Fortunately, they knew what to do.
Last May the Girl Scouts made news when they announced a new policy of acceptance for transgender girls. The policy was reasonable and case-by-case based, but the policy is secondary to the story. What matters is that the organization adopted it as consistent with its mission.
Last month, a $100,000 donor sent the Queen Anne offices of the Girl Scouts of Western Washington a note demanding that the chapter “guarantee that our gift will not be used to support transgender girls. If you can’t, please return the money.” The $100,000 was about 25% of the group’s yearly fundraising goal, and would have been used to send about a 500 indigent girls to camp.
Council CEO Megan Ferland returned the donation, telling the donor “Girl Scouts is for every girl. And every girl should have the opportunity to be a Girl Scout if she wants to.” Of course she did. A non-profit organization cannot put a price tag on its mission and its integrity. This would be like St. Jude’s Hospital accepting a huge donation in exchange for allowing a black child to die of cancer. It would be like a a women’s college’s board of directors cutting a profitable deal with an outsider to close the school down, just to pick a wild hypothetical out of the air. It is the equivalent of treason, selling out one’s nation, or taking money to betray a family or a friend who trusts you.
What Ferland did was an easy call, and what any ethical leader of any non-profit would do when offered a similar bribe, even if the bribe was a hundred times that donation. What fascinates and frightens me is the very existence in the world of human beings so hate-filled and black of heart, so cruel and without pity, that they would use $100,000 to corrupt a virtuous organization and induce it to reject a child. This is a villain of the fanciful sort we associate with comic books, fables and fairy tales—the witch who wants to take away the world’s laughter, the super villain who uses her power to steal the innocence of children, or the Grinch. It is worth $100,000 to this warped individual to corrupt the Girl Scouts of America, to find the organization’s price to reject its stakeholders, young girls—“Everyone has a price, Smithers! Anyone can be corrupted!”—because that will give this rich, evil, misanthropic bigot joy.
It sends a chill up my spine. There really are people like this, maybe living next door, looking for opportunities to infect the rest of us with the sickness of gratuitous and mindless cruelty.
After this story was publicized, an Indiegogo fund was set up to help the Girl Scouts cover the loss of the donation. $172,690 was raised by the campaign in a single day.
Do you hear that, whoever or whatever you are? Foiled again!!!
Asshole.
_________________________
Pointer: Fred
Facts: The Mary Sue 1, 2
Ethics Alarms 
I think the GSA’s policy is dead wrong because a transgender girl isn’t really a girl, just a boy in girl’s clothing. That said, if this donor knew the policy and tried to buy them off it, then he has no one to blame when they refused the gambit. It’s no different than the clerk in Florida who resigned rather than issue marriages to same-sex couples because it was against her principles, or Sheldon whoever telling Sarah Silverman to take a hike when she offered to scissor him if he switched his contribution allegiances in 2012.
Race and deviant sexuality to not equate, Jack. Neither do children. The offer was doomed from the start; not because of the ethics of the stipulation attached, but because the Girl Scouts have long since forgone their founding values and are fatally corrupted.
I think he probably shouldn’t have donated to begin with. Making it conditional AFTER giving it was indeed cruel, though I don’t think that cruelty to children was necessarily what motivated that. People are alarmed about the general cultural upheaval occurring these days at a dizzying pace, and I believe the motives of some of the prime movers behind it are not good.
A transgender girl is an oxymoron. This smacks of identity fraud.
Seriously, commenters? Whether or not you agree with the Girl Scouts’ policy is immaterial to the point Jack is making here.
The point — that there are evil people in the world that would hold an organization’s future hostage to their personal bigotry — could happen (and probably HAS happened) to other organizations who rely on the kindness and generosity of donors for their organizational well being.
Jack is expressing astonishment that these caricatures are real people who lurk the world, trying to get their way by paying for it, and dangling temptation in front of organizations or people who need whatever these evil creatures are using as temptation.
They are all over. Jack just found the most recent Mephistopheles in a story about the Girl Scouts. Might as well have been a widows and orphans home. The recipient doesn’t matter. That which is evil is what matters.
There is no bigotry. If I were to attack a black man because of his ancestry- as immutable a genetic characteristic as one’s sex- then THAT would be bigotry. To stand in defense of children against deviant renegades is not. It’s a duty incumbent on all adults.
Regardless. You miss the point of the post. Or you are just too blinded by your “duty” for you to see that Jack’s point is not about the gender issue.
What “gender issue”? This is a children issue.
