone, the other side retreated, and now there will be no discussion. This could have been a great moment in gender-theory dialog, and we blew it by trolling a child.
Yes I disagree with every word this poor confused child said. Yes, it makes me want to buy All Of The Thin Mints now. But I'm going to continue to be a sister to every Girl Scout, even the bigots, even though like a sister would I will point out to them when they are dangerously wrong.
I may be a starry-eyed naif for believing in the power of a calm non-judgmental counterargument, but that's fine with me because every once in a while it works. I was having a conversation with an older aquaintence, whom I've heard say some pretty bigoted things. This person knows I disagree with those things, but we've never had the appropriate moment to have a full-blown discussion about it. We were talking about Dancing With the Stars and this person was saying how they were uncomfortable watching the season, probably wouldn't watch it at all, and started calling Chaz Bono "it." I immediately interrupted and calmly said, "He. He is the proper pronoun. I know it's confusing and if you want to have a conversation about the pronouns I'd be happy to help you out. But "it" isn't the right word." And that was the end. And apparently it was also the end of the DWTS boycott, because we talked about every episode of the season and I never herd the wrong pronoun again. In fact, we even talked about how much Chaz was improving. One piece of information slides into the right place, and click, the world looks different.
My point is, you really never know how much any person is capable of changing their mind until you give them an opportunity to do so. And you do that by talking, and not by shouting.
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