Girls Joining Boy Scouts. Is this a feminist move to suppress young men and boys?

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Mustard1 said:
Please tell me what you think, and if you think I’m wrong, then please give me your evidence and explain, you might be able to sway me.
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You know how people say don’t ascribe to malevolence what can be explained by simple incompetence? Here’s something similar I just came up with: Don’t ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by simple capitalism.

The Boy Scouts have things that the Girl Scouts don’t–the Eagle Scout being the most obvious. As 1ke pointed out, the Eagle Scout designation confers more than the Girl Scout’s Gold Award does.

Since the Girl Scouts are either unable or unwilling to make it so that the Gold Award gives the same real-world benefits as being an Eagle Scout, you have people doing what people always do in capitalism when their current service lacks something they want: They look for another service that does offer what they want. Thus they turn to the Boy Scouts, and the Boy Scouts decided to take advantage of this market shift.
 
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HomeschoolDad said:
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HomeschoolDad:
When sitting and listening is getting to be a problem, we end that class and do something else instead. We get out in the yard and dig, and explore, and do experiments, and do target practice with air rifles. He gets outside and burns off all that energy. And he learns, and learns well.
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That’s interesting. It is a very similar approach that I take with my daughter, who has ADHD.
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Classrooms, schedules, and rigid structure works better for some students than others.

And target practice would never happen in a conventional school, unless it were ROTC, and even that would nowadays be air rifles, such as we use. It’s part of our PE curriculum. Back in the day, my father’s ROTC used .22 Short rifles, and we use a .22 air rifle. The other day, I needed to put several drainage holes in the bottom of some retrofitted speaker boxes I converted to planters for my peppers. Worked like a charm.
 
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Mustard1 you ask for evidence in opposition to your opinions, yet you present no evidence at all for the (in my view extreme) opinions you express. Do you have any? Or is there no link between you opinions and evidence? The sort of evidence I would like to see would be peer-reviewed studies of the outcome for boys and girls in different forms of scout troops (is that what they are). Without this sort of study we have no idea if there is anything in what you say. You might like to define some terms, too, like ‘moral’, ‘ethical’ and ‘full of confidence’. And you might like to think about the logic of statements like “Having a boys-only group can help them…have relatable groups of boys to talk to”.
 
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Mustard1 said:
Please tell me what you think, and if you think I’m wrong, then please give me your evidence and explain, you might be able to sway me.
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So now that you know you can still choose an all-boy den, are you now convinced that women and girls are NOT engage in some sort of supremacy plot against men and boys?
 
njlisa said:
The BSA has nothing to offer girls that they can’t get from Girl Scouts.
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Except this discussion thread has given examples of things the BSA offers but a girl can’t get from Girl Scouts. For example:
1ke said:
There are MANY college scholarships for those who earn Eagle Scout. There is not nearly the level of scholarship opportunity for a Girl Scout “gold” award.
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njlisa said:
I think girls benefit from being in Girl Scouts. When I was in Girl Scouts back in the late 1960s and early 70s, we learned outdoor skills that gave us confidence. We also learned cooking. Back then, boys were given preferential treatment. Girls could thrive in an all-female environment.

As an adult, the skills I learned helped me when my friends and I accidentally strayed from the main trail. I didn’t panic. I just told my friends to follow the sound of the stream we had crossed on a foot bridge. Soon enough, we were back on track.

In short, girls benefit from an all-female environment. The BSA has nothing to offer girls that they can’t get from Girl Scouts. And, we have the best cookies.
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Have you had an opportunity to read the thread?

The program offered by BSA is a better fit for many girls, including my daughter and the girls in her troop. The girls (and boys) still have the opportunity to learn and thrive in a single-sex environment.

Also, the Girl Scouts of today are very different in their focus then the Girl Scouts of the late 60s and 70s.

Girl Scouts definitely have the best cookies.
 
Hi Mustard1,
Welcome to CAF.

While I can see the valid points you make about boys needing a space to grow and develop skills in a relatable group, I don’t believe that the decision to allow girls into the BSA program is anything other than necessity.

When my children were younger, my sons were in scouting and it left my daughters out in the cold. We did so much to help sustain that troop, such as fundraisers like car washes, popcorn, wreath, and hotdog sales, clean-ups, court of honors, holiday parties, etc. Sisters of the boys made a great positive impact on the success of the troop and individual scouts, but the girls were not allowed to do the fun stuff like summer camp and camp-outs. They also were not able to ever achieve any ranks, including Eagle Scout.

