Current Events > Boy Scouts finalize plans to include girls, will drop the word "boy"

(+) Yeah! (+)

Gheb posted...

I wish they had girls in Boy Scouts while I was in it. It would have made for more fun 12 years of my life.

Which, of course, is why mixed camp-outs is still going to be incredibly unlikely.

How much of boys needing a space to be boys is dictated by adults putting a bunch of boys together into a space and saying "you don't have to worry about the girls, you can just be a boy now"?
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MarshallStack posted...

Eagle Scout here,

Are they going to drop the shitty religion stuff while they're at it.

I had to pretend I believed in God back in the scouts.

Considering many troops are financially supported and operate out of churches.....I highly doubt it.
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shockthemonkey posted...

Boys are running out of spaces where they can just be boys.

There's always Xbox Live, I guess...

I agree with Asherlee here. Boys and girls should have separate activities, but the organization that is Boy Scouts should be inclusive. It has insane funding and provides a lot of valuable experience. I mean, if you enlist in the army, being an Eagle Scout literally gets you an automatic promotion.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Gheb posted...

I wish they had girls in Boy Scouts while I was in it. It would have made for more fun 12 years of my life.

Which, of course, is why mixed camp-outs is still going to be incredibly unlikely.

Why? Venturing has always been co-ed and had mixed camp outs, both camp outs my daughter has been on were mixed, summer camp is going to be mixed this year. And I highly doubt my council is giving the middle finger to national and doing co-ed activities when they're not supposed to.
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Bloodychess posted...

Girl Scout, alarmed by the encroachment of BSA, are developing their own campaign to recruit and retain girls. Girl Scouts, founded two years after Boy Scouts, currently claim a membership of about 1.8 million.

Begun, the Scout Wars have.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

shockthemonkey posted...

Boys are running out of spaces where they can just be boys.

There's always Xbox Live, I guess...

Don't forget locker rooms and grab'em by the pussy conventions.
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Were_Wyrm posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Gheb posted...

I wish they had girls in Boy Scouts while I was in it. It would have made for more fun 12 years of my life.

Which, of course, is why mixed camp-outs is still going to be incredibly unlikely.

Why? Venturing has always been co-ed and had mixed camp outs, both camp outs my daughter has been on were mixed, summer camp is going to be mixed this year. And I highly doubt my council is giving the middle finger to national and doing co-ed activities when they're not supposed to.

well...
BlazinBlue88 posted...

MarshallStack posted...

Eagle Scout here,

Are they going to drop the shitty religion stuff while they're at it.

I had to pretend I believed in God back in the scouts.

Considering many troops are financially supported and operate out of churches.....I highly doubt it.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Gheb posted...

I wish they had girls in Boy Scouts while I was in it. It would have made for more fun 12 years of my life.

Which, of course, is why mixed camp-outs is still going to be incredibly unlikely.

I don't think it'll be that big a deal. Obviously they won't let boys and girls share tents and they will probably have their tent clusters separated.

Sure scouts will inevitably hook-up, but that's kind of what teenagers do. If they are willing to hook-up on a camp-out they are probably already doing so back at home. It's not like the BSA (or I guess just SA) is preventing them from having sex.
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I am a little curious about how many people against this change were (or are) Boy Scouts.

I'm an Eagle Scout and have no problem with it.
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Asherlee10 posted...

I don't think it matters that there is that much separation at a young age, as kids get older things start to separate because of puberty. Again, I don't think Scouts should be something that is separated.

11-18 is puberty, though.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Asherlee10 posted...

I don't think it matters that there is that much separation at a young age, as kids get older things start to separate because of puberty. Again, I don't think Scouts should be something that is separated.

11-18 is puberty, though.

Yeah, while I'm totally on board with adding girls to Boy Scouts. Boy Scouts proper doesn't even start until 6th grade. So you are in peak puberty time during that period. So I'm not sure using puberty (or lack their of) for their reason for merging them is the argument to make.
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good
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Asherlee10 posted...

And again, I don't think it is as imperative as your making it for young kids to have such segregation of the genders. As they get older, sure. But Scouts shouldn't be and doesn't need to have this segregation. Sports? - yes.

To play devil's advocate a bit (again, I'm generally for the Scout integration), sports really are the major single gender activity available for teenagers. Which is great, unless you aren't actually good at sports. There are a lot of teenagers who are terrible at sports. Boy Scouts fills that gap of boy's only, outdoor focused activity that doesn't require certain-levels of athleticism to actually be enjoyable. And honestly, the time commitment sports take is like the number one reason people drop out of Scouts, so most scouts aren't athletes.

I think there is a middle ground with an integrated Scouting program that would allow for sufficient boy (and girl) only time while still having unified co-ed program.
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Girl Scout Leader here:

Nothing is stopping the Girl Scouts from doing the same outdoor activities the boys do. We have a local dad of a son and daughter who recently created a "high adventure" Girl Scout troop specifically for those girls who wanted more hiking and camping experiences. His daughter is planning to be a Girl Scout AND a Boy Scout (using old terminology for clarity).

