How far do the legal vultures go? A couple of, to me today, foolish over-reaches.

[GiraffeCamp]

22 minutes ago, David CO said:

Swimmers were required to shower as a condition to using the YMCA pool.  Students showered as a requirement of the physical education class.  Setting conditions and requirements is not the same as coercing and shaming.

I completely agree. It isn't the presence of showers, it is the coercion and shaming that is the problem in Skeptic's experience.

[David CO]

38 minutes ago, GiraffeCamp said:

I completely agree. It isn't the presence of showers, it is the coercion and shaming that is the problem in Skeptic's experience.

I don't recall him saying he was coerced or shamed into taking showers.  He said it was required.  

 

[David CO]

On 3/27/2021 at 2:18 PM, skeptic said:

What is the trauma of having your school peers make jokes about you or others and the level of changes in your physical development?  

This was the problem.  It is totally unacceptable and un-scout-like.  If I was their teacher/coach/scoutmaster, I would have come down on them like a ton of bricks. 

[GiraffeCamp]

7 minutes ago, David CO said:

I don't recall him saying he was coerced or shamed into taking showers.  He said it was required.  

On 3/27/2021 at 2:18 PM, skeptic said:

BUT, in order to swim at the Y, we had to use the male locker room, which included all ages and open showers.  I remember being a bit intimidated by that, especially when it was crowded with full grown adults.  Later, I also was forced to take open stall showers in HS after P.E.  It was not an option; and the coach or sometimes an appointed older student would monitor us.  Intimidating, and embarrassing?  Yep, but we learned to cope.  [...]

My point is that where do we mark the lines of demarcation?  What is psychological trauma to an 8 year old in with a bunch of older males in a shower?  What is the trauma of having your school peers make jokes about you or others and the level of changes in your physical development?  Am I really stretching things with the viewpoints we are currently seeing?  Comments, or admins decide it is not a valid subject.  

1 minute ago, David CO said:

This was the problem.  It is totally unacceptable and un-scout-like.  If I was their teacher/coach/scoutmaster, I would have come down on them like a ton of bricks. 

He used the words intimidated, forced, embarrassing, and trauma to describe his experiences of public showering over the course of his pubertal years.

He did not believe he had an option to shower in his swim trunks or to change under a towel, behind a curtain or towel held by a friend, or in a private corner, for example. That might be his own lack of imagination and nothing to do with the overt culture. However, that culture did not educate and empower him to live in accordance with his own values so there is room for improvement even if the showering issue isn't institutional. Others later expressed a systemic culture of coercion on this topic so it does appear to be something widespread that could be improved, passively through architecture and actively through culture. 

The issue is 1) was it abusive? Yes, it quite possibly was abusive to deny him his bodily autonomy after he communicated the need. Hiding, shut-down, avoidance, and verbal expression count as communication. Sometimes that communication goes unnoticed which is an education problem lacking attunement and sometimes it is noticed and shamed, telling them to stop it and literally pushing them into the activity, possibly by the adult himself feeling embarrassed and stuck in the face of the culture and his own needs and lack of imagination. If it was only his lack of imagination, that he silently went along with an accepted culture others had no problem with, despite personal convictions to the contrary but no negative consequences for acting on his convictions, it would be tragic but not abusive. If he tried to speak up and was disempowered, shamed, and forced as he reports then it was a problem then and is a problem now that needs healing and a healthy way forward. The fact that it was not the same degree of abuse others endured, and that he did not have the language to consider how this affected him before this point, does not somehow negate the clear trauma he tells us he endured for years and the opportunity he now has to process it and help to provide a better way forward.

2) Does it being abusive mean it should be in the current lawsuits? Not necessarily. There are degrees of neglect and abuse and the lawsuit is addressing an institutional culture that allowed molestation and rape to propagate without sufficient safety and change. If his experience is a part of that, it might find a place there. Not all abuse fits into that category and most does not.

3) Does the fact that it happened with showers or swimming or camps make those places inherently unsafe for sexual integrity? It is worth considering with an open mind with the likelihood being that it was not the place but the culture. However, it might point to opportunities for improvement that would benefit all such as explicitly stating that pre/post swimming showers can be in swim clothes, to have designs which allow for privacy and autonomy in a sustainable fashion (how many of us find shower curtains ripped or missing? a design plan relying on that would probably not be sustainable), and to allow open problem-solving for ways to improve. 

4) If people are pointing out traumas, coercions, and abuse and are being ignored for their lack of frequency (it hasn't happened here, but an example would be saying precocious puberty is rare and hardly deserves discussion or change to accommodate with empowerment instead of disempowerment), and the stake holders are resistant to change despite knowing of the problem and the opportunity to improve, then should we draw bigger circles around those places to assure safety? Absolutely. Maybe that camp can no longer have any communal showers since they obviously cannot safely manage that, and the cost of building individual shower houses is on them. Or maybe if they are adamant enough, they don't have summer camp at all any more until they make adequate changes. Least restrictive, but not compromising safety and integrity in any way. 

