Umm, I was going to engage with Soro's post, but it seems to have been deleted. Not sure what the ~official protocol is for this.
It wasn't, I posted it in the
small rant thread and mostly joked they should have gone full co-ed in my youth instead of waiting so long
One specific thing I don't understand about what the Boy Scouts org are doing, is why is it they are the most vocal + public of youth organizations, about whatever changes they're having trouble with? These exact same set of problems are happening with 1000s of other youth orgs, but there's no massive p.r. and flame wars associated.
It's the Boy Scouts, they are dual combination of religion and military that boosts a strong moral code and influential leaders. Conservationists love them because they are everything that made this nation great, outdoors, leadership, Duty to God!, morals, guns, camping, fire, religion, _insert_buzzword_here, etc. And libertarians hate the shit out of them because they are everything that's wrong with the nation for exactly the same reasons.
And they can be targeted. Like originally their "gay policy" was a direct copy from the US military, "don't ask, don't tell" and violating either end of that got you kicked out. However the US military wasn't going to budge but over on the Boy Scout side multiple gay leaders showed up to meetings with kids wearing dick costumes and some how people flocked to supporting them. And you can see it again in the gender issue. Public schools use gender=sex rather than tumblr's newest invented identity spectrum and they failed so hard to change that it's not funny. So they went back to picking on BSA again whom this time learned their lesson and is a little more proactive, however it also makes them
yielding so if anything they just painted an even larger target on their back. Anyway...
Along those lines, the shirt I'm wearing is a girl scout's Sewing Merit badge, but for boys.
And that's fine.
The thing is,
there is a gender difference. It's the inverse of pretending the gay away and built on the same concepts of sexual discrimination. Having a masculine presentation on things just really doesn't attract everyone. For example, Venturing is a advanced carbon copy program of the Boy Scouts that even offers
four alternative areas of focus. Like Ranger is basically Eagle Scout-like, but they also have Quartermaster (for seafarers), Quest is general sports which includes everything from football to gymnastics to Judo and volleyball, and even Trust which is religious-specific.
And it turns out, there just isn't a lot of female teenagers that have any interest in it. A core requirement of a successfully program is appealing to it's target audience and Venturing is failing. Most of it's numbers come from dual registering which is done for free thanks to how BSA does membership which means most of it's youth added $0 to the budget. Overall, the Boy Scouts have just plain failed to reach teenage girls.
And the thing is, they know they did. They got stuck with two choices, sacrificing the appeal all of the current membership enjoys but trying to reach the females or invent a new program. Well the former costs membership and the latter, well we already have statistics that prove an obviously masculine-leaning team isn't the best kind of people to hire out for femininity. So the only solution is hope someone else comes up with something.
Like the American Heritage Girls is pretty much a girl take on Cub/Boy Scouts and it seems to work better than Venturing. They are succeeding, at least somewhat, where BSA has failed. And here is the thing, AHG got an official "Memorandum of Mutual Support" from the BSA several years ago for offering at least some kind of good answer to the gender-differences. BSA loves them.
Which is probably also a good time for a quick tangent that could really help to open your eyes provided you're up to interpetating my normal levels of BS and style.
Take the recent mother signed her daughter-as-a-boy thing that happening in Ohio (or w/e) before BSA starting allowing trans in. The Boy Scouts have a strong moral code and they take pride in that, and by definition that also means they can't compromise on certain things. Period. The mother saw shiny patches and a good program, she thinks it's unfair. So she
lied on her child's application. She tells her daughter (or w/e) to
pretend she's a real boy. This mother set an example and was teaching her daughter that
dishonesty is a good short cut. The mother could have signed up for any other program, invented her own, or simply mimiced the things the Cub Scouts were doing at home, one of of hundreds of other options but nope.
Does that sound very Trustworthy and Honest to you?
Does it really sound like the child is getting a great message to become a great person?
No, no it does not. It's all about the shinies which is nothing more than the appeal, not the goal, of the program.
So now, let me ask you this.
If a women completes all the Requirement for Eagle should she be allowed to receive it?
That's a loaded question, because it's impossible for her to meet the requirements.
The women has to lead her friends and partners in specific ways with day-to-day interactions over several years. Wisdom, experience, insight, and understanding are things that cannot be taught out of a book and they take time. She did not wear the uniform in public and was held to the same scrutiny as her peers. She never went to Summer Camp and was literately assigned 2~3 strangers to judge her behavior every single day of that week just to see if she was worthy of how the camp's Lodge (or honor) society chooses to promote it's members. She did not submit and appeal and seek approval from the local BSA council for a community project, she did not sit before three Eagle Scouts and validate her self before them with a list of recommendations and approvals in hand.
An educated adult can knock out the list of Merit Badge requirements in less than three months if they wanted to. So a better question to ask would be, if a 37-year-old man proved he can complete the requirements for two dozen Merit Badges did he earn Eagle Scout? And the answer is no. No he did not. That does not change just because someone decided to try to use the word "women" in their statement, and thinking it should is literally the text book definition of sexism.
Should girls have an alt, or one day the Boy Scout program go full co-ed, I'm all for whatever works out of that but I inherently disagree with anything that lessens the Eagle Scout
recognition.
When you get Eagle Scout you're reminded it's not the end of things, it's the beginning. Remember, BSA can revoke your Eagle Scout award if they want to, and through technically revocation is extremely rare it is a thing and it has been done before.
"Once an Eagle always an Eagle" doesn't mean you permanently keep the award, but you are permanently held to it's standards. Eagle Scout is an award of recognition for who you are and who they hope you to be making it less of a reward for doing, but an recognition for being. Again, appeal and salesmanship vs goals. And some people are incapable of seeing the latter.