AwakeEnergyScouter

Sounds like they could use some extra support. Nothing wrong with preparing to help people in groups if there's patterns in who has obstacles and why. What would help military dependent scouts?

These kids today need to appreciate the roots of their fancy image emojis, the merit badge should have requirements like "design your own ASCII smiley using at least five characters"

I was wondering about "the behavior" (I assume going full papa/mama bear) in unisex environments, in case I might have been too quick to think that benevolent sexism was a factor, but even if there's a fuller picture of papa/mama bear behavior that goes a bit too far in single-gender environments as well as mixed-gender environments asking for female-only zones really shouldn't be happening. We are all scouts. That's not a narrative, that's how it is. Or, perhaps I should say, that's how it should be in a properly functioning scouting organization. I don't think that's subtle at all. I've never been in a female-only zone larger than a bathroom in my life, why do we need them in Scouts BSA? Of course girls shouldn't be told they don't belong, but female-only areas are also a non-starter. Just like in OP's case, your camp leadership shouldn't be giving in to a single troop's unjustifiable demand. I find this ludicrous, since we all slept in the same tents, shared carrying the patrol gear, etc. Benevolent sexism may not be as immediately threatening as misogyny but it's still a problem. Equality in a scouting context means equal treatment and equal opportunities for male and female scouts. YES. OMG. What the heck is going on here? 😱 I think maybe there's been some confusion about how to solve the girls not being welcomed by all problem... Two wrongs don't make a right.

Would you be willing to say more about this?

I agree that there is a strong narrative around saying that everyone has to 'pick a side', but I don't know that the narrative is correct. Why are there only two 'sides'? Why are these the sides? Why must I buy an entire 'side' hook, line, and sinker? Reeks of false dichotomy to me. I don't think the world works that way, and I think - to your later point - that in order to preserve scouting as a place to find healthy acceptance, we need to reject that basic frame. Everyone should feel welcome and accepted as they are, quirks and all, in Scouts. That can't happen if scouts/scouters are on two different 'sides'. And while I've read various suggestions for where the narrative came from, I think this is a case of "pull the arrow right out". Solve the problem without first comprehensively analyzing why it came to be. We don't have to participate in sorting people into two absolute categories. Or, if we do, the categories 'scout' and 'non-scout' make sense 😄 I don't haven't really come across anything that clicks with what you're saying about 'traditional' and 'political correct driven troops', so I'm not entirely sure that I know what you're talking about there, and I don't think my voice is needed in any discussion about a potential rise in transition regret rates, but I do agree that social media use by youth is a problem. So do lots of other parents, though, that's a pretty normative opinion among parents of Gen Alpha kids as far as I can tell. I think we think that because of what we ourselves and Gen Z have lived through, though, so I'm sure there's a lot of problems sill going on with the youth that did get smart devices and social media access too early. I just heard an interview with Jonathan Haidt about his new book The Anxious Generation, which sounds like it's a summary of all the research demonstrating the problem as well as what to do about it. His age limit recommendations and anti-phone pacts among parents in a friend group is what's emerged naturally around my own (cub) scout, actually. But those problems are a big part of what makes me think that the time is ripe for scouting to make a resurgence. I mean, what are we offering? Offline friendships and experiences in an accepting and loving environment. That's a bullseye for several kinds of solutions for the loneliness that social media can lead to. Scouting being a place where youth can be accepted as they are is also key here. I think we have strong agreement on that this is very important to protect and make happen. I don't particularly want to get involved with people's sex lives and gender identities, I mostly care about that whoever and whatever they are, they can feel free to be genuinely themselves in Scouts, because that is the seed from which everything else can grow. Without the ground of experiencing one's buddhanature (even if not put in those terms), one cannot travel the path of scouting to the fruition of a better world. While we may be concerned about different specific obstacles to that, it seems like we completely agree on the goal.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I wasn't saying that the latest traditional gender role is a threat. I was pointing to how wide the agreement that aggression and violence towards women (because women are a subset of people) is bad is. We agree on that even if we disagree on the accuracy of other feminist ideas and policies. And this agreement is what's relevant for this discussion. Feminist analysis of gender roles is out of scope for this discussion, but there is plenty elsewhere to read on the subject if you're interested. As far as the PWD podium goes, that leader made sure to say it out of earshot if all of the scouts. No scout of either gender found out that the leader was happy about this, probably for the reason you point out. And the point of sharing that story was to provide a specific example of that there are native-born male American former BSA scouts now feminist scouters that want the option for girls and boys to scout together all on their own. There is genuine demand for that from within the BSA. Trying to cast the calls for that as some outside force trying to push the BSA isn't accurate. That's what I'm trying to say. The point was that there is genuine grassroots support for scouting together.