5) If one place has shown an unwillingness to be safe, should all places have a similarly wide circle drawn around them even if they can safely manage with less restrictions? Absolutely not. The need is safety, not policies that hope to proxy it. If they have a track record of safely navigating the issue through a combination of culture, education, architecture, whatever then they don't need onerous restrictions. Administration showing continuing safety is a burden that should be streamlined but is a meaningful necessity that must be included. I believe this is where much of the frustration comes in today with the idea of over-reach. If the issue is intimidation over showering then the need is a culture change on showering, not the blanket removal of all showers.

6) What role does National play in providing, assessing, and maintaining not only the safety but the culture of Scouting? And are they being effective in meting these goals? For example, they place not tenting with parents under Safety and not under Values (independence) in order to set policies around it. That is a poor proxy for safety as it does not protect kids from being abused, it just tries to limit the amount of abuse happening in a place that could cost the organization. And it places a lot of new safety risks on parents (sexual abuser status for tenting with their own child) and on children who are disabled through an inappropriate level of independence/abandonment. Why do they not see this as a Values issue, which could better cover all involved through simultaneously removing abusive adults and empowering children with limitations? Is it because they do not have an active assessment process for maintaining values and culture at the district and unit level? That could be an avenue for improvement that meets everyone's baseline needs. A revamp of Journey to Excellence could be considered. Once the actual issue is being addressed, needs and opportunities become evident without any need for over-reach.

[David CO]

31 minutes ago, GiraffeCamp said:

He did not believe he had an option to shower in his swim trunks or to change under a towel, behind a curtain or towel held by a friend, or in a private corner, for example.

I'm sure he didn't.  I never gave the boys any options.  Showering was not optional.  Just do it.

 

Edited March 30, 2021 by David CO

[David CO]

39 minutes ago, GiraffeCamp said:

Others later expressed a systemic culture of coercion

Systemic culture of coercion.   Good grief.   We always thought kids were supposed to do what they were told.  

Edited March 30, 2021 by David CO

[GiraffeCamp]

57 minutes ago, David CO said:

I'm sure he didn't.  I never gave the boys any options.  Showering was not optional.  Just do it.

53 minutes ago, David CO said:

Systemic culture of coercion.   Good grief.   We always thought kids were supposed to do what they were told.  

I'm not sure if we're agreeing, disagreeing, or neither.

If a kid told a leader, then or now, that he felt intensely uncomfortable showering in front of others, would you have a problem with that leader troubleshooting to get him to the shower? "I don't care if you go first or last, if you and a buddy take turns holding up a towel for each other, if you shower with your swim shorts on and reach under to get it all clean, whatever you need to do. But it isn't healthy to swim and not shower because you can get rashes and infections, and that would be particularly difficult if you got it in those sensitive spots from not washing them. How can we get you clean?"

• If some version of that happened in your presence, what would go on inside your head? Would your thoughts go to ridicule, shame, coercion, force, or find it ridiculous pandering? Would you not care because your goal is swimming and showering and whatever makes that work is fine?
• Would it change things if the child just took it on himself and used a strategy to accommodate, such as taking turns holding up a towel with a friend, if he actively brought it to the leaders to complain without a suggestion, or if he avoided the issue and was therefore in a situation where the leader had to address it with him?
• Would it change things if you knew that child had identified medical differences, came from a different culture, followed a religion that emphasized modesty, or some other known external reason for the difference?
• And if it would change things, would it make you more inclined to work with the child or more inclined to dismiss it as an unimportant bother that doesn't affect the majority of scouts, so if he wants to be with these scouts then he should adopt their culture and practices?
• Aside from your internal thoughts on the matter mentioned above, what would you externally be inclined to do? To say and act in this situation?
• Would what you say and do directly with the child be different from what you would say and do later in the privacy of conversation with the other leaders? For example, might the boy perceive you as supportive for some reason while you would tell the leaders you thought it was ridiculous? Or vice-versa.
• Do you believe that the youth's conformity and compliance to your direction is a greater priority than the youth acting consistently with his own values such as his sense of modesty and bodily autonomy? 
• Do you believe a conversation on trying to meet both obedience and autonomy is always appropriate or that when given a direction, short of profound safety issues, a youth should obey immediately independent of his thoughts, values, culture, and needs?

I'll be happy to answer the same. It will definitely bring clarity to the topic of what we each believe to be core issues and therefore what we would consider "over-reach."

[David CO]

1 hour ago, GiraffeCamp said:

• If some version of that happened in your presence, what would go on inside your head? 

I'd be annoyed.  The rules are clearly explained.  If he didn't want to obey the rules, why did he sign up?  Why did his parents sign him up?  

