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A major shift from the Boy Scouts of America:
Irving, Texas – October 11, 2017 – Today, the Boy Scouts of America Board of Directors unanimously approved to welcome girls into its iconic Cub Scout program and to deliver a Scouting program for older girls that will enable them to advance and earn the highest rank of Eagle Scout. The historic decision comes after years of receiving requests from families and girls, the organization evaluated the results of numerous research efforts, gaining input from current members and leaders, as well as parents and girls who've never been involved in Scouting – to understand how to offer families an important additional choice in meeting the character development needs of all their children.
"This decision is true to the BSA's mission and core values outlined in the Scout Oath and Law. The values of Scouting – trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind, brave and reverent, for example – are important for both young men and women," said Michael Surbaugh, the BSA's Chief Scout Executive. "We believe it is critical to evolve how our programs meet the needs of families interested in positive and lifelong experiences for their children. We strive to bring what our organization does best – developing character and leadership for young people – to as many families and youth as possible as we help shape the next generation of leaders."
[...] Starting in the 2018 program year, families can choose to sign up their sons and daughters for Cub Scouts. Existing packs may choose to establish a new girl pack, establish a pack that consists of girl dens and boy dens or remain an all-boy pack. Cub Scout dens will be single-gender — all boys or all girls. Using the same curriculum as the Boy Scouts program, the organization will also deliver a program for older girls, which will be announced in 2018 and projected to be available in 2019, that will enable them to earn the Eagle Scout rank. This unique approach allows the organization to maintain the integrity of the single gender model while also meeting the needs of today's families.
I'll admit it, I was a little surprised by the announcement. As a longtime member of the BSA and an Eagle Scout, I find this extremely interesting. I know some who are dead set against it, and others who are totally for it. My personal opinion is that it will be a good thing, both for the BSA and for the young men and women who become part of the organization.
The biggest loser in all of this will probably be the Girl Scouts. I can see their membership numbers dwindling rapidly if/when this takes off.
As a side note, Scouting has been co-ed in many countries for decades.
Both the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts have seen decreasing membership in recent years, and both have been trying to find ways to increase their membership. In this context, they now seem to be butting heads:
The Boy Scouts will soon include girls, and not everyone's happy about it.
The 107-year-old organization announced Wednesday that younger girls will be allowed to join Cub Scouts and that older girls will be eligible to earn the prestigious rank of Eagle Scout.
[...] For months, Girl Scouts USA had a notion BSA would try to start recruiting girls. In August, Buzzfeed News obtained a strongly worded letter in which GSUSA President Kathy Hopinkah Hannan accused the BSA of courting girls to boost falling enrollment numbers.
From the letter:
We are confused as to why, rather than working to appeal to the 90 percent of boys who are not involved in BSA programs, you would choose to target girls.
What are your thoughts? Were you ever a boy scout, or a girl scout, or did they ever affect you in any way? And do you think the BSA should be praised for opening their doors to girls or should they be castigated for 'targeting' girls who would be better off staying with their own kind?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday October 13 2017, @01:23AM (13 children)
But will the BSA find themselves forced into the same behavior when they have Girls in their organization? Hopefully not.
Personally, I was never a member of either, but I did subscribe to the BSA magazine for several years when I was of that age. I liked the subject matter but I never found much to like about the organization itself.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday October 13 2017, @01:48AM
Of course they will. The lawyers and feminists are the same evil force that made the Girl Scouts useless. And the segregated packs will last until the first girl wants to be in the boys' club. If they kept the segregation all the way up I'd have to problem with this idea, in theory, but in $current_year and the already existing poz infecting the BSA this is just confirmation: If you didn't put your boys in one of the alternate scouting orgs years ago you have no business objecting to any of this now.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 13 2017, @02:15AM (11 children)
Additionally - you can find instances of mismanagement in both the BSA and GSA. But, that mismanagement is worse in the GSA. They have sold off a lot of real estate, so that they can spend money on frivolities. The BSA is far more reluctant to lose any of their real estate.
And, really, that seems odd to me. In my experience, as individuals, women are more attached to their land than men are, because they make a more personal and emotion connection to the land.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @09:23AM (10 children)
Right.
