I was not involved in Girl Scouts for very long. Regardless, I still have fond memories of the time I did spend there, selling cookies, making s’mores, going to camp and making pottery. I’m sure that if I would have stayed in it I would have moved on to cooler things, the trips like going to Alaska, Washington, D.C. and other places, like I heard other troops got to do. But when I found out about the Girl Scouts marching in the Inaugural Parade, I was disgusted. I didn’t think Washington, D.C., sounded so good anymore.

Call me sensitive, but I think there’s something wrong with making little girls march in a parade honoring a man who doesn’t respect women of any sort. Maybe it was the infamous “grab her by the *****” comments that he passed off as typical “locker room banter,” teaching the notion that it is normal, healthy and blameless for men to talk about women that way, or the several alleged cases of rape filed against him. Girl Scouts, from what I understand, is about making young girls confident in themselves and using this confidence to build other girls up. I just cannot understand why an organization with this philosophy would support someone who so obviously tears women down.

We try to teach these girls that they can be anything they want to be, but this man has implied that beauty is all a girl will ever amount to. It’s comments like (“you wouldn’t have your job if you weren’t beautiful”) to a reporter in 2014 that teach the exact opposite of the messages that Girl Scouts claims they aim to send to young girls. It’s confusing, and it’s unfair to them.

Women like myself can take it. As disgusting as that sentiment is, we’re used to men saying crude and horrible things to us. But these are little girls who are mainly unfamiliar with even the concept of the things Trump has said.

By having them march around obliviously, saying “this is the opportunity of a lifetime” to them, we do them a disservice. And frankly, it’s appalling. These impressionable girls may later think that this is the standard we set in society for them to be treated, that this is normal. We cannot accept this. We cannot allow young girls to think that it is acceptable for men to say things like Trump does, that they deserve to be talked about and treated that way. People have talked about how they don’t want their daughters exposed to so-called “predators” in bathrooms, but now when they learn that our President is one, they let them be trophies for him.

I’m sorry for my sisters who will later find out what they were really portrayed as standing for when they are not so naive. This is not what I believe that Girl Scouts stands for. I think you are worth more than what your President makes you believe. I think we amount to more than this.