You keep using that word....

.....I do not think it means what you think it means.

IN Rep. Bob Morris has issued a statement condemning the Girl Scouts of America because of their attempts to "sexualize" young girls. And maybe he's onto something - this girl is pretty tarted up, after all.

Though there is a mingled mixture of indecision in his statement where he can't seem to completely say that the GSA is an awful organization (at one point he says that "The Girl Scouts of America stand in a strong tradition that reflects with fidelity the traditional values of our homes and our families. The tradition extends from coast-to-coast and back through the past one hundred years."), the overwhelming majority of the statement casts GSA as attempting to turn good little girls into "feminists, lesbians, and communists."

Now, when I think of sexualizing young girls, I think of problematic things like this. Or this. Or this. Or this. Or this.

Get the idea? Surprised by all the examples? Frightened? Worried? Appalled?

Anyway.

Based on what I read in Rep. Morris' statement, his concerns about the GSA don't have anything to do with actual sexualization of young girls, though he uses the word repeatedly. He's worried that the GSA is *gasp* teaching girls about sex! And even including references to that ever-so-threatening-to-conservatives-bunch-of-baby-killers Planned Parenthood. Rep. Morris is concerned that your little girls might have sex because of what they learn in Girl Scouts.

Can I point out that they're likely to have friends pandering much worse messages than anything GSA says about sex? Friends that encourage them to have sex with boys because that's the way that girls have power over boys? Or friends that encourage them to have unprotected sex because it's "cooler" and "real"? Or friends that convince them that the sex they're having (ie oral sex) isn't real sex because it's not vaginal penetration?

I'm way more worried about the future Queen Bee girls in my little one's life, than I am about what Rep. Morris calls the GSA's sexualization of American girls and young women. In fact, I think that the sex ed my kids get at home will have more common points with the GSA version of things than the "Sex is bad", "gays are evil", abstinence-only approach that Rep. Morris is calling for.