Membership, developing a culture of growth... Is national on the right track? Doubtful... See Philmont Training

[Eagledad]

1 hour ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

Thanks, @Eagledad, I appreciate the response. It seems we've had very different life experiences, so I doubt we're going to convince each other of the value or lack thereof in gender segregated scouting, but that doesn't mean we can't be civil. 

There is a saying, "Experience trumps debate". The Bible says it is folly to rebuke (debate) a prideful person. I am not saying you are prideful, but the discussion appeared civil to me. Of course, units really have a choice of just how mixed-gendered they want to be. Or not at all. So, there are no risks in the discussion.

Have a great scouting weekend.

Barry

[DuctTape]

One major drawback to text based communication is the lack of tone and body language which provides A LOT of information.

There have been studies that showed most people will read positive text as neutral, and neutral text as negative.

This bias towards the less positive is likely from a place of safety/defense inherent to the evolution of our species.

I often listen to people discuss emails from others and it is amazing how much "tone" and malice is projected onto the writer.

Understanding this, I know I must consciously ADD +++ in my reading of other's text in absence of other specific evidence to the contrary. 

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

A major drawback to discussing anything even tangentially related to feminism on the internet is Schrödinger's unpleasant person (https://imgur.com/gallery/wEhXGrr) and the hordes of people in the state of Angry Jack.

It seems a lot of the folks here are older and maybe didn't grow up with the Internet, especially the influence of 2chan, 4chan and 8kun on Internet culture. The reason I was up front with that I know I am biased towards assuming the worst about possibly misogynistic posts on the internet is that I have seen a lot of it since I was a teen. I'm middle-aged now. So I know I come with baggage. But the thing is, that baggage isn't just paranoia, and there are clear patterns in how misogyny plays out in Internet arguments. Maybe you - the reader - would never, but some would and do and keep going. So I gave you an explicit heads up on that I'm not going to be able to assume positive intent but here's something you can do real quick to show that you're not what I'm fearing.

The reason I asked for an explicit  acknowledgement of the equal human worth of men and women is that neither Schrödinger's unpleasant person or Angry Jack can bring himself to say that sort of thing, like he can't fire off that people of all skin colors have the same intrinsic human value or what-have-you. Can't make a clear moral stand on any specific aspect of the equal dignity of all human beings. So if you say similar things but have no problem saying "Oh I'm so sorry, of course men and woman have equal human value" you're obviously not Schrödinger's unpleasant person or manifesting as Angry Jack and the seeming similarity is my prejudice. Playing the plausible deniability is their game, so such a clear and straightforward acknowledgement of morality is anathema to them. They won't do it. Can't shift around in the shadows anymore and that's all the fun, trolling people from the shadows. Throw a bomb and retreat, throw another bomb and retreat and maybe play the victim to boot. Seen this game a million times and they're just trying to get a rise out of you. 

This, presumably, isn't anyone who's still here. I hope not. But I see what people who were so angry about girls being welcome said before they left, and, well... It fits certain patterns. Very familiar patterns. So I can see that being a scouter doesn't necessarily mean that someone recognizes my - or many of my scouts' - intrinsic human value. I'd like to think that in reality, all of you here do. But if someone posts the kinds of things Angry Jack or Schrödinger's unpleasant person might say, I can't be silent because that's part of the plan. If I speak up, it'll be joking (or persecution if it's Angry Jack). But if I don't, it's tacit approval. And anyone reading this should know that I will protect my scouts from that kind of BS, just like I will call the cops first and the council second if I see signs of CSA. So part of my duty is to take the attacks so my scouts won't have to. I hope.

Eagledad broke the pattern in a different way, though. He explicitly said I belong here and went on to say that there's no real practical harm in disagreeing and wished me a good weekend. Schrödinger's a-hole and Angry Jack never do stuff like that. They never stop going after you, they'll just keep shifting the arguments they're making even if it's not consistent. That's part of how you can tell the agenda is never the argument made, it's actually just going after outspoken women although they take care to find cover behind some other issue like "integrity in gaming journalism". And whatever they're claiming to be upset about is always the end of civilization, not a minor point. So while I don't think he made his point about gender segregation being required for developing the best character, it also doesn't really matter because it wasn't a front for that women are lesser than men. It's just a disagreement. Disagreement isn't a problem.

