So writes Amanda Marcotte, who confuses the singular with the plural (at issue is one Scout), and whose elevation to the status of a widely published public thinker is a particularly salient (and, unfortunately, recurring) reminder of the intellectual rot the academic left has institutionalized in its long march through both language and our cultural institutions.
In an article dripping with contempt for those who don’t readily allow for Marcotte’s ideas of social engineering — the lot of them right-wingers, naturally (save those on the left who may be suffering from false consciousness, a condition easily fixed with a stern reminder about which views the collective demands they hold, chop chop!) — St Mandy of the Blessed Vagina Ownership rails against hateful right-wing Christian bigots making it their nefarious right-wing Christian-bigoted mission to question the wisdom (and rationale) of allowing a boy to join the Girl Scouts:
In September, I wrote a Slate piece about the Christian right’s brewing hostilities towards the Girl Scouts. While this may initially seem like the silliest right-wing bogeyman ever, I was forced to conclude that their hatred does make sense. After all, the Girl Scouts are all about sisterhood and empowering girls to think of themselves as fully formed human beings with aspirations beyond wife- and motherhood, which does fly directly in the face of Christian-right views on proper gender roles. Now the clamoring on the right for a boycott of the Girl Scouts has grown even louder, all because a troop in Colorado rescinded its decision to exclude girl-identified members who were assigned to the male gender at birth.
Got that? The “Christian Right” has just been looking for an excuse to go after the Girl Scouts because the Girl Scouts serve as a bulwark against the diminution of women inherent in the kind of Christianity that is tied to “the right-wing”; and now the Christian right-wing haters have found a convenient way to do so by ginning up outrage over something so trivial as a 7-year-old boy joining the Girl Scouts because s/he’s determined s/he’s a female. Thankfully, however, warriors like Amanda Marcotte are willing to speak up and expose the haters — among whom she of course would never number herself, being as she is so open to the plight of a poor transgender boy’s fight to join the Girlscouts.
That is, we’re to distinguish the hatreds of the “Christian right” — the kind that allows for the very questioning of peculiar (in the strictest sense) social relations without the compulsory shame that should naturally attach itself to such a discriminatory posture — from the tolerance, benevolence, and acceptance St Mandy of the Wholly Owned Uterus shows toward Bobby, the 7-year old boy Girl Scout, whose right to declare himself a girl trumps the rights of others to question not only that declaration, but the social trajectory that can result from it. And we’re to ignore the hatred, bigotry, and cartoonish portrayal of a “Christian right” “bogeyman” that animates this piece, and that has always animated Marcotte’s politics.
Just as some pigs are more equal than others, some hatreds are more justified than others, I suppose — and Amanda Marcotte does hate her some right-wing Christian intolerance. (She’s also not particularly keen on certain types of men who use a “cultural script” to get their rape on, forcing alcohol down the gullets of defenseless women who have yet to become properly empowered owners of their own gendered selves, likely because they’ve yet to adopt Marcotte’s feminist worldview, the poor fragile dears.)
Notes Stacy McCain:
The genuinely troubling thing about this is not merely that, to the liberal intelligentsia, transgendered 7-year-olds are entirely acceptable and praiseworth[y], a phenomenon about which no one dare raise a skeptical eyebrow, lest they be accused of “hate.” No, what is truly disturbing is the intelligentsia’s belief that there is something wrong with parents who think that Girl Scouts should be for, y’know, girls.
Attitudes that are altogether common and understandable — such as parents’ desire to provide their children a normal, wholesome childhood environment — are re-imagined by the liberal intelligentsia as hateful bigotry, which must be explained by reference to some sort of reactionary political impulse. And thus the majority of Americans are cast as hopelessly prejudiced, prone to manipulation by shadowy right-wingers, and therefore in need of enlightenment by their moral and intellectual superiors because … Progress!
Well, Stacy, they are.
But Amanda is going to change that, damnit, and if that means she has to beat the hatred out of the poor dumb bourgeois conformists, with their quaint notions of social organization and sexual differences, than that’s what she’s prepared to do. After all, if they’re too dumb to accept Amanda’s truths themselves, then they simply must be brought to heel.
It’s for their own good. And of course, for the good of the (transgendered) children.
SCIENCE!!!
who were assigned to the male gender at birth
By that fiendish Y chromosome, no less.
Look, it may be the case that some males end up with a female-patterned brain because the testosterone didn’t have the normal effect on brain organization during gestation. That’s gotta be a tough row to hoe for those thus afflicted.
Nevertheless, hard cases make for bad law, and exceptions don’t change the rule. There’s a scientific means to determine sex, and if your brain didn’t get the memo, that’s not the fault of the Girl Scouts.
