I was a Boy Scout and I always defend the organization, even though sometimes it has been hard.
It was a heartbreaker when BSA banned gays, because I absolutely knew several gay boy scouts. When I think about it, pretty much across the board the kids I knew in scouts weren’t exactly the popular kids who were good at sports and had a ton of friends. They were all shy or introverted or just plain didn’t fit in in one way or another. BSA was invaluable because it took these kids who probably had low self-esteem and took them out and taught them skills. It’s amazing how much being able to build a fire, cook a meal, pitch a tent, and generally fend for yourself does for your self-esteem and self-worth. It gave these kids leadership skills and camaraderie that they probably weren’t getting anywhere else. I remember a lot of camping trips consisting of a bunch nerds setting up camp and then playing hours of Magic the Gathering around the campfire. We were all better for it.
Then the 90s culture wars happened.
Anyway, I’m proud of the Boy Scouts for, finally, doing the right thing. I encourage my fellow liberal parents to put politics aside and let their kids participate because the lessons the kids will learn are immense.
Merging is what the scouting organisations in Austria and many other countries did in the Seventies.
But maybe the time window for that has passed. When scouting got started (in the case of Austria, 1910 for boys and 1947 for girls), gender segregation was considered a no-brainer. The girl scouts got founded as a separate organisation, and when the prevailing ideas in society changed, merging the two programmes was the obvious way to go about it. The merged organisation then was officially a member of the male-only international WOSM (World Organisation of the Scout Movement) and the female-only WAGGGS (World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts). Nice and symmetrical.
Meanwhile, things have changed. WOSM officially endorsed co-education in about 1990. WAGGGS doubled down on focussing on the girls. The American scouting organisations have codified their programmes to a degree where differences between the BSA programme and the girl scout programme are “official” and not a consequence of the preferences of the individual volunteers who do all the work. It no longer looks like a symmetrical situation.
I might be convinced to allow the girls to decide on whether girls need an exclusive space just for girls to thrive. I know there are a few situations where it is beneficial to separate the genders, though I don’t get why it should be only the girls who need that or why scouting as a whole should be segregated because of those few activities that benefit from segregation.
But an inclusive space just for X is an oxymoron no matter what the X is.
Isn’t the scouting handbook one of those books that always gets included in ‘Literature Helpful To Survive the Apocalypse With’?
eta: I remember the thrill of getting my first penknife for Scouting; I had to convince my parents that I wasn’t going to do anything stupid with it.
Hah! My dad was one of our scoutmasters when I was in jr. high/high school.
For all the crap he gave everyone about knife safety, I’ve caught him a few times in recent years violating the “Circle of Safety”. He is amused every time I ding him on it.
The Girl Scouts’ view is that this change was motivated by a desire to boost the Boy Scouts’ enrollment numbers and will poach recruits from the Girl Scouts in the process. I have to admit they have a point, but I still think it’s a better situation overall if the kids are free to choose.
FWIW I’m a Cub Scout leader and my wife is a Girl Scout leader. I was kind of hoping my daughter would be interested in switching over just for the sake of family logistics but she said no deal.
I was a Girl Scout for a decade. Gotta say that I’m still pretty bitter about all the work I did for my Gold Award, which turned out to be a thing no one has ever heard of because who cares about Girl Scouts, when meanwhile everyone shits themselves over the local Eagle.
Most criticisms of GSA that I hear tend to be rooted in the fact that, like Boy Scouts, whether or not it’s an effective and positive experience can be down to the individual troop and its leadership. I was in a troop from a very affluent area–so no one gave a crap how many cookies we sold–with an excellent leader, and the overall focus was on leadership and planning skills (planning our own camping/road trips), service opportunities, and career exploration with female role models. It really contributed to developing my confidence as I grew up. It’s discouraging to hear about troops that are clique-y social clubs where girls bully each other for not selling enough cookies while their moms sip mimosas, and I’m sure those exist, but that absolutely wasn’t my experience and isn’t reflective of the ideals and goals of GSA.
I’m also personally leery of eliminating the option of single-gender scouting for girls, because I was a quiet, timid kid who got overwhelmed very easily. I don’t think my parents would have put me in a mixed-gender scouting group–they would have reasonably anticipated me getting overlooked in the clamor of boys and more energetic girls–and I don’t think I would have enjoyed or benefited from it if they had. It’s pretty well-documented that girls both perform better and have better self-confidence academically in single-gender education situations, and my experience as a girl suggests that applies non-academically, as well. Girls really do need girls-only spaces to breathe and explore in.
The BSA has officially been cool with accepting gay boys since 2013 and trans boys since 2017 so it would be kind of weird if they decided to exclude lesbians.
i can do every one of those except the archery and that is because i have had shoulder surgery that makes significant parts of the requirements impossible.
Both my sons are Eagle Scouts, and our troop was ready to admit girls in the program for years, and part of the reason is many Scouting organizations outside the USA are made up of both genders. We went to an International Camporee in Mexico, and the Scouting girls there were just as smart, skilled, and dedicated as any of the boys there. My granddaughter who is a Girl Scout is signing up for Cub Scouts right away, as her older brother is a Cub Scout and she hangs with them a lot already.
