The Girlscouts have always been awesome. Their goals are about empowerement and inclusion (and cookies...).
Boyscouts have always been about conformity and exclusivity (and...no cookies...what's up with that?).

There's already a discussion of this going on in yesterday's Lunchtime Quickie. Out of context, it's good news, yes, but in the context of the story, it's the Girl Scouts of Colorado using an arbitrary distinction to exclude a boy who is, but for a word, living as a girl.

So, it looks like he will get to be a Girl Scout, after all :)

Colorado is an odd redneck state, my dad grew up there. They are far more open minded than the stereotype, but most are rednecks.

Good news, though it's irritating that the article keeps using male pronouns for Bobby.

Good to hear. I'll buy an extra box or two this year.

This is actually a really ambiguous ending. I don't see any indication that Bobby lives as a girl, and that seems to be the GSC's sole requirement. Could someone help find out what actually happened with this?

@ 7, Colorado is no more rednecked than Washington. I've lived in both states, not just heard second hand stories, so I know.

@2 I'm not certain that's the case. Certainly the boy loves girl things, and may very well be gay, but so far as I could tell he identifies as male. The only standard the Girl Scouts have is that members be girls. That sort of goes by definition. If you include "girly" boys, you might as well exclude tomboyish girls, which I suspect would reduce their rolls rather drastically. If they allow for this boy, consistency would demand they remove gender as a criteria altogether, and hence they would cease to be "Girl" Scouts. Maybe that would be good, but it's not the kind of decision you do like that.

Being the liberal organization they are, they recognize and accept the existence of transgender girls and embrace them as any other girl. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy that there are trans-girls living lives with supportive parents and supportive institutions, instead of guilt, shame and fear.

@12 - My point was that the distinction is entirely arbitrary anyway. I think we're looking at the same information here. Wringing our hands over a boy in the girl scouts is silly. If he wants to join the girl scouts, there's no harm in that.

@11 So have I, and yes, there's a large redneck population there, redneck doesn't mean "religious fundy", FYI.

@8 Actually, Bobby seems to be between genders at this point, not completely dedicated to one or the other yet, and that's the perfect age to explore one's identity. So the use of the pronoun in the article is likely just "settling on what the legal gender is" or "settling on the genetic gender" .... I was thinking the same thing you did until I watched the video a bit. Just wearing female clothing does not inherently mean female, nor the same for male, the person's identity is far more than that.

In the end, the only thing that really matters is whether or not the kid can pimp cookies.

@ 14, I know the difference between redneck and fundy. So is there a point to your response? You're not exactly disputing what I said @ 11; if you think you are, you should choose your words better.

I'm a woman who wanted to join the boy scouts as a kid because they went camping, learned survival skills, built things, and often played physically active games like capture the flag. The girl scouts on the other hand did knitting, crafts, cooking, and other stuff I don't remember because I was bored to tears. I hope they have evolved but the boy and girl scouts of America that I remember functioned like gender stereotyping, conformity- producing factories. I wouldn't send my kid to either.

I wouldn't join the Girls Scouts as a kid because they made you wear a dress. That seemed dumb to me.

@18 and 19: My girl loves Girl Scouts and although she is a girly girl, she loves it for the camping, hiking, whittling and archery. Her "uniform" consists of a sash that holds all her badges. I like Girl Scouts, too.

For those who don't like the girl/boy distinction, Camp Fire has been coed for quite a while.

I should have qualified that 'as a kid' for me meant late 70's-early 80's. I'm sure lots of things have changed since then. Thanks for the update!

I'm glad the Girl Scouts are more liberal in better parts of the country. When /I/ was in (late 90s, early 00s) the GS, in Alabama, it was pretty much Gender Conformity 101, like @18 said. I wanted to be in the Boy Scouts (only in part because I identified as a boy, mostly because I wanted to camp and shoot arrows and whatnot), so my parents signed me up for the Girl Scouts... BOY was I disappointed!

Are you reading the comments to that article? For the most part, ick. Why do people care how other people identify? Personally, I've got enough things to worry about without worrying about what everyone else is doing.

@24 Exactly. That article was questionable as well. Judging from the video, I'm pretty sure Bobby identifies as a girl and yet the article kept referring to Bobby as a boy, probably just for scandal and sensationalism's sake.smh

When I read this article, it made me proud to be a part of the Girl Scouts. Yeah, we do some girly stuff, but we do LOTS of different things - camping, knot tying, community service, etc. In our troop, at least, there really is something for everyone.