I have a son and a daughter. The biggest difference I have noticed is that after Cub Scouts, the Boy Scouts become a mixed-age group with older boys (allegedly) guiding the younger ones. Girl Scouts has distinct levels, with distinct badge work, throughout. And the badges ARE different, but GS has camping and hiking and other outdoor badges. And we have robotics and STEM and environmental badges. But GS is much more dependent on the individual leader of the troop because the troops are single-grade and insular. With BS the ages all mix together and it is more likely that someone will step up who likes hiking or whatever and open that up to all the boys in the troop.

I don't like camping and don't want to plan it, so my troop doesn't do it. If another parent wasted to do it, that would be great! But we don't have the big network of parent volunteers that a BS troop would have.

There are organizational differences. One is not better than the other; they just are different.
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Why isn't there any plan to merge boyscouts and girlscouts?

Questionmarktarius posted...

Why isn't there any plan to merge boyscouts and girlscouts?

It may eventually come to that, depending on how much the BSA siphon away from the Girl Scouts organization

This definitely puts more pressure on GS to become more inclusive though
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Why isn't there any plan to merge boyscouts and girlscouts?

The BSA tried for a few years to plan a merger with the GS, but they wanted no part of it. That is until the BSA announced they would allow girls to join, then all of a sudden it was "why didn't you come to us first".
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Why isn't there any plan to merge boyscouts and girlscouts?

They are totally separate organizations. They share only a similar name.
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Bloodychess posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Why isn't there any plan to merge boyscouts and girlscouts?

It may eventually come to that, depending on how much the BSA siphon away from the Girl Scouts organization

This definitely puts more pressure on GS to become more inclusive though

I better still get my goddamn cookies every year.

Bloodychess posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Why isn't there any plan to merge boyscouts and girlscouts?

It may eventually come to that, depending on how much the BSA siphon away from the Girl Scouts organization

This definitely puts more pressure on GS to become more inclusive though

GS is more inclusive than BS. Someone mentioned religion, for example. GS has no religious requirement (though it does have optional religious pins that can be earned--it does not ignore religion).
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Sariana21 posted...

Girl Scout Leader here

Thanks for this insight. I have relatives in Scouts so I'm more aware of their stuff, but it's interesting to hear about this from the Girl Scouts' angle.

It will be interesting to find out what becomes of this move to both organizations, though.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Why isn't there any plan to merge boyscouts and girlscouts?

They are ultimately two unrelated organizations with very different operations. A merger would cause one or both to have to fundamentally restructure itself not just in who can join (which honestly isn't that big of a logistical change), but how the entire organization operates. Sariana21 gives a pretty good example of the operational differences the groups have.

By simply adding girls to Boy Scouts. BSA doesn't need to restructure anything. Advancement stays the same. Ranks stay the same. Operations stay the same.
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Males are being pacified.
No developmental spaces, no role models, no rights of manhood or passage.

How many of you have actually killed any ate something? We're losing our birthright as humans. The land is being destroyed, the environment is being destroyed, our human heritage and culture is being destroyed.
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shockthemonkey posted...

Asherlee10 posted...

COVxy posted...

How much of boys needing a space to be boys is dictated by adults putting a bunch of boys together into a space and saying "you don't have to worry about the girls, you can just be a boy now"?

This is touching on what I'm trying to convey. I'm not so sure it is all that needed for young kids to be segregated by their sex. I think the inclusion of both sexes more often at that age would probably produce benefits.

More often? This is one of two places off hand where kids are actually segregated by gender (with the other being bathrooms). How much more often does it need to be? What is wrong with there being the occasional thing to separate them?

It doesnt have to be Scouts and it makes sense for Scouts to integrate. Its just sad if boys keep losing spaces for boys to be boys without fucking anything up.

I mean, men group together socially all the time and exclude females.

Go to any school and assess the gender diversity within groups of friends.

It seems that creating exclusive types of organizations just sets the stage for socialization and approval of the sort of "boy's club" issue we have later on in life. Like, back in the day, it used to be normal for a professor to take their graduate students out to a dive bar like place for a beer at the end of the week. Now, this is fairly normal socialization, until you realize it's socially excluding to female grad students who don't actually feel comfortable in an environment like that. But this type of thing was almost entirely innocent, yet unintentionally exclusive. I have to imagine some proportion of these issues come from the fact that we literally socialize our kids into gender isolated organizations.
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Liberal progressives destroy another institution.

AcFan87 posted...

Liberal progressives destroy another institution.

Meh. There will be a reactionary spinoff soon, if not already.

Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

Males are being pacified.
No developmental spaces, no role models, no rights of manhood or passage.