You might not be familiar with these patterns of behavior of others if you don't drift into the state of Angry Jack yourself and don't have friends who do. It is possible to live in a bubble of people with such similar good, strong morals that you just can't imagine what's actually going on somewhere else, and this could quite possibly apply to a good number of folks here.

So, here you go. If that's you - unfortunately it's a bubble, not all of reality. All of reality should be in the bubble so that it's not a bubble but we're not there yet. So people who can't stay in the bubble have to keep checking on whether they're inside or outside, but that's not a real reflection on people inside the bubble, it's a reflection on what's outside it.

@Eagledad, @qwazse, I'm not sure how you experienced this but if you truly had no idea of these patterns that others have worn grooves into the floor with then I'm sure my reaction seemed over the top. If that was the case, then I apologize.

[yknot]

1 hour ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

 

@Eagledad, @qwazse, I'm not sure how you experienced this but if you truly had no idea of these patterns that others have worn grooves into the floor with then I'm sure my reaction seemed over the top. If that was the case, then I apologize.

 

@AwakeEnergyScouter, you might want to read a subdiscussion among some of the regular commentators under the thread "2022 Membership Numbers". It was in Issues & Politics, starting on about the top of page 5 with a post by Eagledad. Click as well on the links in subsequent posts by other regular commentors, although to be fair I don't recall Qwaze in that one, for the illuminating articles and interviews with people like Jordan Peterson and James Damore which some of them posted to support their views, or others agreed with. The discussion dismayingly goes on for about 48 posts to page 8.  

Having been part of that discussion two years ago, I don't see any apologies due from your court.  

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

1 hour ago, yknot said:

people like Jordan Peterson and James Damore which some of them posted to support their views, or others agreed with. The discussion dismayingly goes on for about 48 posts to page 8.  

Thanks for the warning. I'll go back and read that, prepared for the usual from the "manosphere". Hopefully no one held Andrew Tate out to be a male role model for male Scouts to emulate. I hear the root of all modern society problems is that men don't walk around with swords enough 😂 he's a true paragon of being morally straight, that man is 😂

No death threats or rape threats from anyone here though so that's a plus. I wish I was being sarcastic but the chans set the bar real low. Don't think anyone's doxxed me and no SWAT teams have shown up so everyone is verifiably holding up to that level of civilized discourse so far. Can't say that for the Internet at large.

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

So it looks like a bunch of posts did get moderated in the end, which is probably just as well for the good name of the BSA because what was still there is the same old gender essentialist stuff I've heard since I was my scout's current age and that still doesn't ring true. It didn't ring true even before I studied emptiness and it certainly isn't going to now that I have. I have so much to say about that that I end up with nothing to say because it's all been said for decades if not generations, in books and around dinner tables. There's nothing I'm going to say here that's going to change a dyed-in-the-wool gender essentialist. I just need them to not stop me from living my life any way I please (within good morality, of course). (My female preschool teachers made me jump through all kinds of sewing hoops before they very reluctantly let me build the wooden boat I wanted to make and sail, for example. None of the boys had to sew first, it turned out later.) And they mostly can't, because enough men like yourself @yknot also see through it now. We can just get on with business, in this case scouting. I know my committee all feels the same, I and my scout are absolutely welcome in our pack. So we're just getting on with delivering the scouting program.

What hasn't already been said a million times is that, like @yknot and the moderators here have recognized, it is going to be detrimental to female scouts and therefore the BSA to keep dumping negative feelings about scouting all together into public spaces where those scouts are going to see it. Exactly as they're saying, it does say "go away, you're not welcome, secret boys club girls not allowed". (Even if that honestly wasn't what you meant, because it's hard to believe that you didn't given the volume of people who really did.) It makes the BSA look weak on its foundations - in the best case. In the expected case, it isn't just a look but an actual weakening of our standing as an ethically grounded youth organization. Given the two other major ways in which the BSA has openly struggled with its own values foundation in the same way for a long time, dumping negative feelings about scouting together creates even more drag on recruiting, vitality, and windhorse.