Your sign idea is solid, and the other troop's behavior was not. That's not at all acceptable. First dibs on the big shower is not scout-like at all! And I'm with Eagledad, how can a troop override the camp leadership? Camp leadership needs to fix this for you. I'm also struck by that they had their own signs, which means they planned it. And it wasn't just that they hogged the good shower and sink, they did so by reference to gender. I can't know for a fact, but it smells like benevolent sexism, like they thought that they deserve the nice facilities because it's men's duty to sacrifice for women. Well, that's not how scouting works, and if that's what's in fact going on it's even more important that camp leadership fix this and don't let themselves get overruled by a troop. IMO you shouldn't even have to go to another camp to avoid this. If someone has to leave, it should be them, not you.

Thanks for taking the time to explain! I understand that you're moving on. No problem. I did want to clear something up, though, for everyone still here, that seems to have been missed. This was a family pack that, unbeknownst to me when we joined, was in the family den pilot with written explicit permission to have both girls and boys together in dens. The relevant agreement bullet is Beginning with the 2022-23 program year pilot packs may form Lion (Kindergarten), Tiger (1st Grade), Wolf (2nd Grade), Bear (3rd Grade), and Webelos (4th Grade Only) dens with boys and girls in them. Arrow of Light (5th Grade) to prepare them for Scouts BSA are to remain in single-gender dens (this is a requirement and not optional). Multi-rank dens such as a den of Wolves (2nd graders) and Bears (3rd graders) working on their respective badges of rank may also be formed with girls and boys. It would be disingenuous of me to pretend that I disapproved when I didn't, pilot or not, so I didn't. I was completely honest and open with my understanding of what the pack was doing. But as a parent I wasn't really reporting that understanding to anyone. By the time I joined the committee, the family den program had officially launched so there was no question left.

I'm trying to point to that basic feminist values are not opposed to scouting values, including therefore BSA values, by asking the reader to really take in what RememberSchiff posted an excerpt from. Of course you recoil from gender-based violence because it is mid-evil, and it's not just you and me who think so. Having that gut reaction of NO! is the sign that this is outside the Overton window for whatever society you're part of. Of course WOSM is joining the UN in trying to get gender-based violence to stop, and to move the world closer to having gender equality, because it's totally the right thing to do. I really do not think there is any debate at all about whether this is wrong in US society. We all agree that's not ok. The reason that's worth reminding people of less great things going on in the world in a somewhat sharp way is that the basic ground of broad, strong agreement on that seems to get overlooked on the topic of girls and LGBTQIA+ people in the BSA. We scouts and scouters are all united on that there is no exception in the scout law and oath for behavior towards women (and LGBTQIA+ people, even if you have some kind of aversion I cannot believe anyone here condones violence against them). There is no exception in 'kindness' that allows being mean towards fellow scouts who are girls or LGBTQIA+. Etc. I'm also hoping that people will notice in their reaction that aggression towards women is disallowed even by the latest traditional male gender role, so further unity regardless of what one thinks of gender roles... and many of the topics you mention in your second paragraph. We can disagree about tons of feminist-related things going on while having very solid agreement on core feminist values, which are the ones that are key to this discussion. The main problem FireStone is pointing to here is that the BSA is failing on its own value foundation here. 'BSA is failing' is being discussed, but I want to point to the importance and implications of 'own value foundation'. Own value foundation. There seems to be a persistent tendency to think about needing to be kind and friendly to female and LGBTQIA+ scouts as some kind of imposition from outside, but that's just not the case. I think this obliges individual scouters to think about what I would call Right Speech in scouting contexts simply by virtue of their own value foundation. Everyone else's religion may not have that concept or anything similar, I don't know, but the idea is certainly around, T.H.I.N.K. Before You Speak for example. You don't have to like girls or LGBTQIA+ people in the BSA, but when you express that opinion in the physical or digital presence of scouts that are female or LGBTQIA+, don't ask what's legal or what's in the Constitution, ask what's kind, courteous, friendly, and loyal. Being rude and a disloyal friend is 100% legal, and insulting your friends is also 100% free speech, but that doesn't mean that it won't have consequences for your relationships with others. In the case of complaining about some BSA scouts being in the BSA, hurting fellow scouts and by extension the BSA. Scouters that want to vent should do so somewhere where it won't be heard by those they're ranting about and they shouldn't do things that make others feel unsafe or unwelcome.