How many of you have actually killed any ate something? We're losing our birthright as humans. The land is being destroyed, the environment is being destroyed, our human heritage and culture is being destroyed.

what's wrong?

sad that toxic masculinity isn't cool anymore?
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Why do girls want to join boy scouts? Does girl scouts not have an equivalent to the Eagle Scout to boost their early resume?
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Gheb posted...

I am a little curious about how many people against this change were (or are) Boy Scouts.

I'm an Eagle Scout and have no problem with it.

I'm a Life Scout (I honestly didn't give enough of damn about it, kind of wish I did now that I'm preparing to camp again) but I don't have an opinion on it yet. I will say, Boy Scouts was more fun when the Venture Scouts joined my troop and this seems like an expected move to modernize the BS to keep up with culture.
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mario2000 posted...

Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

Males are being pacified.
No developmental spaces, no role models, no rights of manhood or passage.

How many of you have actually killed any ate something? We're losing our birthright as humans. The land is being destroyed, the environment is being destroyed, our human heritage and culture is being destroyed.

what's wrong?

sad that toxic masculinity isn't cool anymore?

Soy boy alert!

SuperExcitebike posted...

Why do girls want to join boy scouts? Does girl scouts not have an equivalent to the Eagle Scout to boost their early resume?

Were I just a bit more cynical, i'd suggest that it's the same old demands for inclusion while retaining their own little safe spaces.

Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

How many of you have actually killed any ate something?

Modern society doesn't call for that for survival, anymore. Men have value beyond the ability to kill. Or eat. Or are you convinced otherwise?

The land is being destroyed, the environment is being destroyed

Yeah, and some of us (raises hand) are out there trying to undo that, which humanity was largely the cause of in the first place. What's your contribution?

our human heritage and culture is being destroyed.

Our human heritage and culture is in a constant state of evolution. You adapt or die.

EDIT: Oh, you're talking about hunting to thin down invasive animal populations. Well, clearly there will always be a need for that, and that's fine if people continue to do that, but it's not required of every human, especially given how efficient it is these days.
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Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

Males are being pacified.
No developmental spaces, no role models, no rights of manhood or passage.

AcFan87 posted...

Liberal progressives destroy another institution.

What rank did you guys get to in Boy Scouts?
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Bloodychess posted...

BalisticWarri0r posted...

Can boys join the Girl Scouts?

no

Then it shouldnt happen
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Dark_SilverX posted...

Bloodychess posted...

BalisticWarri0r posted...

Can boys join the Girl Scouts?

no

Then it shouldnt happen

I'd agree if Boy Scouts was related to Girls Scouts in anyway whatsoever besides having similar sounding names.

It's not like there is some unified scouting organization that Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are subsidiaries of and the Grand Troopleader has deemed that only the Boy Scouts will integrate.
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Sariana21 posted...

Bloodychess posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Why isn't there any plan to merge boyscouts and girlscouts?

It may eventually come to that, depending on how much the BSA siphon away from the Girl Scouts organization

This definitely puts more pressure on GS to become more inclusive though

GS is more inclusive than BS. Someone mentioned religion, for example. GS has no religious requirement (though it does have optional religious pins that can be earned--it does not ignore religion).

Religion isn't the hot topic though, gender is. And the BSA just pulled ahead.
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Bloodychess posted...

Sariana21 posted...

Bloodychess posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

Why isn't there any plan to merge boyscouts and girlscouts?

It may eventually come to that, depending on how much the BSA siphon away from the Girl Scouts organization

This definitely puts more pressure on GS to become more inclusive though

GS is more inclusive than BS. Someone mentioned religion, for example. GS has no religious requirement (though it does have optional religious pins that can be earned--it does not ignore religion).

Religion isn't the hot topic though, gender is. And the BSA just pulled ahead.

I don't actually know whether boys can join GS. I know transgeneder girls can. Does anyone have an actual policy quote that boys cannot join GS?
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SuperExcitebike posted...

Why do girls want to join boy scouts? Does girl scouts not have an equivalent to the Eagle Scout to boost their early resume?

Girl Scouts has the Gold Star Award. Clearly you've never heard of it, which makes your point. (No one else has heard of it, either.) Have you ever heard anyone describe a woman as a Gold Star Scout?
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Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

Males are being pacified.
No developmental spaces, no role models, no rights of manhood or passage.

How many of you have actually killed any ate something? We're losing our birthright as humans. The land is being destroyed, the environment is being destroyed, our human heritage and culture is being destroyed.

I have. The first time I did it by myself was when I was 14. Me and my cousin rode out to the creek on our fourwheelers and dirtbikes and caught some bream. We brought them back and prepped them and threw them in a pan. It wasn't that great, but we ate it.

I've killed and ate other things since then. Not a ton, though.
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Imagine getting triggered when an organization decides to be more inclusive.
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