Gender is a children’s issue, they’re the ones being indoctrinated into the gender system. But what you seem unable to understand is that the issue at hand isn’t gender or sexuality, the issue is using money to try and make a person defy a policy that they’re obligated to follow.
Did you actually read Jack’s post or do you just run on automatic the instant the word transgender comes up?
*mumbles something about Senator Kelly and Magneto*
“Obligated”?? The GSA directors have been flounting the founding principles of their organization for decades now, slowly proceeding from one outrage to another. Now they’re overtly pushing perversity on their girls as a virtue. If sexually corrupting preteen girls is all right with you, then you deserve to be in jail right along with the directors. It’s called “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” at the very least. That used to be a major crime before the sodomites and their liberal allies started rewriting the laws and the Constitution.
Yes obligated, the Girl Scouts of Western Washington do not make policy, so long as they are part of the Girl Scouts of America they are obligated to follow the national policy. End of story.
Either you are unable to understand that or you are unable to think once the word transgender gets mentioned. Neither case speaks well for you.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Senator Kelly. Magneto should be here shortly to tell us penis is female, socialization means nothings and womanhood is about feelings and nothing else.
“End of story”? You honestly believe that local councils of the Girl Scouts are obligated to ignore the Code and Law that’s been in place since their founding in 1912… just because a depraved clique of feminist politicians in the upper levels say they must? Are they bound to meekly bow their heads to policies that overtly endanger those children in body and soul; the very thing that the GSA was formed to stand against? At what point, Valky, does obedience to higher authority break down? When does the time come when principle and a tradition of virtue supercedes the edicts of those who hold these things in disdain, regardless of their high office?
I maintain that this point was reached and surpassed quite some time ago. And, because no one on the lower levels- in the local councils- had the sense of duty to their girls to stand up and say “no” when it was needful, the Girl Scouts have devolved to a point where they constitute a moral danger. They are hardly the only one-time national institution to have sold out their honor in this manner. The fact that they are a youth group, however, makes their descent into depravity particularly disturbing.
So, if my girls (who will be girl scouts too) hang out with a child who biologically is male but identifies as female, they are being corrupted? They wouldn’t give a damn Steve. They have friends who are boys, and friends who are girls. They’d probably be excited if more of their boy friends wanted to play girly games with them like dress-up, house, and dolls. You are the one corrupting. I am teaching my children to approach others with love and acceptance — while you are sharpening your pitchfork — to use against a CHILD.
Indoctrinated into the gender system? You mean like “that penis of yours means you’re a boy, Johnny”? The horror!
I mean like “that penis of yours means you can’t play with dolls or ever cry, Johnny.”
Are you old enough, or young enough to have been shown Free to be You and Me in school?
There’s nothing in the “gender system” (also sometimes known as reality) that says boys can’t cry or play with dolls. Although prepare to be punched if you call a boy’s action figures “dolls.”
On the other hand, there IS something sinister in the public school system that says boys can’t play with imaginary guns or hand grenades.
Yup.
If it is ‘reality’ why does it need to be enforced with punching?
You just called a child a “deviant renegade.” Who is that transgender child harming? If he identifies as a girl, how is he harming the mission of the Girl Scouts? Is he going to pass on his transgender cooties and suddenly make them identify as boys? My guess (speaking as a former girl scout) is that he just wants to make campfires and friendship bracelets with his friends.
Patrice, what a great comment — and Jack, what a great post. I concur.
Are all conditional donations unethical? That doesn’t seem like a tenable position to me. If I offer my neighbor $100 to take down a motion-triggered security lamp that shines right in my window and wakes me up whenever a raccoon runs by, am I not doing something analogous to what the Girl Scouts donor did? “I am willing to offer you money and support if you are willing to slightly modify your behavior in return.” I certainly admit that the fact that the donor in question presented the money first and didn’t reveal the strings attached until later is rather jerk-waddish, and the fact that he’s trying to get the Girl Scouts to change their stance on a hot-button culture-war topic makes the whole thing feel much skeevier than an equivalent offer where the catch was something like “you can’t use the money to buy food for the scouts that contains factory-farmed meat” or “some portion of this money must be used to upgrade the bunks at Camp Iwannagohome.” Still, I’m not sure how much of Jack’s criticism is really about the fact that the donation is conditional, and how much is about the fact that the conditions concern LGBT issues, which he is passionate about.
Regarding Jack — among other things at which Jack is brilliant, he has been a lifelong fundraiser and has been involved in philanthropic issues as long as I’ve known him. He is also passionate about ethical philanthropy.