 

[David CO]

1 hour ago, GiraffeCamp said:

then or now

It's not the same.  Back then, everybody knew that guys swam nude at the YMCA.  Showers were required.  Swimsuits were not allowed.  If a boy didn't want to shower and swim nude, he shouldn't have joined the Y.   Simple as that.  

 

[GiraffeCamp]

43 minutes ago, David CO said:

I'd be annoyed.  The rules are clearly explained.  If he didn't want to obey the rules, why did he sign up?  Why did his parents sign him up?  

33 minutes ago, David CO said:

It's not the same.  Back then, everybody knew that guys swam nude at the YMCA.  Showers were required.  Swimsuits were not allowed.  If a boy didn't want to shower and swim nude, he shouldn't have joined the Y.   Simple as that.  

I follow now.

Back then, most of those boys' dads had been in the military, most probably drafted or signing up under the impending threat, and they had their own profound traumas and little empathy for the discomfort the boys felt over nude showering when they had to face and move through the same discomfort in the context of death and destruction, not recreation. They feared their sons being left behind, beaten up, or ostracized by a culture requiring conformity and thought the pain of shame preferable to the violence that their expressions of vulnerability and individuality could instead bring. The parents, basically, were controlled by cancel culture and the fear their kids were next on the chopping block. I think that is tragic and nothing to hold up as a model.

And I assume the boys who had no such experiences generally found this scenario to be problematic, as so many here express, Skeptic included. I just took a poll of everyone within earshot, giving them no setup except that which was presented here, and 100% of people of a multitude of ages said in some way or another they would sympathize or empathize with that boy and expect to work with him and none could conceive of a reason for annoyance or frustration though much older people did express that they would expect little to no mercy from others back in the day, one sharing how small kindnesses would be arranged in private to avoid their vulnerabilities being known. Another told me of that exact scenario in Boy Scout camp back in the day, with the boy having a similar situation and not joining the others in the shower then a scoutmaster quietly coming and pointing out the need to shower and arranging a time for private showering. It was happening even then.

So I think it is not the times and people that have changed but that we do not have a generation of traumatized fathers responding to the natural vulnerabilities and growth of their kids. One where it is safe to ask why things are the way the are and if there is a way that can meet more needs, no longer hiding this conversation away out of fear of cancellation.

[David CO]

45 minutes ago, GiraffeCamp said:

So I think it is not the times and people that have changed but that we do not have a generation of traumatized fathers responding to the natural vulnerabilities and growth of their kids. 

A generation of traumatized fathers?  Just the opposite.  They didn't need to run off to their therapist over every little disappointment or imagined slight.  They didn't dwell on drama.  They didn't see themselves as the center of the universe.  They earned their grades.  They worked for their paychecks.  They volunteered an incredible amount of time at church and service clubs.  They built good, clean, safe neighborhoods and schools for their children.  They gave me a pretty darn good life.  They're gone now, and I miss them.  God bless 'em.

Edited March 30, 2021 by David CO

[David CO]

1 hour ago, GiraffeCamp said:

I follow now.

I don't think you do.  You didn't get any of that stuff from me.  

I think it is interesting that you automatically assume that my father was most influential on my attitude about my body.  Why would you think that?  My mother was a stay-at-home mom with most of the child rearing responsibilities.  She was the athlete of the family.  My dad was too busy working to play sports.  Then he was gone to war.

In grade school and Jr. High, I was taught by nuns.  I didn't have a male gym teacher.  I didn't have any male teachers till high school.

So, if you want to do all that psychological stuff, maybe you should concentrate on the mothers and female teachers.  Why did the WWII era women feel that boys of my generation shouldn't be very modest?

 

[David CO]

22 hours ago, GiraffeCamp said:

Maybe that camp can no longer have any communal showers since they obviously cannot safely manage that, and the cost of building individual shower houses is on them. Or maybe if they are adamant enough, they don't have summer camp at all any more until they make adequate changes.

I think this is a definite possibility.  Even if camps survive the bankruptcy, they probably won't have the funds to upgrade or repair their more expensive facilities, like swimming pools and locker rooms.  

A swimming pool has a life of about 40 years before it needs replacing or extensive repairs.  Our park district pool was taken out this year and will be replaced with a "splash park" to reduce liability.  The washrooms remain open, but the locker rooms are to be closed permanently.

Our YWCA recently tore out its indoor pool and converted the space for a new day care center.  My school recently closed its 50 year old indoor swimming pool.  No decision has been made on what they plan to do with the space.  My town's new public junior high school doesn't have showers, much less a swimming pool.  The old junior high school building had both.

I am concerned that these modesty issues, high cost of upgrades, and new concerns over transgender rights, will result in the closing of many of our existing facilities.  I wouldn't be surprised if BSA is forced to drop its swimming merit badge requirement as swimming facilities become unavailable.