I honestly do not see what's so horrible about having two dens share a meeting for pragmatic reasons. It was allowed for different ages already, and multiple ages could even be in the same den. All for pragmatic reasons I imagine. Like you say, InquisitiveScouter, you still have to apply some judgement and common sense. I don't see how that's against either the Scout Law or Oath, and definitely not that's a much worse rule-bending or breaking than many other such situations discussed here on the forum previously. Sure, some pragmatic rule-bending or breaking can be dangerous, but it doesn't necessarily follow that all rule-bending or breaking in all circumstances ever is dangerous or against the Scout Law and Oath. Could either of you please explain your train of thought here? Also - why trustworthy and not obedient? The rule that dens must be gender-separated makes so little sense for a family pack that it made me wonder if there was a rule modification for packs participating in the pilot. (Think about it - there were girls-only packs and boy-only packs and they were testing family packs - if girls and boys can never be in meetings together, how is that not just a girls-only pack and a boys-only pack sharing a unit number? What would be the point of that? And like I said, if they can do some meetings and camping together but not other meetings - why? That makes no sense and I can find zero additional risk of... anything happening at all at the den meetings specifically. Maybe that's my failure of imagination, but if so it's an honest one.) One quick search later I now know that there was. So it wasn't actually breaking policy in the first place, I misspoke. I had just read the rules before joining, because I planned to abide by them, and it said girl and boy dens are separate on the BSA webpage. I accepted that, but was glad to find they weren't in practice. (They were on paper, though, if it makes anyone feel even better.) And now, as you know, it is allowed for everyone who would like to put girls and boys in the same den even on paper, so obviously national didn't deem it a very dangerous, un-scoutlike thing to do. Probably because literally millions of scouts have already done it that way. Normal people doing normal things. Now, since at least ToKindle96 isn't actually commenting on the topic at hand but rather only on rule-following and interpretation of BSA policy no matter the context, perhaps a separate thread would be appropriate. That could certainly be valuable, since it's a topic that comes up from time to time, like here recently with whether being a registered cub scout prevents one from camping with a troop one is considering joining even though the rules would allow it if one wasn't a cub scout. I know I've read others where a conversation about the gray has value, too. But this discussion is about the need for the BSA to enforce YPT and certainly not contribute actively to scouts not being safe, or feeling like they're not.

