Not your father’s Boy Scouts
A new name, a new policy: “Scouts BSA”:
The parent organization will remain the Boy Scouts of America, and the Cub Scouts ”” its program for 7- to 10-year-olds ”” will keep its title as well.
But the Boy Scouts ”” the program for 11- to 17-year-olds ”” will now be Scouts BSA.
The organization has already started admitting girls into the Cub Scouts, and Scouts BSA begins accepting girls next year.
Surbaugh predicted that both boys and girls in Scouts BSA would refer to themselves simply as scouts, rather than adding “boy” or “girl” as a modifier.
As far as I can tell, the reasons aren’t just the usual PC stuff, although of course that’s operating—as it seems to be everywhere. Are there any unisex enclaves available anymore? But behind this move also seems to be the fact that both Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts have been losing membership in recent years. Hardest hit (potentially, anyway) by this Boy Scout rebranding is the Girl Scouts, as one might expect.
Given the choice of a co-ed experience or an all-girls’ experience, I’m not sure what girls (or their parents) will choose. When I was a kid, of course, there was no such thing, and I wouldn’t have wanted it, particularly at an early age. By the time I was a teenager my scouting days were long past me. To tell the truth, the only reason I ever had joined—first at the Brownie level, then as a Girl Scout—was that just about all my friends were members, plus the uniforms.
But mostly, the uniforms. I confess it. We used to meet once a week after classes—at school, not at a parent’s house—and we got to wear our uniforms to school all day. My uniform made me feel very very snazzy. The rest of it I remember as a total bore, except the songs we sang. I was not really Scout material.
The uniforms have changed considerably, but this is what we wore:
I never got up to sash level.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane, Neo! I have fond memories of my time as a Brownie and Intermediate Girl Scout in the 1960s. Had forgotten that one of the perks was wearing your uniform to school on the day of the meeting. And not to brag, but I DID achieve sash level 🙂 Loved adding those pins and patches to the sash.
Agree that this rebranding is probably the kiss of death for the Girl Scouts. But they’ve been drifting leftward for quite awhile and I can’t work up much outrage, except for concerns about the availability of Thin Mints and Tagalongs in the future.
People have accused the Girl Scouts of late as being only a profit making cooking selling organization for the BureaucracyAnd nothing more
I still have my sash. It was fun to wear, and it was fun earning the badges. We also had regular events called Sings (an odd use of the word); I loved getting together and singing. And I enjoyed the campfires. A few years ago around a campfire a friend of mine started singing Girl Scout songs and it was astonishing to learn that although I hadn’t heard them for decades, I still know every single word. White Coral Bells…
Getting kicked out of Weblos in 67 for scaring the Brownie girls. Patmos Island, Lake Erie, 1966.
Showing up two days later to church sealed the deal.
Patches lost, no more kerchief with the wolfyhead.
F Troop. Sometimes I wake up and feel the itch of long dead limbs.
Next stop: gender bender boys, dressed in Brownie uniforms, go door to door selling thin mints and puppy dog tails. The sweet smell of decay.
OK, I’m over-reacting, but like everything else that’s supposed to be Progressive, it screams for satire.
Neo, you reminded me of how anxious I was to get my membership card when I first joined the cub scouts. As soon as I got it I dragged my mother to either Gimbels or Macy’s (I forget which) to get my uniform. I thought blue and yellow was a wonderful combination. It did bring about one conflict though. The school had a special assembly one day and boys were told to wear a white shirt. But that day was also Scouts Day and scouts were supposed to wear our uniform all day! Fortunately my teachers let me wear a white shirt over my uniform even though they correctly realized it was the uniform I wanted to show off.
Sarah Rolph:
Don’t get me started on another earworm!!!
I already have one from writing this post: “I’ve got something in my pocket, it belongs upon my face…”
Please, have mercy.
neo-neocon Says:
May 2nd, 2018 at 4:54 pm
Sarah Rolph:
Don’t forget
“Barges, I would like to go with you…”
I came of age for Cubs during WWII and my Dad was in the Navy. I joined, and Mother rushed me down to get outfitted so I could wear the the uniform when he came home on leave. But, he got bumped from his space available flight, and didn’t get home for nearly two years; and I very soon lost interest. As I did with many such endeavors during my youth.