It is not loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, or kind to your brothers and sisters in scouting to say that they could never have the highest character because they didn't scout gender-separated, especially when that is the movement norm. This is not the spirit to bring to the campfire.

There are families in our pack that have very different political opinions than mine. (Seen political slogans at their houses.) And you know what I do in scouts? I shut up about politics. I do not bring that to the campfire. I rouse compassion and genuinely consider them my friends. I like them, they're good people. (As, of course , literally everyone is in the primordial sense.) I am very alarmed by the policies proposed by the politicians they support, but breaking scouts isn't going to make that any better. In scouts, we build community, not break it apart.

Another thing that hasn't been said a million times is the overlap of religion and therefore reverent with rejection of gender essentialism. I imagine most here aren't familiar with the story of Noble Tara Bodhisattva's human birth Yeshe Dawa, so here the pith of it is:

Princess Yeshe Dawa developed genuine, impartial love and compassion for each and every living being. She was not enchanted by the luxuries of palace life; instead, she vowed to show the way to liberation to millions of beings each day before eating breakfast, to millions more before eating lunch, and to even more before going to sleep at night. Because of this, she was called Arya Tara, meaning “The Noble Liberator.” “Arya” indicates that she has directly realized the nature of reality and “Tara” shows her liberating activity. When religious authorities suggested that she pray to be born a man in future lives, Tara refused, pointing out that many Buddhas had already manifested in male bodies and vowing to attain full awakening in a woman’s body and continuously return in female form in order to benefit others.

https://thubtenchodron.org/2005/03/practice-of-tara/

Not denigrating women is one of the traditional vajrayana vows. There is no equivalent for men - sexist on the surface, but let's be honest, we all know why. It didn't need to be explicitly called out because it wasn't much of a problem.

The reason for both Noble Tara's lesson and the vow inclusion is that gender essentialism is a mistaken view not just according to many modern Western feminists of all genders but also according to core traditional Buddhist teachings. Gender is empty of independent essence, as per noble Avalokiteshvara in the Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Knowledge:

"O Shariputra, a son or daughter of noble family who wishes to practice the profound prajñaparamita should see in this way: seeing the five skandhas to be empty of nature. Form is emptiness; emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form; form is no other than emptiness. In the same way, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness are emptiness. This, Shariputra, all dharma are emptiness. There are no characteristics. There is no birth and no cessation. There is no impurity and no purity. There is no increase and no decrease. Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling, no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind; no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no dharmas; no eye dhatu up to no mind dhatu, no dhatu of dharma, no mind consciousness dhatu; no ignorance, no end of ignorance up to no old age and death, no end of old age and death; no suffering, no origin of suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and no nonattainment. Therefore, Shariputra, since the bodhisattvas have no attainment, they abide by means of prajñaparamita."

This isn't comprehensible without knowing some terms, foundational teachings, and the two truths view, and I don't this anyone really cares here so I will just make the note that if this makes no sense to you, it's because hearing this without knowing that background is like hearing that all matter is both a wave and a particle at the same time without knowing the background and sequence of both theory and experiments to understand how to understand it. I still wrote out that whole segment because it's the most well-known sutra that makes it very clear that gender is absolutely one of the "things" that doesn't really exist at the ultimate truth level. It exists at the relative, everyday level, but such existence is a little random and comes together and falls apart, so we shouldn't take it too seriously. It's just a concept. Reifying concepts into some sort of Eternal Absolute Truth Beyond Impermanence is grasping and solidifying something that is only there temporarily and is a form of ignorance (mental dullness, refusing to look properly, and/or just not knowing how things work), one of the Three Poisons, which are the roots of Samsara and therefore suffering.

Just like it's not helpful to scouts, scouters, the BSA, nor the scouting movement to go around telling people they're going to go to hell if they don't repent, even if you honestly think that, going around telling people it's a grave mistake to scout with anyone who's interested is unhelpful. As a movement, we logically have to hold such different opinions - no way millions of people with different spiritual views happen to hold the same opinions to the extent that they don't think others in the movement are making spiritual mistakes, logically speaking. But we're here to build community, not tear it apart, so we agree to disagree and focus on building friendship instead.

