By Nicholas Stix
Girl Scouts' Inclusion Of Bobby Montoya, 7-Year-Old Transgender Child, Prompts Troops To Disband
First Posted: 12/21/11 06:15 PM ET Updated: 12/21/11 08:55 PM ET
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A Colorado-based Girl Scouts troop's decision to admit a 7-year-old transgender child this fall has prompted three leaders to resign and dissolve their troops.
As The Christian Post is reporting, all three of the troop leaders were affiliated with the Northlake Christian School in Covington, Louisiana.
Susan Bryant-Snure, one of the leaders who resigned, told The Baptist Press that the Girl Scouts' action is "extremely confusing" and an "almost dangerous situation" for children. "This goes against what we [Northlake Christian School] believe," said Bryant-Snure, who has three daughters among the 25 girls who had been active scouts there.
The controversy began when Felisha Archuleta protested against a Denver troop's decision to not initially allow her transgender daughter, Bobby Montoya, to join the group. [N.S.: What daughter?!] "I believe he was born in the wrong body," Archuleta, who also confessed to having difficulty switching from male to female pronouns when discussing her child, told ABC. "But the Girl Scout leader told us he can't join because he has 'boy parts.'... But no one would know he's a boy unless they pulled his pants down."
The Girl Scouts of Colorado subsequently released a statement through the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) in support of Archuleta and her excluded daughter [sic], noting, "If a child identifies as a girl and the child's family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout."
Added Rachelle Trujillo, vice president for communications of the Colorado Girl Scouts: "If a child is living as a girl, that's good enough for us. We don't require any proof of gender."
Bryant-Snure and her fellow leaders are now expected to align themselves with the American Heritage Girls, a Christian organization that was founded in 1995 in response to the Girl Scouts' decision to let scouts use a word other than "God" in their pledge, according to She Wired.
Watch CNN's report on Bobby Montoya below:
[N.S.: The discussion thread was dominated by homosexuals, such as Valerie Keefe.]
Valerie Keefe
90 Fans
22 hours ago( 1:58 AM)
Well, when the Girl Scouts let in a male who wishes to live as a female, let me know. Until then, I'm going to give them kudos for allowing female children who were mistakenly assigned male at birth into scouts. Good day.
hp_blogger_Valerie Keefe: Well, when the Girl Scouts let in a male who
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/hp_blogger_Valerie Keefe/girl-scout-troops-transgender-child-disband_n_1163971_125263346.html
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[By way of translation, Valerie Keefe is counting a boy—you know, XY chromosomes, penis, prostate gland, etc., as among the ranks of "female children who were mistakenly assigned male at birth." Thus, she has the anti-naturalistic notion of "assigning" a sex promoted by her own movement (i.e., chopping off a child or man's sex, changing his name, giving him female hormones and psychotropic drugs, and psychologically re-programming him) and applied it to one's natural sex, as if we were all merely "assigned" a sex, and had none naturally. But if there is no natural sex, how can one say that someone was "mistakenly assigned" one?
To those who would say the individual in question has his own "gender," independent of his body, I say:
1. How is that supposed to work?; and
2. What happened to your generation-long assertion, "Gender is a social construct"?
There are people who claimed to be "black," in order to benefit from affirmative action, who have been declared "white," and prosecuted. On what basis does one tell them that their claims are false?
And what if I insist that I am really seven feet tall, even though my body is not seven feet tall? (Please take my word for this.) How is that different from someone in a boy's body insisting that he is a girl?
What we are seeing here has nothing to do with reality. Rather, certain people are being given privileges to assert that 2 + 2 = 5. It all started with affirmative action for blacks. Bad as that was, it has just gotten crazier and more evil ever since, as more and more groups have forced their way onto the gravy train.