I suppose it is cynical of me to think that one motivation is simply that boys cannot be allowed to have their own private organizations because they might be incubators for toxic masculinity.
Now, if I were really cynical, I would suggest that we may be headed toward a time when male fetuses are treated the way the Chinese treated female ones. After all, how many males do we really need? Kind of like bulls in the current bovine world; keep just enough sperm donors to insure a comfortable supply, and do the rest in the clinics and labs. (I wonder if inbreeding is a problem in the cattle world?)
Ah, shame on me.
Wish I had a better story to relate but I don’t.
Basically, I quit cub scouts while my Mother was functioning as Den Mother and the meetings were being held at our house, ungrateful little jerk that I was.
She had just managed to bring our troop or pack or whatever it was called, up to standard after inheriting a rather slack group of [even if middle class] kids. I vaguely remember some kind of stage performance she put on to highlight our transformation from a crew of (relatively) disheveled misfits, to a properly buttoned up and spit-shined crew. The other boys were all excited, and the “play” was a hit. I was pissed because I was not one of those in need of reform and thought the whole thing of cub scouting was ridiculous by that time anyway: balancing on 2×4’s, making Indian drums out of rubber and coffee cans, and all that crap. Even my Mother and more day trips didn’t adjust my attitude.
I had relatives with guns and horses and cabins in the woods and that is what I expected the cub scouts to be … well, birch bark canoes and camping at least. And when it was not, mostly just social shit – and just got to plink with a .22 short a few times and plant seedlings as our big adventures, I got in a snit.
Poor Mom. Positive, enthusiastic, intelligent city woman with a heart of gold … with a cynical half redneck snert like me for a kid.
DNW:
She loved you anyway, I bet.
When our son was scouting age he belonged to a troop that specialized in camping and backpacking. I was an adult assistant on many backpacking trips. I shudder to think what a headache for the adults those trips might have been had they been co-ed. Co-ed camping for teens – what a great idea. Not.
We did one 50 mile trip in King’s Canyon/Sequoia National Parks. Two days walk away from any road most of the trip. You don’t want to deal with youthful sex hormones in that kind of situation. ‘Twas a beautiful thing to see how the boys became a well-oiled team. Quick and efficient at setting up and breaking camp. Long hard days on the trail with big packs. Fishing for trout in icy lakes. Scrambling up granite slabs for gorgeous mountain vistas. Telling jokes and singing around the fire at night. It was an experience that helped the boys along the road to becoming self-reliant young men. I think having teen girls along on such a trip would have been a major distraction and maybe even a safety hazard.
But then I am an old curmudgeon. So what do I know?
Yet another supporting pillar, a civilizing institution of the old regime, falls to the Gramscian “long march thought the institutions/culture.”
The boy and girl scouts taught many important lessons about how to become a responsible, well socialized, relatively aware, industrious citizen, then adult, can’t have that.
Just another in a long list of cultural icon casualties to fall as the radically different, Leftist dominated “new culture” displaces the fading–because the last of those civilized under it are shuffling off this mortal coil–old one.
Make that “long march through…”
4-H from 7 to 17. 4-H was boys and girls together, and in the teen years there was a bit of hanky panky the adults tolerated, but no guy got beyond 2nd base as far as I was aware, not for lack of trying.
Farm kids in the 50s and 60s tended to be randy. We understood the mechanics of sex without any adult telling us about it. We had direct education seeing farm animals mate.
Funny, but i sent you the vintage poster of a pregnant female scout and it said be prepared.
so, you have girl scouts and now and you have girl scouts II
i guess the reason a matriarchy degrade or one of the reasons is that the only all boy club left is gangs… ms-13 and all that…
gangs replace earning badges and growing up positive…
after all the mancave revolution was cause she basically pushes him out of all the other spheres of the house (but now wants that too)
and ya’ll wonder why we started MGTOW to help young men not waste their time on people like this and cultivate a decent life which would work well if you didnt find anyone, and better if you did… but not likely…
on another note, ya dont want to look at what they are doing to the colleges in terms of disenfranchising boys but some more than others.