I don't lose any sleep over that the Jehovah's Witnesses think I'm going to hell, they can think whatever they like, but I still don't want them ringing my doorbell again and again to tell me so. That's just annoying. Think it, but don't come interrupt me living my life to tell me.

Edited February 16 by AwakeEnergyScouter

[Eagledad]

21 hours ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

It is not loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, or kind to your brothers and sisters in scouting to say that they could never have the highest character because they didn't scout gender-separated, especially when that is the movement norm. This is not the spirit to bring to the campfire.

 

Several of us have been members of this forum for many years and have watched thousands of Scouters pass through. Most of us who have hung around for that many years just have a passion to make the lives of new scout leaders easier with perspectives based from our experiences of success, and often failures. We have wisdom that comes from the blood sweat and tears of experience.

Once in a while, a scouter comes along with their own strong personal ideals of how things should be and wants to impress on those of us with experience their perspective of better way. Ideas and perspectives are welcome because a respectful balance of dialog is enjoyable if nothing else. After all, we all have the same passion for scouting.

However, many times when those of us with wisdom present a different experienced perspective that doesn't fit with the idealist perspective, the idealist counter back with hostility to intimidate the list and experienced scouts to accept their perspective.

There is a clinical personality disorder that appears common with these idealists who use hostility and intimidation to impress and defend their idealistic visions.

Ironically, though, the idealists eventually fade from the list as hypocrisy often exposes that their continued hostile drive to change minds with reason is driven by ego. Kind of like demanding their perspective of ethical behavior with unethical intimidation.

Most of the time these members who use hostile tactics of persuasion find themselves frustrated by the stubbornness of the experienced members. Their personality disorder simply doesn't accept the idea of agreeing to disagree. 

It’s not that experienced wisdom isn’t humble and can’t be changed because wisdom actually grows in the fertile ground of humility. But, changing an experienced mind requires evidence of reality. If the idealist perspective is so great, then why would intimidation be necessary?

However, we are all here to grow, so maybe a perspective of another Scouting program could reinforce the movement norm perspective of segregation in scouting. May I respectfully suggest discussions in the Girls Scouts forum?

Of course, you are always welcome here, but anyone throwing self-imagined unscoutlike illusions on forum members is not welcome.

Have a great weekend.

Barry

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

Gender equality and everyone scouting together isn't some newfangled progressive ideal, it's the faît accompli  mainstream of the scouting movement. At a movement level, it's not controversial in the slightest, it's the status quo. 95% of WOSM NSOs scout together. 95%. I'm not proposing or doing anything new at all or trying to intimidate you. BSA has been in the 5%, so I understand that in your personal experience it's new, but that's not the same thing as it being new in scouting as a whole, and both WOSM and WAGGGS embrace gender equality as a goal to strive towards and that scouting is meant to help achieve.

Some top hits off a search on "WOSM gender equality":

https://www.scout.org/iwd2020

https://www.scout.org/what-we-do/young-people-and-communities/diversity-and-0

https://www.scout.org/gender-equality-ethiopia-gambia

https://treehouse.scout.org/topic/wosm-services-equips-nsos-tools-be-champions-gender-equality

https://issuu.com/worldscouting/docs/gender_equity_guidelines_en_final_final

Same for "WAGGGS gender equality":

https://www.wagggs.org/en/our-world/europe-region/about-us/our-impact/working-men-and-boys-gender-equality/

https://www.wagggs.org/en/blog/calling-decision-makers-let-young-women-lead/

https://www.wagggs.org/en/blog/calling-decision-makers-let-young-women-lead/

Which is what makes it so striking that you're calling the vast majority of scouts out as not having the best character. That's quite a statement. This is why I made sure I wasn't reading more into your words than you actually meant, but you confirmed that you did mean that virtually all WOSM and most WAGGGS scouts don't have the best character. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but bringing it up every time something as normal as girls and boys scouting together comes up is going to get tiresome, especially if you keep angling it personally. Like I already explained, it comes off looking probably more pointed than you realize to any scouts reading this, scouts for whom this is also something relatively new. You don't have to scout with us girls, just don't keep telling us that our presence is ruining our male den and troopmates' character. Think it, don't come say it here every time someone mentions scouting together.

