So to recap: Your son is in a BSA troop. By BSA rules, this is all boys, so most of his experience is going to be a boys only environment. The troop chooses to host some events with a girls troop, though, so it's not the entirety of the experience. Your son could choose to move to a troop that doesn't do that, but that wouldn't be good enough, because the OTHER troop would still be camping near girls. Pointing out to you that this is a problem you could easily solve is the same thing as blaming your son for all of the sexism in history. Yeah that all makes sense. |
I've been in 3 diff GS troops. At 2 different schools. 3 troops because the leadership kept fizzling and a new mom tried to spin off and start a new troop instead just picking up where the last one left off. All were very poorly run. I get that it's a lot of effort and I think GS doesn't make it easy, but we had just a few meetings, did very little, then suddenly for 3 months it was nothing but cookies and maybe a small party at the end with our earnings. For 4 years all I remember doing was selling cookies and my daughter got very little out of the program. |
Sadly, no. |
For the 15th time it's not a boys only environment. You have to be intentionally obtuse at this point. It's coed in every sense except on paper. The point of the thread, in case you missed it, is to discuss why girl scouts don't accept boys and BSA accepts girls. Yes, if we left this particular troop which I never said we wanted to do though you suggested it several times, girls would still be a part of it. I wasn't asking you for advice or to solve any problem. Yes, we do force organizations to accept girls in the name of equity even where it doesn't make practical sense. Yes, it would be good if boys had a space just for themselves the same way you think it's a good idea that girls have a space for themselves. Is that so hard to understand? |
Okay, so your problem isn't actually that your son lacks an all-male environment, nor is your problem that you don't want to deal with "shenanigans." Your problem is that girls exist...somewhere, even if they are not actually near your own son. great great great. |
You sound really dumb when you assign words to people they never said or thought. Especially, after I've repeatedly said the opposite. |
New poster here: Buddy, no one knows what the hell you're complaining about. The thing you want - "a boys-only space" - has never existed in Boy Scouting. There were always moms and sisters around decades ago, participating in activities and camp outs. If you want a boys-only space, send him to an all-boys boarding school in some rural wasteland where he never needs to cross paths with a female. |
Buddy, just because your family broke the rules and brought girls to events doesn't mean that boy scouts were not a boy's organization. They might have let the girls in for equity or numbers or money but it doesn't change the fact there were not girl eagle scouts back then. So take your BS and shove it. Girls were not permitted to raise through the rants of BSA back then. I never suggested that my son live in isolation from girls as you suggest he does. It's really ignorant and perhaps why I keep coming back to respond to suggest that some space shouldn't be allowed just for boys. |
*facepalm* I am not claiming that girls "rose through the ranks" decades ago in Boy Scouts. What I am stating is that girls and moms attended every event because Boy Scouting was always a family event. No, the sister did not get to earn the merit badges. But they were allowed to attend meetings and campouts, participate in activities (eg, go to the rock climbing wall or a day hike), etc. During our Pinewood Derby growing up, we even had a Sister category so they could race each other and win trophies. This was back in the 1980s. So this idea you have that Boy Scouts was a "boy-only space" at some point in the past is a myth. It never existed. The only thing that changed when Scouts allowed girls to formally join a few years ago was that those "sisters" could now finally earn merit badges and ranks. Which, frankly, was long overdue and well-deserved since they had been "doing the work" alongside their brothers for decades. |
Well I call BS on that. No, they were most certainly not doing the work along their brothers for decades and no they did not go on every camp out and every activity. Maybe in your podunk troop but that certainly wasn't the norm. So let's keep it honest, shall we? |
DP but that's not what happened. No one forced BSA to accept girls in the name of equity. BSA lost a LOT of lawsuits because of their lax supervision leading to rampant child sexual abuse, and also lost lawsuits because of their sexual orientation discrimination. Because of the latter (notably not the former), Mormons decided to leave in droves. Without Mormons, BSA didn't have the numbers to pay all of their debts so they made an internal business decision to change their business model to get more participants. |
Fair enough. It was a business decision. But I failt to see how an organization that didn't protect boys from predators is going to do any better when they have girls there too. |
Girl Dcouts doesn't have the fiscal and PR nightmare from covering up years of child SA like BSA does. BSS allows girls because hardly anyone wants to join their creepy club. Girls Scouts can just do it's own thing. |
I'm not affiliated with Scouts but my understanding is that they've overhauled their rules to be much closer to GSUSA's rules, which necessitate a lot of background checks, training, and checks on the ability of an adult to be alone one-on-one with a child not their own. |
Something like 40% of the abuse allegations in Boy Scouts stemmed from Mormon troops. The Mormon Church tried to pay BSA $250M to take the fall for abuse in Mormon troops, but also tried to include abuse by the same church officials in non-Scout settings and to non-Scout victims. The bankruptcy judge threw out that proposed liability shield for the Mormon Church: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/boy-scouts-walk-back-250-mln-abuse-settlement-with-mormon-church-2022-08-15/ While the Mormons made a big deal about leaving BSA because of the acceptance of gay Scouts and families, the real reason was because of the Church's knowledge and liability of Scouting-related abuse. There's a really good discussion on Reddit about this among former Mormon Boy Scouts: https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/yk73oc/why_did_the_lds_church_end_partnership_with/ |