There isn’t a program similar to BSA that allows girls to achieve a respected status such as Eagle Scout. I think that because scout numbers are dwindling and families are so squeezed for time and resources, BSA allowed girls to join in order to maintain support and participation by families with children of both genders.

I think families want inclusive programs for all of their children, especially since scouting takes precious time and financial resources to be successful. By the time parents fully support their son’s scouting endeavors, it leaves little time to support a daughter in a similar program.
 
Mustard1 said:
I am involved in the Boy Scouts of America, and quite frankly, girls joining our troops has started to scare me. The whole point of the Boy Scouts program is to raise strong young men who are moral, ethical and full of self-confidence. But girls being let into the program has endangered this.

Having a boys-only group can help them bond, create belonging and have relatable groups of boys to talk to. These groups also create friendly competition and goal setting that can influence their self-confidence in a good way. I feel that it’s important for boys to connect with girls, but with the rise of (extreme) feminism, this relationship has begun to take a hostile turn. Girls now have more even more opportunities than boys (ex. STEM program), and female college acceptance has exceeded those of men. Letting girls in the BSA (Boy Scouts of America) program sends the message that girls are more important than boys and that they can do whatever they want, such as taking away their safe haven. In addition, there is no friendly competition what so ever. Female bodies naturally mature more quickly than male bodies giving them a slight advantage and this can demolish the self-confidence in these boys. Backed by this utterly diabolical feminist movement, boys are being pushed to the side.

I do believe that girls deserve the same opportunities as boys, but taking away the boys’ opportunities is not the right course of action. Also, many feminists shed their anger and hatred towards men at these young boys. It is true that we as a society have a complicated legacy related to rights, such as the suffrage movement in the mid 19th century and the impression of women. But these modern-day feminists have no right to take away a boy’s self-confidence. These boys have nothing to do with female suppression. Most of these anti-female rights movements happened 100 years ago! This is completely unnecessary and unacceptable.

Please tell me what you think, and if you think I’m wrong, then please give me your evidence and explain, you might be able to sway me.
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Really? Boys are so socially inept or so starved of opportunity to socialise with other boys that apart from BSA they have no other ways to become “strong young men who are moral, ethical and full of self-confidence”?

Girls, by implication, are NOT strong, not moral, not ethical, not self-confident? Or do you just think they are incapable of inspiring good qualities (including manliness) in young people of the opposite gender?

Funny we don’t tend to write off male leaders - or males in general - as being incapable of inspiring girls to be “strong young women who are moral, ethical and full of self-confidence” - they’ve been doing so in all sorts of arenas for centuries!
 
These are all valid points, but keep in mind that the BSA isn’t the only example where girls are presented with more opportunity and help.
 
Freddy said:
What’s next? Equal pay?!
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When I was 18, back in 1978, I got a job working as a night security guard in a small nursing home. Perfect job for a student. All I had to do was be there, and open the main door for the nurses at the beginning and end of the night shift. And answer the rare phone call, because they wanted a male voice to answer to discourage obscene phone calls. Otherwise, it was just one big study period.

I soon found out I was making a quarter more than the nurses aides, which translates to a whole buck in today’s money. And they had a tough and dirty job. And I mean dirty. Back then, they didn’t wear rubber gloves when cleaning up a patient’s mess.

So I asked the aides if they thought this was fair, and they just looked at me. Of course it was fair, they said. Because I was a man.

People don’t realize how pervasive that attitude was, and how much hard work over how many long years it took to stamp it out. We take it for granted now.
 
@JSRG and @babochka

I took down my post. And I’m sorry that I made offensive and inaccurate statements.
 
I don’t know about that, but I am not a fan of it. My friend Jamie was in something called Indian guides (which, some people find racist, he is Eastern Band Cherokee, so obviously he doesn’t take issue with it), and I remember talking to him about Boy Scouts. And that’s the keyword “BOY”. I don’t know enough about Indian guides to know what they were when he was growing up, but I know that Boy Scouts were boys, and that was that. There are already mixed sex scouting organisations, so it feels like a politically correct slap to the face. But, as a former Boy Scout, I should have listened, because, as every Boy Scout in America knows: Be prepared.
 
In 1972 Sea Scouts admitted girls so this discussion is a few years late.
 
adamhovey1988 said:
My friend Jamie was in something called Indian guides (which, some people find racist, he is Eastern Band Cherokee, so obviously he doesn’t take issue with it),
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I was in Indian Guides as a boy; it was a a Fathers and Sons organization. Indian Princesses was added a couple of years later, in time for my sider.

It was extremely respectful with what it borrowed.

Since then, they’ve apparently become “Y Guides” or some such.

Much of what I actually know about real Indians comes from t.
 
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