I'm sure not everyone remembers or has previous read this, but my own simultaneous WOSM and WAGGGS scouting experience was in Sweden, where we have scouted together since 1960. So, if no scouts that scout normally can develop the best character, than I didn't either, and neither did my dad, my uncle, my patrolmates, etc. Insulting other scouts' character really isn't a friendly move.

All my old hike and Jamboree pictures of my patrol with both girls and boys in them isn't some political statement, they're just old personal pictures of someone's patrol from 30-40 years ago. Just like your old pictures with just boys or girls in them. That's just what it was. Me talking about my scouting experience with both girls and boys isn't a political statement any more than you talking about yours with just boys or girls. That my old is your new doesn't mean that I forced the change in your world, or that it's somehow alien to scouting. I want my scout to have the experience I and my dad had many, many decades ago, and I've got a scouter crew that want the same all on their own, no convincing or intimidation required. Talking about what we do as scouters in a family den also isn't a political statement, it's what this forum is for.

I have never heard a GSUSA scout or scouter say any like what you're saying here, IRL or online, so I'm not going to go stir up that forum with my opinion that they should admit men and boys as well, and for that matter that GSUSA and BSA should merge, both of which I've previously expressed here. If I do ever hear that, I will say something, but there's a difference in impact and frankly intent to respond to something in a conversation stream and in starting a conversation to criticize how someone else is scouting. GSUSA must be doing more right than wrong, after all, and they are our sisters in scouting either way. I am always glad when a new scout mom is a former GSUSA scout. Loyalty to scouting trumps disagreements about how to deliver the best program. 

Edited February 19 by AwakeEnergyScouter
Typo

[Eagledad]

15 hours ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

Gender equality and everyone scouting together isn't some newfangled progressive ideal, it's the faît accompli  mainstream of the scouting movement. At a movement level, it's not controversial in the slightest,

Ah, movements of shallow ideals. I miss Martin Luther King Jr. so much.

The difference between us is that Scouting isn’t movement. Scouting is an organization that uses the simple ideal of real-life decisions to develop young people into ethical and moral decision-makers. Sadly, scouting is being hijacked by activision that uses the simplicity of intimidation to make decisions of equality rather than developing free minds to make personal decisions to treat people equally. 

But, moral and ethical decision-making (integrity and character) is the humanistic ideal of fairness and respect toward all people. 

One doesn’t get integrity by wearing it as a badge on their uniform any more than a person is a leader simply by being given the title. Integrity comes from forming oneself without intimidation into a person of integrity by the experiences of making right and wrong moral and ethical decisions.

A person of high integrity doesn’t treat other people Equally because they are told to act accordingly. Integrity is a habit without thought. A habit developed through continued actions that expose the qualities of its virtues.

From experience, I can assure you that youth coming from true single-gender youth run programs will not only choose to treat genders equally, but also people of religion, nationality, mental conditions, unusual ideas, quirks, and so on. Equality is just one of many actions of Fairness and respect.

Your program of forcing youth to make specific decisions without the self-discerning action of the consequences of that decision only creates confusion and resentment.

About 20 years ago when I was SM of a troop 100 scouts, I learned a few weeks later that one of our local high schools ran their annual student vote for the school’s top 7 leaders. The school of about 2500 students in grades 9 through 12 wrote in the students who they felt were the best leaders. Six of the seven voted were scouts in my troop. The seventh was a girl.

The blank ballots didn’t ask for a specific gender race or any other specific quality, it was blank. It was an open vote where 2500 young adults male and female of different ages, backgrounds, genders, races, and ideas voted for 6 scouts as the best leaders. I’m pretty sure the students didn’t know they were scouts.

It’s no coincidence. True decisions of fairness and respect, what I call integrity, come from individuals who shape themselves to believe that the traits of integrity are the kind of character that is best for humanity. They act friendly, courteous, and kind to everyone because they shaped themselves into that character. They likely didn’t even know they made the decision to change. But, the brain develops paths of least resistance. The trials and struggles of bad decisions cause pain, which forces the brain to change away from the causes of those bad choices. The brain literally is rewiring the neurological paths of the brain to stay away from those pains. Kind of like learning to not burn your fingers touching a hot pot. 

