Girl Scout cookie season officially started Jan 6. Soon grocery stores will have girls in vests with patches trying to sell you slightly overpriced cookies.
Normally, I avoid Girl Scouts, though not because I hate children. I am simply a broke college student who can only really eat one of the cookies.
In the last year though, I have found myself buying Girl Scouts again from transgender and nonbinary scouts across the country.
According to the Erin Reed, the journalist who started a list of transgender and nonbinary scouts to buy from, the Girl Scout program has openly included transgender and nonbinary individuals in its membership for a long time.
This might vary from state to state. Different sources stated they only accepted AFAB, assigned female at birth, scouts. Others said they were accepting everyone.
“At Girl Scout camp, we all commit to actively building a sense of belonging for all our community members,” the Camp Culture Code & DEIB Guide of the Northern California Girl Scouts states, “we ask all staff, volunteers, parents, caregivers and youth to commit to working towards the practices of LGBTQIA+ allyship, antiracism, and anti-oppression.”
Let me make it abundantly clear. Young transgender and nonbinary people are not given any sort of medical intervention. They will not be given any surgery or hormone replacement therapy.
A study done by Harvard researcher Landon Hughes found that 0.1% of teenagers with private insurance in the U.S. are transgender and receive gender-related medicines.
It is also incredibly important to note that gender is fluid. No matter the age, you can change and experiment with your gender identity. That is allowed.
“Gender is a social construct, an idea created by people to help categorize and explain the world around them… In reality, gender roles aren’t set in stone… We don’t have to conform. Rather than on a binary (only two ways of being), gender and sex exist on a spectrum, meaning that there are a lot of different ways that people can express their gender identity or sex,” said The Trevor project on its website.
According to girlscouts.org, in 2014 the organization launched a digital platform called Digital Cookie. This was a safe and interactive space for girls to sell cookies.
“One major benefit of their online ordering system is that it allows for trans Girl Scouts to sell their cookies with relative privacy, a no contact between scout and the purchaser when it comes to online orders” Reed said in her article published Jan. 6.
Reed’s list has reached more than 2 million readers on Facebook alone, and on her website, she states several families have reported that their scouts have been in awe of the support they received.
Reed announced on Jan. 22, 2025 that the list has sold 71,000 boxes of cookies.
Reed even encouraged to seek out a scout who has not reached their goal yet.
I ran into Reed and the list she made of transgender and nonbinary girl scouts last year on Instagram. Last year, I bought my Lemonades, Adventurefuls and gluten-free chocolate chip cookies from a kid in Illinois. I plan to use the list to buy my cookies this year as well. My only issue is that I have a hard time deciding who to buy from.
If you want to support a transgender or nonbinary scout please consider visiting https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/2026-trans-girl-scouts-to-order-cookies. The scouts are of all ages and have different goals they are trying to reach.