Of course. Had they not done that, they couldn't have served girls at all. They wouldn't have had the leadership. Finding double the den leaders, or getting the existing den leaders to do the same den meeting twice isn't trivial, especially to serve just one or two scouts. And how fun is it to be in a den alone? And tell me, what is the danger we're saving classmates by day from, by making sure that they never do the same activity in a den meeting together? They were allowed to go camping together and do pack meeting activities together, and often are in the same class all day - what would be achieved by strict gender separation for den meetings only? The rule doesn't make sense, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was widely disregarded like the one night camping rule was. As I pointed out explicitly, that wasn't my personal doing in the first place - decisions the pack committee made before we joined can't possibly be "my agenda", can it? That's why I pointed that out in the first place, to show that the pack already rolled like I liked when we joined. I didn't have to change anything when I joined. What's your agenda in objecting to a pack doing what they can to serve as many scouts as possible safely? Choosing the word "agenda" suggests that it's a secret, possibly nefarious plan I have, as opposed to a normal scouter doing normal things in implementing the BSA scouting program and wanting to keep their scouts safe. Scouters wanting to implement the program isn't an agenda, that's normal people doing normal things. The rule they didn't have to bend was that girls and boys couldn't scout together, because they were in the family pack pilot - in other words, the program was already for what would become my scouts to scout together. Even in the BSA, not just from my personal life experience, defending girls and boys scouting together is defending the status quo. "Agenda" is usually used about someone's attempts to change things, girls and boys scouting together isn't a change even in the BSA at this point. The reason I've gone out of my way to point out that I'm an old Swedish scout is so that people here can understand that my strong support of girls and boys scouting together comes from within the scouting movement and from my own life experience. I lived scouting together myself, and so did my dad, and the generation before him. I want the same experience for my scout. That's not radical activism. I want to keep things the same as when I was a kid. You can want something else, but implying that me wanting to preserve the status quo and being ready to go to bat for it is some kind of activist secret plan is not reading the situation correctly.

And let's also not pretend that girls and boys scouting together is some radical, newfangled thing that's actually outside the US Overton window that some radical radicals are trying to force the BSA and every single individual inside the BSA to adopt as part of a daring cultural war caper to ruin the BSA and/or America. Like... Where is this narrative even coming from? In case someone needs to hear this, the pack we joined was in the family pack pilot (so parents approve of scouting together and committee voted to enter the pilot), and every single committee member with a son in the pack has at some point or other expressed either gratitude for the girls being there or feminist pride in the girls' achievements. When we joined, they were already ignoring the separate dens by gender rule and the effective dens were just by age. The girls in our pack are actively wanted and the parents have self-selected into that because it's right on the "Family Pack" label. I had to do zero - absolutely none - pitching for gender equality or DEI to the committee, they were already acting out what I think should be done when we showed up, which of course is why we stayed and invested time and money into the pack. (I was asked to join the committee, and asked to take over as CM when the old CM wanted to transition to CC.) Everyone on the committee was a scout themselves in their youth, so this is not some outsider takeover to make it a family pack. The parent so happy about a female sweep of the Pinewood Derby podium in Women's History Month is an Eagle. There are absolutely male BSA members who want girls and LGBTQIA+ folks in too - in his case, the same reasons as mine. The committee is basically a friend group. Speaking of unit membership policies - I haven't heard a single peep from anyone ever in the direction of banning single-gender units, and yet the question of whether single gender packs and troops are allowed keeps being asked even though the answer to that is also settled. I don't get why anyone would want that but apparently people do, and as long as them doing it doesn't interfere with my scouts' ability to scout together it doesn't hurt my scouts in any way if they do that. The only need to oppose single-gender units would come if they struggle with loyalty to their fellow scouts of the opposite gender. This shouldn't be a problem. I would like to think that if it occurs, it can be solved by working with the Scout Law some more rather than banning a unit type that there is demand for. So, like FireStone was emphasizing, what's notable isn't so much that logistics and membership policy details could change but that there does seem to be a group of scouts and scouters who are trying to get certain scouts to quit, and that this seems to be nominally tolerated by the BSA and the BSA scouting community. I mean... Do I really spell out why that's contrary to the Scout Law? Surely not.

Reading the replies above, I can't help but notice that a) no one has disputed that opposition to scouting's promotion of feminist goals of gender equality is outside the Overton window in the US b) at least one person takes the view that membership policy is still evolving and c) there is yet another call to disengage from standing up for gender equality. To me, this reads as confirmation - and the risk of confirmation bias is why I'm sharing the above as a bystand - of that the purpose of continuing to complain about girls and LGBTQIA+ people in the BSA is to get national to reverse allowing us membership by shifting the Overton window. Is that correctly perceived? Are there people here who hope to drive us back out?