I believe the difference between his stated opinions and those of the “we’re concerned about kids” commenters is the source of the evil. Jack hates evil manipulative people who think they can push other people around because they’re wealthy. The others seem to be so blinded by their concern for children — obviously a worthy concern, of course — that they can’t see that the evil manipulator is the point here, and that such manipulators could threaten other organizations that also care for children, such as Children’s Hospital(s), Big Brothers/Big Sisters, KaBOOM!, Operation Smile, etc.
I thought KABOOM was “Key Atomic Benefits Office of Mankind”?
Did the post suggest that all conditional donations are unethical? Donations with unethical conditions are unethical. “Violate your mission” is such a condition. So is “teach Aryan superiority” and “Ignore the Western Classics.”
“Did the post suggest that all conditional donations are unethical”
Not as such. Patrice’s first comment, especially the line about “holding an organization’s future hostage” seemed to imply that position, however, and I was slightly unsettled by your characterization of the conditional donation as a “bribe”. However, I stated the position much more strongly than the evidence warranted, which was incorrect. I still think that there’s something a little off about the idea that a large conditional donation, in Patrice’s words, is an act of “evil manipulative people who think they can push other people around because they’re wealthy,” but I completely concur with the assessment that in this case the particulars of the condition imposed by the donor loom much larger than the act of putting strings on the donation.
The mission of the Girl Scouts is to serve *children*. We’re talking about children here, remember? Children who are transgender. And people in the comments are referring to these same children as having “deviant sexuality” and being “deviant renegades” from whom other children have to be protected — as though they will corrupt the innocents around them. Has no one noticed that we are talking about *children*?
Gender dysphoria is a medical condition, and it’s been documented for decades. It is not the same as being “a boy in girl’s clothing,” and anyone with any understanding of these issues knows that. In addition, being trans has nothing to do with sexuality. It’s about gender, not about who people want to have sex with. Trans people can be gay, straight, bi, asexual, or anything else on the spectrum of human sexuality.
The kind of comments I’m seeing here betray exactly the kind of ignorance that motivated a person to give $100,000 to a terrific organization that serves girls — so long as some of their money didn’t go to pay for making beeswax candles, or weaving potholders, or making brownies for a bake sale, with transgender children. Because clearly, a transgender nine-year-old is going to … well, what exactly? Get their cooties on the beeswax? Weave subliminal messages into the potholders? Whisper disturbing things into ears of shoppers walking by the bake-sale table?
You’re talking about keeping innocent children from engaging in innocent activities with other innocent children because they’re transgender. That’s astonishing. There is nothing quite like watching grown people project their fears onto children and say hideous things about them — on an ethics blog, no less. I believe you’ve made Jack’s point rather spectacularly.
A “terrific organization”… that now denies God, consorts with pervert groups and Planned Parenthood, indoctrinates its children in Islam, Wicca and other “alternate lifestyles” and generally subscribes to radical leftist dogma on the highest levels. Ask them, if you will, what their procedures are for helping a girl who’s been infected with unnatural attitudes towards her own basic identity. This very article ought to tell you what that response would be; a page quote out of the GLSEN handbook.
Yes, it IS about children. That’s the very point. Remember that “God” and “morally straight” part of the original Scout’s Oath? The emphasis on good deeds and citizenship? There’s precious little of that, now. In essence, it’s gone. The GSA has gone from a group that encouraged the best out of American girls into one that reduces them to the level of little animals and prey for the degenerates that obviously run the show today.
Yeah, uh no. Critical research failure, that’s the Boy Scout oath.
The Girl Scout law is…
The original read…
Stephen is just irrational on this issue and related ones, and can’t be moved. I’ve tried. This is how ingrained this particular basis is in some otherwise reasonable, compassionate people.
I am compassionate when it comes to children, Jack. That’s the very reason why I stand up against manifest dangers to their persons. This is one of the big ones.
Only you could think that calling children perverted deviants was being compassionate, and try to whitewash that be saying what you’re really against is ‘dangers to their persons’.
In this instance his objection IS fair.
So long as he believes allowing what he believes to be a boy into a group of girls that should have reasonable expectation of privacy, then opposing efforts to allow the “boy” into the group of girls IS acting in their interests.
You can’t attack his desire to be compassionate.
You can only attack his evaluation of whether or not there is a danger.
That is to say his objection that he isn’t acting compassionately.