From the real world, men and women are almost the same and have the same emotions about things. Attachment, sex, whatever. The only difference is men are actually more emotional while women tend to *express* emotions better for their own benefits.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 13 2017, @10:21AM (2 children)
You really need to talk to a shrink or even a sociologist. You're astoundingly incorrect.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 13 2017, @01:02PM (1 child)
So are you just that stupid or are you trying to troll?
It is astounding that people first steer men as "tough" and women as some "magic fragile flowers", then they try to reinforce this through a positive feedback loop while the opposite is true. Both sexes are very much the same. Maybe you should actually *talk* to both women and men instead of accepting societal stereotypes? By nurture, rather than nature, women are simply allowed to express their emotions in our somewhat patriarchal society while men are forbidden to do so. What you end up is a society of broken men.
But you get what you get. People trying to troll, or simply being ignorant (and by acting on their ignorant beliefs, being stupid) -- sad! Then keep your backwards beliefs that men belong in manly jobs, and women belong in the kitchen raising kids...
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 13 2017, @02:25PM
Sweety, you can deny science all you like but it's still going to exist. Men and women are both physically and mentally different. Always have been. Always will be.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 13 2017, @01:38PM (6 children)
Lemme think a second here. Men, especially young men, have raging hormones that stay pretty much the same all the time. Women have a hormone cycle that sends them constantly up and down and up again. Then, they've got this 9 month thing where hormones do especially crazy things to them. And, finally, that end-of-fertility thing, which does some VERY crazy things to some of them, and mildly crazy things to others. And, you're asking us to believe that men are more emotional than women? All of that emotional stuff you see from women are just "expressions"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday October 13 2017, @03:08PM (5 children)
It used to be that we didn't have any ubiquitous counterexamples to this unscientific claim about men and women's emotions. But hey, they said if I voted for Hillary I would end up with an emotionally unstable insider with a private email server. Well, I voted for Hillary, and look what happened.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 13 2017, @03:13PM (4 children)
"unscientific"? What rock are you hiding under. Anyone who's actually studied the brain can look at male and female brain activity scans real-time and easily tell which is which.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday October 13 2017, @04:33PM (3 children)
Sorry, I was responding to the overwhelming use of anecdotal common-sense style argument. You're right, men's and women's brains look different under fMRI. But the "unscientific claim" had nothing to do with brain scans. It had to do with the difference between an estrogen/progesterone cycle and a relatively constant level of testosterone.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 13 2017, @04:49PM (2 children)
Ahh, roger. This would probably best be studied in trans folks, pre- and post-hormone supplementing. I don't know of any good research on the subject though and I doubt we'll see any soon because it would be politically incorrect regardless of the results. PC currently dictates that you not acknowledge any proven mental differences between women and men, while still claiming trans folks are born mentally different enough to warrant major surgery.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by j-beda on Friday October 13 2017, @09:37PM (1 child)
I don't know, most of the gender differences I have seen (ie the differences between the average male and the average female) are comperable or smaller than the agerage differences between members of either population. Men are "on average" taller than women, but the difference in hight of any two randomly selected women (or men) is similar, or larger, than that.
The two population overlap so much, that while the differences are potentially useful when thinking about the entire groups, they are almost useless when dealing with individuals. If you divide a population into two groups, "A" and "B" and make comparisons on some characteristic, call is "foo-ness", and find that, on average, group "A" scores 20% higher than group "B", that doesn't mean much if the spread in each group is such that there is a lot of overlap. Pick a person at random from "A" and from "B" and compare them - how much do they differ? Pick two people from "A" - how much do they differ? Two people from "B"? For the most part, if we do "A" and "B" by gender, these differences between groups are not hugely different from the differences within groups. Making policy or societal decisions based on these types of differences make for very poor fit to a large number of individuals, since many of the group "A" are more like group "B" people than they are like other group "A" people, and visa versa, on whatever "foo-ness" measure you might want to make.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday October 13 2017, @11:15PM
Sure, people do not all individually fit generalizations. That doesn't make the generalization invalid for use, so long as you keep in mind that it's a generalization, though. The mental, emotional, and most physical generalizations of men and women, however, are extremely accurate and that should be kept in mind. Ignore science at your own peril.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.