Barry, I assume you're talking about me in the discussion about affinity groups? If so, you have misunderstood what I was saying, and you're going beyond the frames of civil discourse that in that you're not sticking to the issue (saying that girls shouldn't be in the BSA, especially with bitterness or vitriol, hurts the scouts it's aimed at and thus the BSA) and that you're telling how I feel and what my motivations are - and you're wrong about those. Please stick to civil discourse in the future. I have explicitly explained my motivations several times. Let me know if you need links to those posts. Perhaps you didn't read them? As for your grandchildren - they should be welcome. If they do not feel welcome, then we need to understand why. If it's because someone isn't following the Scout Law, then that's something to correct. Can you give us an example of what hostile environments you or they have been in in the BSA, so that we can understand the issue better?

Perhaps this is a product of us being effectively in different social spaces (especially thinking of us being from different countries here), but I don't know that society is debating whether it's okay to be violent towards women because they're women. I've never, ever, in my life heard anyone, male or female, young or old, any attribute or other you could choose, say that it's ok to hit women because they're women. In the path I've taken through life on this planet, that's completely outside the Overton window of every society I've been part of. No debate at all. It's universally condemned as far as I know in the US. The WOSM statement went beyond just gender-based violence, of course, but I also don't know that society is debating whether women are equal in human value to men, either. I've never heard a person IRL say that. Have you? If you have, I'd love to hear more about that. I've seen people on the Internet try to shift the Overton window on this issue, but I've still never met anyone who's willing to say out loud that they think that men have more intrinsic worth than women, or something closely related like that they think that men should get paid more than women for doing the same job with the same qualifications. It seems wildly uncontroversial to say that women and men are equal in value to me. Like, "I support democracy" or "killing is wrong" politically uncontroversial. Up there with white walls and beige couches. Gender equality is a basic building block of at least European political culture (EU value 4). Saying that men and women are not equal in value and dignity is also outside the Overton window of every society I've ever lived in, best I can tell. It's just not something that's debated. There is, as far as I can tell, wide agreement on this issue. Have you met anyone who thinks that men have more inherent worth than women? A lot of the gender equality the UN and WOSM is concerned about is from countries where it's much worse than here. What does seem to be going on in countries with globally high levels of gender equality is that there are individuals who do secretly think that it's ok to hit women because they're women and that men are have more intrinsic worth than women and act like it, but avoid stating these opinions out loud because they recognize that these opinions are outside the Overton window. In scouting, we have the Scout Promise/Oath and Scout Law as a common value foundation to operate off of. We are not a debate society. If it's outside the Overton window, I don't think we have some obligation to entertain it as a debate subject in our movement. Like you say, we've got better things to do, like getting on with the scouting. It's just not our role to debate ideas, especially ones that alienate some scouts and were outside the Overton window to begin with.

100% everything you just said, @FireStone! Bravo! And for any scouts and prospective parents reading this, there are units out there that are in fact on board with the scouting movement's commitment to feminism as per @RememberSchiff's post above. I and my scout have been nothing but welcomed by our pack and council IRL, and one of the male leaders was so thrilled to see girls sweep the speed podium at our Pinewood Derby this year that he talked about it throughout teardown. There are male allies in the BSA.

I suppose you're right, I don't know for a fact that the scouter in question meant it as a political show of support for Ukraine in the war. They could be Ukrainian and wanted to give a nod to their other country. But political support for Ukraine in the war is a very psychologically available interpretation for many, which is what makes it dicey in terms of not taking sides in armed conflicts even if that wasn't what the scouter meant, and the Puerto Rican scouts are all both from Puerto Rico and members of the BSA at the same time all the time in a way Ukrainian scouts aren't scouting with the BSA. (Which is why I wouldn't move the Swedish flag patch from my old scout shirt onto my BSA shirt, that's not the role I take when I put on the shirt.) The dissonance and near certainty that others will see it as political is a problem. Not a giant, Earth-shattering problem, but a problem nonetheless IMO. But you're also right that we'll never know probably. As long as not that many people see it (no media coverage, etc) it also isn't a big perception dent. I don't have strong opinions on the PR flag on BSA uniforms TBH, but the fact that PR is a territory but Texas is a state makes a bit different IMO. Although, I did a quick search on this, and it looks like the official scouts website for PR has scouts in uniforms with US flags. https://www.scoutingpr.org/cubscouts/ They have their own, separate website, but if there isn't actually anything officially different in terms of uniforms then that's it, I suppose, although since PR isn't a belligerent in an armed conflict and the scouts are actually from PR no one is going to think scouts with PR flags are doing it as a foreign policy political statement, even if it's a uniform code violation. Either way I'm not bent out of shape about it.