Not his objection to whether or not this transgendered whatever is a legitimately accomodatable (?) person.
I’m not even sure that second response was English, but if the first response was any indication: Bullshit. And you should know better.
Even if we give full and complete credit to he idea that transgenderism is a mental condition: What’s the harm? We aren’t talking about some ephemeral “expectation of privacy”, he said, and I quote: “manifest dangers to their persons” like these kids are psycho killers. There’s a burden of proof between his bigotry and reality that he needs to hurdle before he deserves the defense of people like you.
I didn’t defend him did I, moron?
And if that doesn’t look like English to you, you must be illiterate, moron.
I told you on what grounds you can logically attack him, moron.
And compassion isn’t one of them, moron.
Rather, the methods he derives to determine who is or is not a danger is valid to attack, moron.
But once he (or anyone) has made that determination, what HUMAN doesn’t then seek to maximize a compassionate response, despite flawed premises, moron?
Go back and reread and don’t start your comment with complete stupidity like you did, moron.
You know, this would be a perfectly forceful reply without all the “morons.”
Perhaps so, I sometimes suffer from an inability not to identify behavior by what it is. In this case, moronic. This inability manifests itself more readily when someone ought to know better.
First off: Read what you wrote. Those words look like English, but I still don’t know hat you were trying to say. You don’t get to write like that and then call someone else a moron. I’m just saying.
Second: You don’t get to tell me what grounds I can or can’t argue. I don’t think it’s logical to start an argument from an illogical starting point (“Well it makes perfect sense if you take these ridiculous points of view as fact first”) I take SMP as the insane, slightly retarded bigot he’s portrayed himself to be. We disagree. I’m not going to give him the ‘benefit’ of logic as a starting point, and I don’t think you should either.
In my opinion, in accepting that SMP is being compassionate, you are per se giving credit to his views that these children are perverted deviants who represent a physical danger to their peers. In fact, by this logic, I’m actually being compassionate saying that SMP is an insane, slightly retarded bigot, because I have other people in mind. And one way empathy is still empathy.
SMP IS compassionate: he’s a devoted, sincere and effective child welfare advocate. For some strange reason, he is not compassionate about trans and gay individuals, or their problems.
Jack; you’ve got it all wrong, there. Every human soul is precious. I never said otherwise. My opposition is to those who cling to a perverse lifestyle, define themselves by it and seek to impose it on innocent children as a part of their political agenda. Just as bad are those who would either deliver children into the ultimate, soul destroying bondage and/or deny them help in coping with their dawning sexuality to steer them into a safe and moral approach. This latter is what parents and, in a larger sense, all decent adults are for as their first priority. It was why such organizations as the Girl Scouts were established in the first place.
Now, the GSA has not only abrogated their founding principles, but have viciously turned against them. It’s not a matter of hating the poor souls who have fallen into this terrible trap, but opposing those who not only deny their condition but, to maintain that denial, would enforce that bitter delusion on the other 98% of the population. But when they go after the children, that opposition must be unrelenting.
I don’t buy it. “I’m compassionate towards children, except those ones” just doesn’t hit me as legitimate.
I’m not sure that physical danger is necessarily what he was implying. Some of us are particular about how much more unfettered access to our children’s extremely malleable minds we are willing to grant to the left, and unfortunately the gay/lesbian/transgender movement has CHOSEN to hitch its horse to the left.
Gee, I must have missed a lot! Sorry, folks, but my time on the internet has been limited as of late, so I don’t know who’s attacking or defending who over what. What I’ve just gathered, however, is that ‘some” consider me retarded and a bigot for expressing an opinion in favor of decency with and protection of children. If so, I plead guilty. In reality, I have a pretty good I.Q.- for the record. Unlike liberals, I don’t flaunt it. Intelligence, as mature people are aware, is useful only when combined with discipline, ethical motivations and a reservoir of factual information (based on experience as well as academic research) on which to base one’s judgments. You can have an I.Q. of 160 (like Einstein and Newton) and still be a worthless leech on society- or a downright menace- unless you have those factors I mentioned. Oh… did I mention a godly outlook? Both those two men had that, as well. Consider that.
I’m going to double down:
Jack: Can someone say the sentence “I’m a humanitarian, I just hate niggers” and be a humanitarian? If not, how is this different? And is that being a ‘compassionate’ humanitarian?
Joe: The thing is, the policy is relatively well known. It’s definitely not a secret. If you as a parent feel that this is a problem…. Don’t participate. My god, it’s not like their holding their meetings in your living room.