You can’t just tell (force) someone to treat the other gender equally and expect it to become a habit. They have to accept that that character action of fairness and respect is the only right or noble action.  And that kind of character trait doesn’t fixate on just gender, but all types of people.

Scouts from that kind of program believe it is the right behavior because they have experienced the feelings from right and wrong consequences of practicing that behavior. That choice to believe that fairness and respect can’t be forced on them by some other person who just says so. Change comes from discerning their personal experience. A youth-run program where authority, and intimidation, behavioral confusion (mixed genders) are absent from the scouting activities is the perfect environment for that kind of self-induced growth.  

Interesting to me that you believe that males and females are the same. Oh, I’m sure you believe there are a few things different physically. You are an educated person after all.  But, you believe that genders are mentally close enough that youth only need an educated self-righteous person who holds power over them to change their actions of behavior. But, I know from experience that scouts from your idealistic troop will leave no different than when they came in. Adults who are unwilling to accept a single-gender program for maximum growth aren't typically interested in a program that gives youth the freedom to make bad decisions. 

Your arrogance for mediocrity by tearing down traditional institutions to force shallow imaginary ideals on social society is culturally destructive because it can’t imagine the consequences of forced social behavior. Where are the feminist protests for fairness when physical males are competing in daily norms as females?

Last year, a female student in my kids high school was sent to the hospital by a trans male who attacked her in the Women's bathroom. That could have been my daughter a few years before. The school has since changed its bathroom gender policy, but it took an attack by a predator to force the change.

The shallow vision of forcing the culture to treat the female gender equally has collapsed to a culture where extremists now feel safe to politically force their dangerous destructive radical agenda on the weak female gender, which, ironically, has set back feminine equality several decades. No surprise, if the feminists really wanted change without the dangerous consequences, they should have taken on the ethics of the Scout Law and Oath of fairness and respect for everyone. Not just females. Now that would have been noble.

Real feminists are fighting to gain that ground of equality and fairness back into society, but they fight an uphill battle with today's facade of progressivism. Scouting is the one place where they can get that ground back, but you want to take that away as well.

I expect we will never agree. But, at least in this forum, maybe respectfully agreeing to disagree for an intellectually enjoyable discussion. instead of forcing one-sided thoughts and ideas with intimidation on those who disagree.

Have a great week.

Barry

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

@Eagledad I see that this transition is hard for you. I hope you can find your way to equanimity. But girls and boys scouting together isn't new for me at all, and I personally had nothing to do with BSA changing its policy on that. I'm here because BSA is now providing the scouting experience I wanted for my scout, that's all. If somebody forced and intimidated the BSA, it wasn't me. To the generic insult of my character, and that of past generations of scouts as well as current scouts, you now add personal insults of my leadership? Not getting friendlier. I just want you to be quiet if you can't say anything nice. That's not censorship, that's manners. 

I don't think the inverse of what you think. I don't think that there's no way that gender-segregated scouting can produce the best character. I think it can produce people of the best character. That's not my objection to gender-segregated scouting. But I don't really care if you agree with me or not as much as I care that you don't make my scouts (or anyone else's scouts) feel like they're doing something wrong for joining an organization they're allowed to join.

Not telling girls that they're ruining scouting for their male den- and troopmates isn't for my personal benefit. You're not going to be able to sway me to take the idea that my childhood scouting was all wrong and nobody in the whole country realized it, just you, seriously. I did not lower my male patrolmates' character.  Like I've already said, you're not the only one with experiences, and nothing makes yours real and mine a fantasy. My childhood really happened, just like yours. No, it is for the benefit of current BSA scouts. I will be the lightning rod for anger about this change so that my scouts don't have to receive it. May this be of benefit to all sentient beings. 🙏🏼

As for scouting not being a movement - I refer you to BSA being a National Scouting Organization of the World Organization of the Scouting Movement, and the World Organization of the Scouting Movement's history of scouting.