Personally, I think the parents should lose parental rights for allowing a kid to make such a stupid decision at age 7.
Just wait until the kid is age 15 and has to live down the transgender phase he went through at age 7.
Oh wait, I forgot, 7 years always know what they want and parents should just acquiesce to all requests and demands.
After all, who can expect a parent to know what’s right?
Serious question: is Marcotte really this fucking stupid, or is she putting us on? I know here track record and therefore assume that a room temperature IQ in an igloo is beyond her, but this is slime mold quality “thought” at work here.
Someone is called a man just because he has a dick? OUTRAGE!!!
7 year olds are in Brownies and the second grade. What child self-identifies as transgender at age seven? I’ve been arguing about this with my lefty friends about this for a week. Naturally, none of them has an answer other than it’s for the fairness, regardless of the bad feelings this is causing with the rank and file, ya know, girls in the Brownie troop.
I have mentioned that my youngest son is a wrestler. There is a girl on their squad and no one will wrestle her in competition, so she wins by forfeit. How is this fair?
Girl Scout cookies are also overpriced and not as good as they used to be.
Life’s not fair
QED
No kidding. That was one of my first points. Life is not fair and that is a lesson best learned at a tender age.
It’s so very funny – that after these womyn cried about rights and what not- title IX, and now they’re willing to let any little boy who wants to wear a dress into their club.
I see something so very strangely ironic in it all.
1) Life’s not fair
2) You can’t always have what you want
3a) Because I said so that’s why*
3b) You’re a fucking idiot. Grow up.#
*that’s when I’m reasoning with my kids;
#When I’m reasoning with Leftists
Anyone else ever notice that Leftists and children reason the same way?
I can see it now, the high school coaches will start recruiting “transgendered” basketball players for the girls team in order to be able to win more games, I mean add to the “diversity” of the squad.
I’ve found that they argue like petulant teenagers, so yeah.
Blake, That’s actually not a bad strategy: Treat liberal pieties with the same respect they treat custom and tradition.
Really, Blake, that’s not a bad idea. Add the girls softball teams in there and people might actually start to pay to see the games.
Sorry, I got four words in and the whole thing went away.
mojo gets my vote for thread winner.
God, Allah, Brahma, whatever created nature and it isn’t fair. What I ask progressives who go on about making things fair is where their greater-than-god-like powers to do so are going to come from.
Let’s face it, they reject natural law (which God, Allah, Braham, whatever failed at) and therefore the concept of any rights derived from them in favor of… well, what exactly?
What child self-identifies as transgender at age seven?
Sexual identity clunks into place at age 3. That’s when kids notice that there are two kinds of people in the world, male and female, and they know which one they are.
If your little boy, starting at age 3, insisted he was a girl every time you asked him, and kept it up for four years, how would you react? Assuming, of course, that that’s what happened. I have no idea what the kid told or did not tell his parents to lead them to conclude he was really she.
That’s the crux of it, di. We don’t really know anything other than Mom insisting that little Johnny/Joanie insisted he is a she. We’ve yet to see a Dad or partner or same or opposite sex in the picture. Only Mom’s earnest pleadings.
or=of
I guess, looking for the bright side, Marcotte has finally found a place where the opinion of the individual trumps the will of the collective…
God, this woman’s an idiot. She’s like a bad parody of a feminist. Does anyone take her seriously?
Insty’s link to a piece about dual — not to say dueling — vaginas t’other day was interesting, to the extent that at least some few of the possessors took the condition to be the commonplace norm of the matter, ’til they found out otherwise. That’s more or less the way things go with people, ain’t it?
“identified as female since age 2.”
I thought children were completely fungible. That sex characteristics were socially imposed and if Johnny were given a Baby Poopy Diaper and Jennifer a GI Joe all these differences would disappear. There were a lot of PhD’s and funding dedicated to that proposition.
So 40 years of feminist propaganda is flushed away by one toddler?
members who were assigned to the male gender at birth
Unnhhh – so that whole XY/gender thing doesn’t resolve until birth, Amanda? So those parents who decide to find out the gender of their child before birth are doing some kind of partial-birth thingie to assign the gender?
Stupidity like that should be painful….
Amanda cannot admit that gender is assigned at conception, because a clump of cells cannot have gender since it’s just a clump of cells and not a human.
The clump of cells isn’t really a baby until after it’s born, and sometimes not even then, depending on the wishes of the host to the parasitical clump of cells.
I am intolerant of intolerance.