SMP: If nothing else, I appreciate your honesty, and there’s a certain amount of integrity in what you do. But you have never once demonstrated in any way outside of empty rhetoric what damage these groups do. Your position requires… stubborn willful blindness, and retards your ability to think rationally. A genius with an IQ of 160 can still have trouble putting his underwear on the right way around. I’m just saying.
“My opposition is to those who cling to a perverse lifestyle, define themselves by it and seek to impose it on innocent children as a part of their political agenda.”
stvplln, I confess that I’m not entirely sure exactly what your “godly outlook” is, but I do strongly suspect that it is actually a perverse lifestyle, one I do not want to impose on children. My reasoning for this is that it leads you to make normative statements condemning behaviors, to attempt to justify your arguments by repeatedly claiming that they are obvious and describing poetically how wrong the behaviors seem, and to confabulate against the character or sanity of anyone who disagrees with you, no matter how solid their arguments are, and without addressing any of their points in the slightest.
I’ll believe you are skilled with the mindset of semantics. I could even believe you are skilled with the mindset of analysis, but it is clear that you are not analytically skilled enough to realize that some of your axioms are absurd and are leading you to depart from objective critical assessment of the propositions placed before you.
Compassionate though you may be, if you can’t figure out what is harmful and what is not, then you’re not helping.
First off: Read what you wrote. Those words look like English, but I still don’t know hat you were trying to say. You don’t get to write like that and then call someone else a moron. I’m just saying.
Comment 1
“In this instance his objection IS fair.”
This seems like plain English to me.
“So long as he believes allowing what he believes to be a boy into a group of girls that should have reasonable expectation of privacy, then opposing efforts to allow the “boy” into the group of girls IS acting in their interests.”
(1)SMP believes it is compassionate to protect girls’ privacy of an extremely personal nature.
(2)SMP believes allowing a boy into a girls’ intimate group (of this kind) to violate their privacy of an extremely intimate nature.
(3)Therefore SMP believes it is compassionate not to allow a boy into a girl’s intimate group (of this kind).
Syllogism 1 complete.
(3)SMP believes it is compassionate not to allow a boy into a girl’s intimate group (of this kind).
(4)SMP believes this transgender individual is a boy.
(5)Therefore SMP believes it is compassionate not to allow this transgender individual into a girl’s intimate group.
Syllogism 2 complete.
“You can’t attack his desire to be compassionate.”
This is plain English also, I don’t see any issues.
“You can only attack his evaluation of whether or not there is a danger.”
That is a call to attack his premise in line (4) of the syllogism. Note, that is what you have already indicated is your beef with him, and note, that is a line that doesn’t involve compassion, which are lines that there isn’t any irrationality in.
Comment 2
That is to say his objection that he isn’t acting compassionately.
This was an add on to my comment from #1 about “You can’t attack his desire to be compassionate” –
In other words you can’t attack his objection that he believes he is acting out of compassion, which was the first comment you made when he asserted “I am acting compassionately”.
“Not his objection to whether or not this transgendered whatever is a legitimately accomodatable (?) person.”
This is to clarify that, opposite of not attacking his compassion, you are quite free to attack his premise that this transgendered individual is someone we should not accommodate as part of the group.
Here:
“In this instance his objection IS fair, eh.
So long as he believes allowing what he believes to be a boy into a group of girls that should have reasonable expectation of privacy, then opposing efforts to allow the “boy” into the group of girls IS acting in their interests, eh.
You can’t attack his desire to be compassionate, eh.
You can only attack his evaluation of whether or not there is a danger, eh.”
Does that help?
“Second: You don’t get to tell me what grounds I can or can’t argue.”
But, I do like to try to edify the commentary of those whom I see as my comrades in battle, and would hope they would do the same of my comments should they touch on the illogical.
“I don’t think it’s logical to start an argument from an illogical starting point.”
Neither do I, but that wasn’t the issue here.
“We disagree. I’m not going to give him the ‘benefit’ of logic as a starting point, and I don’t think you should either.”
I don’t, but I’m also not going to attack a point that isn’t unsound.
If this is the framework:
Keeping dangerous condition X away from people Y is compassionate.
Then, there is, quite frankly, nothing wrong with that framework.
If X is an irrational premise or a false premise, that doesn’t undo the framework (which you attacked).
“In my opinion, in accepting that SMP is being compassionate, you are per se giving credit to his views that these children are perverted deviants who represent a physical danger to their peers.”