P.S. When I was a kid, a mother who did to a child what Felisha Archuleta has been doing to Bobby Montoya would have been arrested for child abuse. By the way, why the two different last names? Neither HP nor CNN has mentioned a father, let alone a stepfather.) ]
In reply, I would point out that you've confused the strident transphobic screeds of the second-wave feminist movement which, when you read its leading lights, Raymond, Daly, Greer, Dworkin, Steinem, etc. would assert that gender is merely a social construct, with transfeminist activism.
ReplyDeleteGender exists, it's natural, it's innate, though much of the ephemera (i.e. liking pink, long hair, what have you) may well be constructed and performed. There is sexual dimorphism in the brain, and given that the midbrain, which studies have linked to gender identity and sexual orientation, is sexually dimorphic, it too is a reproductive organ, really the most important one.
When I referred to Ms. Montoya as being 'mistakenly assigned male at birth' it's because birth assignment, (i.e. doctoral declaration of the child's sex) is based on genital morphology, which, while well correlated with neurological sex, is not perfectly correlated with neurological sex.
Being trans is simply an intersex condition, and given that attempting to change the patient's brain to match the bodily morphology would be the ontological equivalent of homicide, and given that it also doesn't work and transition, which is, allowing the patient to direct the development of their own body, (which anyone who's ever gone on a diet or lifted weights or had electrolysis or taken birth control has also done) has a long-term satisfaction rate of roughly 98%, transition is the least invasive, most effective choice.
So yes, as I have been saying all this time, (though you may not have been reading, since you conflate what I write with what radicalfeminists write about gender) gender, or (neurological) sex is indeed innate, but it is not the same as gonadal morphology in all cases, merely most.
I hope this answers any questions you were asking in good faith.
-Valerie
PS: Thank you for mentioning that I am a lesbian. Oftentimes I find that those espousing cissexist attitudes don't realize that sexual orientation in trans people isn't always heterosexual, or as my girlfriend likes to quip, "They don't bother to know what kind of gay this is, but they don't like it."
Anyway, feel free to read some of Julia Serano's landmark work, "Whipping Girl," and maybe at some point you'll ditch the claims that trans activists believe that gender is constructed and that the left is less monolithic than you think... or not, since it's really the only way your story has any heft, is if you accuse transfeminists of being second-wave-radicalfeminists.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise what you have as a story is, "Person who's been in the same place as subject of story defends her from ignorant assumptions about her life and identity." not much of a story.
[I wrote the following response last night to your first comment, but am only now posting it.]
ReplyDeleteIs this THE Valerie Keefe who is responding? Not an imposter, I hope. The Web is lousy with them.
I have to warn you, Ms. Keefe: I can’t presently respond to your statement, except to nibble at the edges. Your comment looks very interesting, and I’ve read it three times so far, but I’ll have to do a lot of new research before I can respond to most of what you wrote, time that I don’t presently have. Thus, I am going to keep things at my own simple level.
The person you called “Ms. Montoya”—that’s a seven-year-old. I hope you don’t have kids, because I’ve never heard a parent refer to any seven-year-old as “Ms.”
You also spoke of “the Montoyas,” but the article does not mention “Montoyas,” as opposed to Bobby Montoya and his mother, Felisha Archuleta. Although the article did not mention Bobby’s father anywhere, there is approximately a 100 percent chance that a man sired him. If that man is still alive, he has rights under family law to be involved in this situation.
When you say “transition,” are you talking about chopping off this child’s penis? And if so, at what age do you foresee the butchering to be done?
By the way, at the risk of sounding simple-minded and of personalizing the matter, and based on my having so far fathered only one child that I know of, I do know that my son was not “assigned male” at birth via “doctoral declaration of the child’s sex.” As soon as the main doctor had succeeded at dragging our son out of his mother’s womb against his will, my wife and I declared him a boy, based solely on his having a penis. Any declarations the doctor may have made regarding his sex came later, and were thus moot. I would wager that that is the way things happen 99 percent of the time. The only declaration most parents need to hear from an obstetrician or OB nurse right after delivery is, “ten fingers and ten toes.” The parents can take care of the rest just fine, thank you.