This train has no brakes and will keep going as it did last century over the same ideas and similar (within power limits) ideas to fix thins..
https://www.wikihow.com/Teach-Feminism-to-Young-Girls
https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/classroom-resources/k-12-students-feminism/
https://www.noodle.com/articles/teach-feminism-in-elementary-school-with-these-tips
this is good if your watching them do to tech what they did to the boy scouts.. its what we know and what we have to accept (or else)
Women in tech feminist entryists BTFO by real female programmer, trigger warning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=3YnsDAT8SaY
Oldflyer Says:
Now, if I were really cynical, I would suggest that we may be headed toward a time when male fetuses are treated the way the Chinese treated female ones. After all, how many males do we really need? Kind of like bulls in the current bovine world;
well, i will take last first and first last…
if your going to domesticate a species and remove its independence then you get the cows to do all the work, and you have to trick them into this, because if they dont think they gonna win more than with their man, then what?
I guess you only need the harvey weinsteins, the soros, and so on to be enough males in a world of women, though you may need a kind of military class but looks like some cows will be bulls to the ladys…
a permanent, underclass, who does all the work, for the few above
they dont get to have kids, even if they do, they are already trained to leave them with others (and think them a hassle)
their infertility making it all possible…
but thats only sci fi… right??!??
and as to the next part.. which i been mentioning for a long time..
so your way late to the idea – its already got its wealth of justification established!!
people only want to talk about it AFTER its whole and exists never wanting to prevent its creation…
(you can quote me on that one)
Why women have a right to sex-selective abortion
Sarah Ditum
As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter why any woman wants to end her pregnancy.
If it’s to select for sex, that’s her choice
[i never read it but it will have to be about the derivative from the fact only women can grant personhood, soooo]
Ann Furedi of BPAS, who has won outraged headlines simply by saying that abortion on the grounds of sex selection may be within the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act
Campaigns against sex-selective abortion are misogyny disguised as feminism
https://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2014/01/campaigns-against-sex-selective-abortion-are-misogyny-disguised-feminism
but dont worry, the way the jobs game is going, with diversity inc awards trumping eeoc laws and other stuff..
sarcasm on/
i was thinking that investing in crematoriums may be a good idea for the long term.
eventually all this has to go somewhere when the numbers get asymmetrical enough.
/sarcasm off
J.J. – I’m with you on that co-ed overnight camping thing – what a headache that would be!
Truth be told though; more likely than not it just wouldn’t happen. “Sorry guys, we can’t go on the backpacking overnight trip because we would have to let the girls joins us and we don’t want anyone to get pregnant from the trip. So, it is best if we just don’t go.”
But, I loved the scouts (even though I didn’t earn many merit badges) because I loved the outdoors. Or is it I love the outdoors (and still go hiking, camping, etc.) because I was in the scouts?
It is kind of sad to see them fall by the wayside.
This is just part and parcel of the Left’s/Feminist’s widespread attack against males and masculinity, on every front and in every sphere of life in this country.
I was a Boy Scout as a kid, liked it and we had a lot of fun. Not a lot of advancement in rank, we did a lot of camping and having fun in our troop.
Years later when I got out of the Army I said, I will never wear another uniform or sleep outside and I was wrong. When my son, now 46 years old became a Cub Scout I started helping out and then when he became a Boy Scout I became an assistant Scout Master, uniform and all and it was fun working with the boys, helping them with merit badges and teaching them all the out door stuff. The first camp out I attended as a leader I asked the other leaders how we would keep them entertained and I was told that being out of doors, with knives, axes and camp fires and no girls around they tend to have fun just being kids. From 12 to 18 years old they kind of fall into their routines, the older ones helping the younger, making fun of them sometimes, chasing around, yelling and in the evening sitting around watching a campfire.