As a matter of fact, I clearly indicated that his compassion is very misplaced. Which is true and it doesn’t give credit to his flawed premise.
You know Tex, you can write however you want. I’m not conceding anything. My comment was specifically to your second comment, and asserting that you meant broken English sentences to be sandwiched between random sentences in your first comment where they barely make any sense when edited in where you think they should be. And then instead of clarifying, you devolve into name calling? Did you think that made you right? And then when you did clarify, you threw some regional linguistics in… Wonderful! I haven’t heard someone say “eh” since the South Park Movie! And now that the conversation is thoroughly derailed…. Are you done? I mean really…. This isn’t even personal; you did the same thing to Tim off the other post.
My explanation is sound. No my problem you can’t comprende after further clarification. And as I explained to Tim, I treat smug condescending jackassery very aggressively. You engaged in such and elicited the response. It is NEVER without reason and I make certain of that.
The Canadian jab was humor. Should I parse that as well?
Oi, Humble Talent and texagg04, there are some communication skills that I think are lacking here.
1) If you think somebody’s wrong, insulting them in an attempt to make them feel bad about it is gratuitous and usually completely ineffective. Worse, it makes them want to prove you wrong at all costs so they won’t internalize the insult. This is cognitive dissonance at work. Cognitive dissonance is also responsible for the desire to insult someone in the first place: if someone is worthy of insult, you don’t feel so bad about their criticism, however much you might need to hear it. [b]Never express contempt[/b], because contempt is hostile action, not effective communication.
2) If you have failed to communicate clearly, whether through your own fault or someone else’s, just [b]apologize[/b] for the miscommunication, [b]scrap[/b] what you said before, [b]listen[/b] to what they don’t understand, and [b]start over[/b] on their terms. If you’re on the receiving end of the communication, let them scrap what they said before and start over. The only reason not to let go of what a person said before is if it’s important that a standing communication standard be established to prevent further mistakes. (That’s not the case here because there is no time pressure and new people won’t know the standard, so we’ll have to explain ourselves in full in any case.)
In the spirit of getting everyone on the same page: texagg04 raised a good point, which I’ve also brought up before: SMP is compassionate enough to want to keep people from doing bad things, but for whatever reason will not critically analyze his own dogma about what is bad and good in the first place. Therefore, any criticism of SMP’s compassion is simply inaccurate and misdirected. texagg04’s point was phrased in an awkward way, but I was able to understand it, including the addendum.
Following this, Humble Talent disagreed with the point as asserted, but also seemed to misunderstand the reasoning behind the point, and expressed something resembling contempt. texxag04 attempted to clarify his point and expressed contempt in return. This repeated a couple more times.
It’s clear you both have great capacity to identify discrepancies between ideas, but if you assert someone is wrong instead of just asking for a perceived discrepancy to be explained or just explaining so they can understand, you’re going to get conversationally gridlocked.
This comment refereeing is a new genre here, and a wonderful one, well executed and objectively, which it must be to work. Bravo.
ExCeph, I still don’t think caveated compassion, or compassion(asterisk) is actual compassion. At best this amounts to compassion math, which I think falls somewhere between a King’s Pass and Ethics Accounting. “We’re going to call him compassionate, even though his compassion has some huge holes, because he’s a great advocate for children, so long as they don’t belong to groups he discriminates against.” I get what Tex is saying (now), I just don’t agree. Maybe address my questions to Jack: “Can someone say the sentence “I’m a humanitarian, I just hate niggers” and be a humanitarian? If not, how is this different? And is that being a ‘compassionate’ humanitarian?”
I think we’re on the same page about what’s happening, then; we merely disagree on what to call it. To me, “compassion” has hitherto meant “the desire to help others,” but it doesn’t imply anything about helping others correctly. It is purely a motivational descriptor, not a behavioral one.
Wiktionary, however, defines it as “Deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it.” By that definition, the Spanish Inquisition, nuns that hit left-handed people with rulers, and SMP are [i]not[/i] compassionate, because they are not actually aware of who is and is not suffering, regardless of what they wish.
Both definitions make sense to me; I don’t really care which one we use so long as we are aware of the distinction between those two definitions.
Also, thanks, Jack. It took me years of trouble before I learned to facilitate communication without regularly screwing it up.
Except that his mission is not the Girl Scouts mission, as they define it, and how they define it matters. He is free to start his own organization, or persuade them to change using reason and data.
Yeah, the original donor. I’m talking about SMP’s misplaced compassion.