https://www.scout.org/who-we-are/scout-movement/scoutings-history

I've learned elsewhere on this form that a lot of BSA scouts and scouters don't quite realize that the BSA is not a stand-alone organization, so perhaps you didn't know this. But you can easily verify what I'm saying here by exploring scout.org. I didn't create WOSM as part of a secret coercive plot to ruin everything, I promise 😂

There is also the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, WAGGGS, which is the other international umbrella organization for the scouting movement. You can verify that they also conceptualize scouting as a transnational movement. Most scouting organizations are in both, as Scouterna (and Svenska Scoutförbundet before the creation of the single organisation) is.  Again, you can have a different conception of scouting if you like, but me holding the most common view doesn't mean that I'm out to get you somehow.

Edited February 19 by AwakeEnergyScouter
Male, not ale, patrolmates 😂

[Eagle1993]

I think we are at the point of agree to disagree and time to move on. Let's get back to the initial focus of this topic.  

@RememberSchiff

[Eagledad]

27 minutes ago, AwakeEnergyScouter said:

@Eagledad I see that this transition is hard for you. I hope you can find your way to equanimity. But girls and boys scouting together isn't new for me at all, and I personally had nothing to do with BSA changing its policy on that. I'm here because BSA is now providing the scouting experience I wanted for my scout, that's all. If somebody forced and intimidated the BSA, it wasn't me. To the generic insult of my character, and that of past generations of scouts as well as current scouts, you now add personal insults of my leadership? Not getting friendlier. I just want you to be quiet if you can't say anything nice. That's not censorship, that's manners. 

 

I'm respectful and nice. But, you want me to be agreeable or quiet and that is not nice. 

Barry

[RememberSchiff]

Possibilities...BSA Troop 713 photo at link:  (sorry no spoilers)

https://bsatroop713.com/about-us/

"Troop 713 is a scout led troop. The Senior Patrol Leader and their Patrol Leaders Council set the events calendar for the year, plan the troop meetings, and run all of the events.  Adults are present for health and safety concerns, to assist the scouts in developing their leadership skills, and to perform duties that require an adult in order to accomplish the task for legal or contractual reasons. The scouts occasionally stumble, but scouting is a a safe environment to learn from our mistakes."

Recent news article regarding their adventures:

"The group of very high adventure kids hiked volcanos and went white water rafting, zip lining, rappelling, rock climbing and drove ATVs. A total of 13 Scouts, both..."

"The trip took over a year to plan and West said it was frequently changing as a committee of scouts came up with different things they wanted to do. Most of the things they requested they were able to do, including the rafting, rappelling, climbing mountains, zip lining, and celebrating New Year’s as a big family. The only thing they were unable to do was connect with local scouts from Chile."

https://www.delmartimes.net/lifestyle/story/2024-02-13/adventures-in-scouting-local-troop-713-explores-patagonia-chile

Scout Salute,

[Ojoman]

8 hours ago, Eagledad said:

Real feminists are fighting to gain that ground of equality and fairness back into society, but they fight an uphill battle with today's facade of progressivism. Scouting is the one place where they can get that ground back, but you want to take that away as well.

My mother was a den mother back in the day... scoutmaster, cubmaster and Webelo's leader positions and accompanying assistant positions were not available to her. Today women can and often do hold all of those roles and it is only fitting that girls can join into the program and enjoy the benefits of leadership, character and citizenship training/learning that takes place while they enjoy fun and adventure. No child ever joined to have their character developed... that just naturally happens (sort of sneaks up on them) while they are having fun being given the opportunities to learn, lead and teach. Pretty neat. 

 

[AwakeEnergyScouter]

On 2/19/2024 at 2:22 PM, Eagledad said:

I'm respectful and nice. But, you want me to be agreeable or quiet and that is not nice. 

Your posts above are neither. As you quote me telling you previously above. Asking you to stop attacking a fellow scout's character is frankly something that shouldn't even need to be said at all, yet here we are. Attacks are not nice. Being asked to stop attacking isn't not-nice.

Every time you say girls are ruining the program for boys, you're reducing our chances of growing membership and creating a culture of growth. You're spinning that wheel of cause and effect every time you say that here. So please stop. Let's move forward.