That was about 30 years ago and there were some electronics, radios and stuff which we did not allow on campouts and in my opinion, watching the boys have time to learn how to plan meals,make fires and cook over an open fire. They also learned how to take care of themselves away from their homes and I know it helped build good men who, like my son became good husbands, not afraid to cook and good fathers.
At least that’s what I saw, I think bringing in girls will change the behavior, not the messing around with each (there’s that) but the self consciousness of young males around young females will not allow them to be a young, smelly, noisy band of brothers.
Back around 1990 I was on the board of our local, privately run, youth athletic association. This was a non-profit group that organized youth sports leagues and activities.
All of the activities for kids under the age of 11 years were run as in town, intramural activities; no traveling, no outside leagues, and these were coed. The participation ran about 80/20 boys to girls. At the suggestion of a couple of parents (moms, that is) we decided one spring to offer single gender soccer. The participation by girls skyrocketed! We expanded this to all the sports we sponsored, and saw the same result.
You can pretend that young boys and girls are the same, that they care about the same things, are motivated the same way, and interact with other identically, but that’s simply not true.
Opening the Boy Scouts to boys and girls, and changing the name, will likely drive down female participation.
I would suggest that we may be headed toward a time when male fetuses are treated the way the Chinese treated female ones. After all, how many males do we really need?
We are already there. While the Chinese leftists had one-child, the Western leftists have selective-child, which is a progressive condition stemming from moral, political, scientific, and cultural corruption. Both, ironically, were/are justified for social progress. Then there are the Down Syndrome offspring (“fetus”, baby, whatever), that are identified in the womb and electively, selectively Planned/aborted. It’s a liberal (i.e. divergent) world.
The male and females sexes are complementary in Nature, and, on average, necessarily follow different development paths. Let the gender (i.e. physical and mental traits) conflation experiment progress.
I was a Boy Scout. All I remember about this is camping out at Boy Scout Camp, near Cannon Beach. I made a good friend there, as neither of us participated much in official activities. I remember a notorious (and unpopular) young bully being tormented in the night by older boys, hearing his disturbing scream.
I didn’t do much in the way of merit badges, and the scoutmaster called up my mother to say that I was letting down the troop. That was the unlamented end of the Boy Scouts and me.
Cub scouts was mostly crafts and skits, and I wasn’t much good at either. I liked the Pinewood Derby where we made little cars out of wood blocks and raced them. I never won because living in the Detroit area, there were always a couple of kids whose dads were Ford engineers and for some reason their cars always seemed to win.
Boy scouts was where I flourished, because the troop I joined was all about the outdoors and camping and I loved it. I also loved getting the merit badges which spanned a broad area of topics from basket weaving to public health, plumbing, first aid, and conservation. The most difficult for me were swimming and lifesaving which were required for Eagle Scout in those days, which I eventually attained. Opening the Boy Scouts to both boys and girls and changing the name I think will likely drive down both female and male participation. I think that’s sad.
Given the lack of understanding concerning feminine strengths and virtues, the Girl Scouts probably aren’t going to get popular any time soon. Why go that route of domestic homemaking skills when you can work for the State and get taxed to raise the exceptional USA’s GDP?
GDP doesn’t raise when you create extra people in the home. Just the consumption.
For death squads, it doesn’t particularly matter whether it is girl/boy/both. For organizations that use traditional hierarchy, they will find it difficult to police groups without the groups policing themselves.
When girls try to obey the rules of the boy hierarchy or vice a versa, or when one set of rules is enforced by the girl leaders upon the boys, your hierarchy is not going to become very smooth. The greater the stress, such as war or survival, the easier it is to break that group up.
The Ukraine and Russia have military clubs for boys and girls. It would be interesting to compare how they do it to the USA.
The only uncertain thing is whether it’s a gay or a hetero scandal that finally kills this organization.
Which was the Left’s goal all along – not “fairness”, not “diversity”, not “equality” or “inclusiveness”.
Maybe then parents can construct a new organization that won’t cave to PC demands.