I find that the people who are most afraid of any particular “order” breaking down, no matter how arbitrary and harmful that order is, are the ones who have no idea how anyone could create a functional alternative order. Usually this is because they have either a weak grasp of abstract concepts, or very little imagination. In order to free their minds, we have to show them stable alternative worldviews in terms they can understand before we go about destroying the ones they have.
I agree with SMP that certain behaviors in physically healthy people can be classified as unhealthy lifestyles. However, my definition of what is unhealthy behavior for a person is somewhat at odds with his, especially since we ascribe different motivations to people. I would consider him to be very unhealthy by my standards, due to him being some sort of fundamentalist, again due to the lack of imagination. His ideas of what is “natural” and what is not seem right backwards to me at times. By the same token, I surmise that he considers me to be unhealthy for having the capacity to distrust the motives and the very existence of his abusive/neglectful energy being dictator from which he appears to derive his values. I am indeed a manifest danger to his way of thinking, as I fully intend to slay it in the realm of public consciousness.
However, I don’t think this donor is evil in the sense of being knowingly unethical. If I were to donate money to an organization, I would want it to be used in accordance with my values. There are two differences between me and the donor, however. 1) My values are incompatible with assigning different societal roles to people based on their genitals. 2) If I’m donating money to an organization, that automatically means I trust it to do something good with it, so I wouldn’t be so crass as to earmark it. 3) I don’t have $100,000. Three! Three differences!… I’ll come in again.
What a great comment — I should have read the whole chain before responding myself, but I guess great minds think alike!
Sorry Siobhan (ugh, WHY did you have to share a name with someone I do in fact like?), but I am not comfortable with blurring the lines between the genders that early. From the beginning my generation was taught certain things were for one gender, certain things for the other, and that was that. Girls didn’t play football with the boys and boys didn’t play dolls. Scouts didn’t blur the lines either and in fact saw little of each other, they met on different nights and in different places. How the hell does someone nine years old, who’s barely old enough to know the multiplication tables cold, know that he/she is “in the wrong body” or “meant to be someone else?” If a kid said he was Napoleon and strutted around in a bicorn with his hand inside his coat, or that he was a cow and wanted horns attached, you’d say at best he was playing, at worst he was nuts. Yet if he says he’s the other gender we fall all over ourselves to accommodate this.
I’m not saying that gender identification issues are simply nonsense the way Michael Savage said autism is just acting out, but come on here. Are there objective tests for this, by which you can determine who is just messed up and who is for real in the wrong body? If there are, I think, for everyone’s protection, there needs to be some kind of diagnosis before the GSA blurs the lines between the genders, for everyone’s protection. I don’t understand these kinds of feelings, the same way I simply can’t grasp gay feelings, because I am straight and don’t experience them. However, I am hoping there is some kind of way of diagnosing a genuine medical/psychological issue rather than a game gone too far.
But even if everything you just said is correct, what is the harm of letting transgender children be in the Girl Scouts. What is the actual harm being done to the other children?
Need we show actual harm before we disallow something? You wouldn’t allow a man to accompany twenty pubescent girls into the woods, even if nothing went on, because there’s risk and the optics of the situation do not look right. Without a genuine official diagnosis, the optics of the situation don’t look right. Girl Scouts is supposed to be about personal development, I thought, and the addition of someone who is transgender is a distraction from that mission. Then of course there’s the question of what will the parents of the conventional girls think, but that can be handled at the local level.
You still haven’t identified the “risk.” I agree with you that many people have a visceral reaction, but that doesn’t make for a strong case either. People thought (and some do think) that bi-racial marriage should be banned because of “optics.” But there was no substance to that argument — only fear, ignorance, and optics. We moved on as a society. We can deal with this as well.
You named a plausible harm and risk based on documented experience. Like almost all phobias about LGBT individuals, the fear of..what, exactly?…with trans individuals participating as equals in groups has no basis in fact or experience whatsoever.
Yes, or at least one must be able to show a rational basis, non?
“Need we show actual harm before we disallow something”
Lord on His Throne, yes. Seriously?
And that’s awful.
Should I mention that boys did and do play with dolls. What do you think GI Joe is? A toy person you play with and make up stories with. And football? What about football do you think requires a penis?
A child wants to play with a doll, you say boys don’t play with dolls, ergo child must be a girl. Welcome to gender. Maybe if we spend less time pushing social and behavioral roles on people based on whether they stand or squat to pee there would be less of this crap. Maybe if pretty dresses and makeup weren’t forbidden to males Caitlyn Jenner wouldn’t be in the news. Maybe people like you create people like them.