This could be me not culturally getting it, but why would US American young men be more prone to sexual assault than European young men? What does it mean, exactly, to not be Scouts UK? How is the BSA significantly different to Scouts UK? (Why Scouts UK in particular?) I will share an off-the-cuff reaction someone in our pack had to how my patrol camped, everyone including leaders in a single big canvas tent. "That's probably much safer [than BSA YPT]". And I think they might be right, because the audience for any CSA is literally everyone there. That's pretty darn hard for a perp to pull off. I used to gripe about the weight when we were backpacking, but in retrospect that might have been minor compared to a perp being able to isolate you in a tent. TBH it didn't occur to me. Don't get me wrong, the last thing scouting in the US needs is more lawsuits, but I'm honestly not sure how scouting together raises the risk of that, or even more importantly, there being harm to sue about in the first place.

I wish they would. In fact, I bet I'm not the only old WOSM scout in the BSA who's scouted in another NSO where everyone scouts together and has for many decades. Totally doable.

Ah, here is where it gets actionable for us scouters. I agree completely. Advancement can become "scouting materialism", in the sense that you're talking about. If scouts weigh their own worth as a human being based on their advancement, something's not quite right, but we're the right folks to look for that and correct as necessary. If nothing else, if others around us don't see the problem, we can just straight up point out the misunderstanding to the scout. Their essential worth as a human being does not depend on scout rank or advancement at all, and never did. Just being together and having wild fun is where the fun memories are at, anyway. 🏕️🏞️⛰️🎒🥾

There's nothing like proof of concept to pull you out of a spiral of self-doubt someone is trying to suck you into. Well, except your own experience. It's really hard to take someone who's saying you can't do what you've already done seriously. But for girls, who haven't had time to do all that much yet because of age, proof of concept is very helpful when it comes to deciding whom to listen to. How wonderful that the scouts got to meet a live "Rosie"! Can't be many left.

I think you're right on the money here. Part of the reason things have turned out fine generation after generation is that the youth were guided skillfully enough by elders who didn't give up. The youthful perspective is important, but so is that of the elders. Both are needed. So it's important to rouse wakeful energy and confidence when they start wanting. We can make a difference, there is a point, even if youth don't show it as you do the helping! Also, youthful mistakes as well as parenting mistakes tend to correct themselves with more reality feedback. Can't imagine people who being parents to job interviews get many offers, and most likely get told point blank it's completely inappropriate eventually. Rough and unfair in a sense, but... From a larger history POV, probably corrects itself.

Even with a red passport in addition to a blue one, I represent US scouting with the BSA when I'm in the BSA uniform. The Swedish flag goes on the Swedish scout shirt, the US flag on the US scout shirt. Puerto Rican flags make sense for Puerto Rican scouts. So unless they're in Scouts Ukraine in a Ukrainian scout shirt...

Well, considering that the youth of today have been terrible since the days of Aristotle, I'll say it could have gotten much worse 😂 Are you familiar with the book Factfulness by Hans Rosling? He's got a few TED talks that are lowkey inspiring in terms of building a better world. We in high-income countries don't feel it day to day, but the world is actually a much better place now than in the past. Even here, things are better in a lot of ways. It's good to remind oneself sometimes.

In my view, a bigger problem than that it's a uniform rule violation is that it's taking a side in an armed conflict as a scouter. Even if everyone else there agrees with the position. Whether you or anyone else can address it with the person skillfully or not is a somewhat different question. A scene a la GSUSA threatening the scouter with the Palestine bracelets with legal action isn't a great first step. Do you know the person in question?