This thread is not complete without “The Who” and “I’m a Boy”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4_eSW6D6sc
Who – I’m a Boy 1967
One girl was called Jean Marie
Another little girl was called Felicity
Another little girl was Sally Joy
The other was me, and I’m a boy
My name is Bill and I’m a headcase
They practice making up on my face
Yeah, I feel lucky if I get trousers to wear
Spend ages taking hairpins from my hair
I’m a boy, I’m a boy
But my ma won’t admit it
I’m a boy, I’m a boy
But if I say I am I get it
Put your frock on Jean Marie
Plait your hair Felicity
Paint your nails, little Sally Joy
Put this wig on, little boy
I’m a boy, I’m a boy
But my ma won’t admit it
I’m a boy, I’m a boy
But if I say I am I get it
I wanna play cricket on the green
Ride my bike across the street
Cut myself and see my blood
I wanna come home all covered in mud
I’m a boy, I’m a boy
But my ma won’t admit it
I’m a boy, I’m a boy, I’m a boy
I’m a boy, I’m a boy, I’m a boy, I’m a boy
I’m a boy, I’m a boy, I’m a boy.
This is the same Girl Scouts that directs them to Media Matters to refute Urban Legends?
“The Internet is a breeding ground for “urban legends,” which are false stories told as if true. Next time you receive a txt or e-mail about something that seems unbelievable, confirm it before you spread it.
The fact-checking site snopes.com investigates everything from urban legends to “news” articles and posts its findings. Media Matters for America (http://mediamatters.org/) gets the word out about media misinformation”
I still ordered 8 boxes of cookies. The caramel ones are the best.
I thought they had corrected that error, Red? I’m really not surprised that the Girl Scouts are caving on this transgender kid issue. Their leadership, at the council level, not the individual troops, has been overrun with lesbians for at least 30 years that I am aware of. Of course, you could say the same thing for a lot of the young ladies who are in our Armed Forces. It’s certainly not all of them, but they are overrepresented compared to the civilian population. Kind of like Hollywood, the Arts and Academia.
The Samoas are the only good cookies, but I can make them at home cheaper.
Mayhaps they did, leigh. Problem being that it appeared in the first place. You’re right, many institutions have been overrun with liberals not of the classic variety. I am constantly in awe of how effectively they have taken over traditional institutions.
Next year I am coming to your house for cookies. Can’t be more than 1500 miles.
Yeah, it’s depressing. When they said that they were going to work to change the system from within, they weren’t kidding. Two can play at that game. I hope some of our young’uns are on it. I’ve been pleased by how intolerant of the race card, pc nonsense my own kids and their friends are. They see through all the window dressing to the crappy stagecraft it is covering up and are screaming “Foul!” They’re a lot smarter than I was at 21 when I thought we could all get along. Of course, I also thought guys were interested in my deep thoughts and not trying to get me alone so they could try to undress me. Youth is wasted on the young, alright.
My 20 y.o. son is aghast at what passes for education nowadays. He thinks he’s in the minority, but now has classmates approach him quietly saying that they didn’t realize there were others out there with similar concerns.
And there is nothing wrong with combining deep thoughts and undressing. It’s how we may be able to take things back. Numbers count.
Heh. One of my girlfriends is due with her tenth child any day now. She’s more woman than me. I quit at three. I think we can take things back with sheer numbers since the lefties are too busy being hipper than thou.
Leigh, that’s genuinely unfortunate. It would be far better if they went out there, wrestled her, and demonstrated in empirical fashion the differences between males and females in terms of strength, size, and speed. Hopefully she or her parents will get the point before someone breaks her fool neck.
And if someone does break her fool neck, the response to the wailing sure to ensue ought to be:
My misanthropy is pretty much reaching critical mass. It’s time to thin the herd.
I join you in your misanthropy, SDN. The girl is a millstone around the neck of the team. She has no skills and since no one has volunteered to flatten her ass, she really thinks she’s the bomb.
My son did have to wrestle her in practice once and she cheats. He pinned her like a bug and got a new partner.
“to exclude girl-identified members who were assigned to the male gender at birth”
That’s a special brand of crazy talk right there! Has Mandy been huffing exhaust fumes again?
Quick, someone get Mandy to ask this 7 year old how he feels about abortion. That should cause her head to explode. I mean, she has to defend him because he’s self identifying with female (and is a useful tool to bash “right-wingers” with) so he’s an ally of sorts. But he DOES have a penis, so any thoughts that he might have about abortion are immediately considered null, but he IS female identifying, so …. ARGH! *POP*!
I like the “assignedto the male gender idea”.
“Your parking space is B65 , your locker is 378, and here’s your penis. Don’t come to work without it.”.