Our troop used big lodges at state parks. Maybe forty bunks, pretty decent kitchen and our fathers were all vets of WW II and could make something out of nothing–both convenient and a lesson not in the syllabus–so we did okay. We were pretty wild one Friday evening. So, about dinner time on Saturday, four fathers placed themselves at the corners of a square maybe half a mile by half a mile. Each made us run to the next dad. Snow was up to our knees. So we had a pretty quiet Saturday night. Imagine the moms if girls had to do that.
Oh, gosh – I went all the way through to Senior; I think my senior uniform is still in the back of my closet, as well as the troop windbreaker with my nick-name on the front patch.
I had the good luck to be in a very enterprising troop in Sunland/Shadow Hills, California, from 1967 on to when most of the girls graduated high school, and aged out of scouting. As juniors, they had gone on a trip to the state capitol, Sacramento. As Cadettes, they took on a trip to Washington DC – and as their final grand fling – Europe. We fund-raised and worked jobs, to spend two and a half months doing Great Britain and Europe on the youth-hostel and rail pass method, with airline travel via student charter. (There were a few airlines offering bare-bones charters from the US to terminals in Europe and England then.) I got my taste for foreign travel on that trip.
Ah, the memories!
My understanding is that, 1). The troops will be either girls or boys, not mixed, and 2). The real reason for this is that the Girl Scouts is so messed up that they don’t even do outdoor stuff any more. Hence the flight to the BSA or other groups.
as long as we are discussing how feminism changed laws to scary things like soviet courts, lets throw this log on the fire too (makes MGTOW and marraige strike, and hebivore men make SENSE)
Man must pay child support after ex faked signature for IVF…
A woman in Germany forged her ex-husband’s signature twice to undergo IVF treatment with eggs fertilized by his sperm while they were married. Now a court has ruled he has to pay child support for a son he didn’t agree to have.
Nick Olivas father at 14, but didnt know till he was 22 – he was sexually abused, and so now has to pay for the child he had….
here is another case…
Are laws requiring male rape victims to pay child support to their rapist part of ‘rape culture’?
Kris, his mother and his father all say that at that moment, Jessica admitted that she forced Kris to have sex against his will. “I made him,” Connie Bucher recalls her saying.
Prosecutor’s own words: “I guess he thought he was a man then,” she said
my judge told me in court i had no rights, gave my son to a woman that faked her murder, destroying too families, and causing me to be arrested for a capital offense that never happened (its over 20 years later and she is still running around someplace)… AFTER that, she took the kids (her two kids by another man after me, and my son) and decied to walk into a bank and rob it. she was arrested, and spent two years in fed.
i never got to be with my son…
By the way, i mentioned this stuff about half a decade before it was mostly permanent… not interested until it reaches wacko city and then its interesting.
but now you cant do a thing about it…
nor say anything a half decade to several later you protest
be like waking up today and realizing, hey, maybe we should argue against penumbras..
WAY too late..
and you should see the crap coming NOW
[if a woman changes her mind after sex, even years later, its rape… did you know that? thats what this worm is turning on, a bunch of legal stuff most pay not attention to until enough people ar run over they like (too bad for thos ehtye dont care about)]
how far can the lack of caring go?
Man Literally Sets Himself On Fire On The Courthouse Steps
American Father Self-Immolates To Protest Against Family Courts
hey… i guess he was nothing like a bhuddist priest in vietnam
i suggest you invest in cremeatoriums, cause this isnt going to go the other way at all, its only in one direction…
here is an exaple of the law discussions:
VictimswithResponsibilities: RequiringMaleVictimsofStatutoryRapetoPay ChildSupport with NoEscape
https://lawpublications.barry.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=cflj
Well, that’s a Mother, for you.
Brownie & cubs, were a great way to *get away* from the opposite sex that you were stuck with all day in class
Males esp.needed a brake from that lady teacher
Wrong break
I started my Brownie experience, all excited about the uniforms, the crafts, the camping adventures….
It was all so disappointing. Horseback riding was a bust. There weren’t enough horses and I had to ride double, on the back. I slid off the rump when the horse went uphill and had to walk the rest of the trail.
Our only camping was day camp, no tents, no cooking over an open fire.
The crafts were always juvenile and I hated traipsing around selling cookies. Ugghhhh!!
Let it die.