You’re also confused, bringing the wrong body argument into it. The overwhelming majority of trans people don’t seek surgical sex reassignment. I think that’s the line you’re looking for, it’s the one I use, the sincere desire to ‘lop it off,’ as it were, demonstrates the level of seriousness you’re looking for.
Then again maybe my own biases are showing.
I don’t think that’s an unreasonable position at all. We’ve been slowly getting away from things like labeling people as having affective disorders (like bipolar D.O) and ADHD until it’s fairly certain that it’s not a transient array of symptomology, due to an immature nervous system or the typical behavioral lability of children. Why the rush to saturate their already confusing worlds with even more instability? I strongly suspect much more of a nefarious political agenda than a desire to make children more comfortable in their skins. It seems like every cultural and social mooring is being systematically destroyed; faith, the family, gender, morality, property, financial security, and it’s my guess that the more insecure you can make people, the more likely they are to turn to government for something to cling to. Nature abhors a vacuum.
Sorry, if I had more than a few seconds, I could organize this a little better. I’m trying to stuff 20 pounds of shit into a 5 pound bag this Summer while I have the time.
Also, I agree that it was very wrong to make this donation conditional after-the-fact. Beforehand, it’s his money, and he could attach any conditions he chooses, and the recipient can take it or leave it. I’d do most anything for a Klondike bar, by the way.
Me too. Especially right now.
No, that was well worded and a valid concern.
Of course, I would suspect anyone or any entity seeking to cause something like that would have a solid infrastructure in place to label you a lunatic conspiracy theorist.
Ah, you want to know the mechanism of it. OK, at the risk of being tediously repetitious:
First, the anatomical cause (though more recent studies strongly suggest both genetic and epigenetic factors are involved too)
Sexual Hormones and the Brain: An Essential Alliance for Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation Garcia-Falgueras A, Swaab DF Endocr Dev. 2010;17:22-35
Second, the psychological effects – how does anyone know they’re male or female at age 5-6 (can be as early as 2, as late as 10), not just Trans people?
Biased-Interaction Theory of Psychosexual Development: “How Does One Know if One is Male or Female?” M.Diamond Sex Roles (2006) 55:589–600
You asked for the mechanism. There it is. For supporting evidence, there’s a couple of hundred papers on the subject over at http://www.cakeworld.info/transsexualism/what-causes
“Gender dysphoria is a medical condition, and it’s been documented for decades.”
Are you referring to hermaphrodites, who do indeed have a medical condition? Or are you saying that transgendered people have a medical condition, in which case their transgenderism is a problem, and it would be reasonable for them to seek medical or psychiatric help?
Transsexual people have a medical issue, yes.
But Transgender covers far more than that.
And please – “hermaphrodite” is deprecated. It can be used without semantic loading as a technical term to describe a small subset of a particular group, but should not be used as a general term.
The preferred term – preferred by Intersex people – is Intersex.
(Hermaphrodite should be reserved for that subset of Intersex people who have or had both cytologically testicular and ovarian tissue present)
This one went downhill faster than most. The original post was about the ethics of commanding a group to accept a personal bias in order to receive money. No matter what the GSA’s policy is toward transgenderism, that money should have been refused. If you’re going to make a contribution to a not-for-profit, you have no right to make the contribution provisional on the not-for-profit rescinding or ignoring it’s national policy.
Right. If the organization was the Confederate Heritage Foundation, and some billionaire gave a million dollars and then said that the group could only keep it if it publicly burned a Confederate flag and poured acid on a statue of Robert E. Lee, the post would be exactly the same. I don’t care whether anyone agrees with the mission and the policy undertaken within it. The organization must remain true to the policy, and using money to make leadership betray its mission is despicable.
The anti-trans comments are literally non-sequiturs.
Duh!
It didn’t go downhill — it took a tangent.
True. And an irrelevant one, at that. I stand corrected.
All good, Jack. Good for you. Good for the Girl Scouts. Good for the diversity of EA responders. Good for the tangent warriors who leave me nothing more to say. And good for Indiegogo: I’d like to believe that the total amount came in in increments of $5.00 or less.
“Asshole,” though? Isn’t that a gender-bound word? I was thinking more along the lines of Cruella de Vil.
Is it? I don’t use it that way.
Funny, I just don’t think I’ve ever heard “asshole” applied epithetically to a female before. Not that it’s not appropriate. Thing about this blog, you learn new things every day.