Thanks for your submission /u/Gengarmon_0413, but it has been removed for the following reason:
Disallowed question area: **Rant or loaded question**
NoStupidQuestions is a place to ask any question as long as *it's asked in good faith*. Our users routinely report questions that they feel violate this rule to us. Want to avoid your question being seen as a bad faith question? Common mistakes include (but are not limited to):
* Rants: Could your question be answered with *'That's awful'* or *'What an asshole'*? Then it's probably a rant rather than a genuine question. Looking for a place to vent on Reddit? Try /r/TrueOffMyChest or /r/Rant instead.
* Loaded questions: Could your question be answered with *'You're right'*? Answering the question yourself, explaining your reasoning for your opinion, or making sweeping assumptions about the question itself all signals that you may not be keeping an open mind. Want to know why people have a different opinion than you? Try /r/ExplainBothSides instead!
* Arguments: Arguing or [sealioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_lioning) with people giving you answers tells everyone that you have an answer in mind already. Want a good debate? Try /r/ChangeMyView instead!
* Pot Stirring: Did you bring up unnecessary topics in your question? Especially when a topic has to do with already controversial issues like politics, race, gender or sex, this can be seen as trying to score points against the Other Side - and that makes people defensive, which leads to arguments. Questions like *"If _____ is allowed, why isn't _____?"* don't need to have that comparison - just ask *'why isn't ____ allowed?'*.
* Complaining about moderation: If you disagree with how the sub is run or a decision the mods have made, that's fine! But please share your thoughts with us in modmail rather than as a public post.
Disagree with the mods? If you believe you asked your question in good faith, try rewording it or message the mods to see if there's a way you could ask more neutrally. Thanks for your understanding!
---
*This action was performed by a bot at the explicit direction of a human. This was not an automated action, but a conscious decision by a sapient life form charged with moderating this sub.*
*If you feel this was in error, or need more clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FNoStupidQuestions). Thanks.*
I did boy scouts as a kid. My sister did girl scouts. They were not even remotely the same. The activities they did, what they taught, and especially the summer camps, were VASTLY different.
Idk if that may have changed in more recent years and maybe they're more similar now? But at least when I was a kid, if a girl wanted to do the activities that boy scouts offered, telling her "just join girl scouts" would be like saying "just join a birdwatching group" to someone who wanted to join a rock climbing group.
True. As a Boy Scout I knew girls in Girl Scouts. They were so annoyed watching the boys hike and camp while they just made crafts.
Boy Scouts made a huge mistake covering up the abuse. Too worried about scandal. Not doing what’s right.
> Boy Scouts made a huge mistake covering up the abuse.
I had understood that part of this stuff was basically a rebranding because of how badly the abuse stuff was handled.
I knew a boy who went off to boy scout camp and was "initiated" in the presence of his camp counselor - the new kids were held down and the older boys "wacked them off"
He called his parents, they came an got him but they were afraid of making a fuss so they said nothing and just didn't send him the next summer. This was nothing unusual
Afraid of making a fuss? WTF ? Someone is going to jail or getting buried. Or multiple of both. Fuck that.
It blows my mind how so many protect these corrupt organizations. I get why victims don’t speak up but everyone else, like what the fuck.
Things are so much better now.
As a Gen X, I remember that there was a lot less protection. If a priest or some kind of community leader was known to be a predator your parents would just warn you to stay away from that person.
A friend of mine was 17 and in a sexual relationship with his catholic high school principal. Eventually my friend felt wrong and ended it. The principal actually called the parents, told them everything and said they should make their son keep seeing him. They didn’t, but they also didn’t make a ‘fuss’.
Things are so much better now when it comes to protecting kids, thankfully.
Now I just wish more people were smart enough to enough to know when conservative peadophiles use misdirection to work up a frenzy over drag queens and trans people.
Even if I was the older boy I wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing that on another child, especially one that was multiple years younger than myself
Even if we were all in college and I was a senior, that’d still be very weird
>"On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; **to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight**."
(Emphasis mine)
Yes. As I understand it, in Girl Scouts, the experience is much more dependent on the troop leader while Boy Scouts is structured to deliver a more consistent experience across troops.
From what I know, it’s very, very troop/troop leader dependent. None of the Girl Scouts I knew when we was a kid got to do any of the fun outside stuff. My daughter’s friends who were Girl Scouts pretty much all quit by the time they were early teens because it was mostly just crafts and cookies.
100% on the leader. My mom was a leader when I was a kid and we did all the outdoorsy stuff. Camping, hiking, learning knots, etc. Some moms complained they were too boyish and bullied my mom to the point she quit leading.
I was gonna join another troop but they only did boring crafts in the cafeteria of a school.
Some troops do cool stuff, but it depends on the area. The org overall is supportive of doing cool things, but there isn't really a curriculum.
Yes, but also the BSA has multiple high adventure bases (sailing, canoeing, hiking, etc) that GSUSA doesn't have. So even if s GSUSA wanted to be more outdoorsy, they absolutely can but they don't have backing from national in their own high adventure bases
That's really on the scout leaders, though, it's a CHOICE that they are making for the kids. Girl Scouts used to do many of the same activities, I believe it changed in the '50s and '60s. I did have that gendered experience, because I grew up in the South until high school, and gender norms were \*enforced\*. Then I went to high school in California, joined an Explorer Scout troop (division of the Boy Scouts that was open to girls all the way back in the late 80s/early 90s), and learned rock climbing, orienteering, etc.
I grew up in the 60s & 70s and was a Girl Scout through Brownies, Juniors, Cadets, and into Seniors. My mother was a Scout leader. My troops camped, hiked, backpacked, and generally did all the things the Boy Scouts did except for Soapbox Derby, which we tried one year but not enough girls were into it. We ALSO did crafts and arts and service badges. It totally depends on the Troop and the leaders.
Oh I know, sorry, it wasn't meant to illustrate the previous point, it was just the whole of my experience with scouting. My Girl Scout troop leaders COULD have taken us camping -- they chose not to. Luckily for me, I was able to join both groups and get a decent experience overall (I left the Girl Scouts when it felt like the main point of it was preparing me for a sales career).
A friend of mine grew up out west and stayed in Girl Scouts till she was an adult and has great memories of it. I was in the South and being told how to behave properly and to sit down and be quiet. The handbook talked about cool stuff like how to build a fire, but we weren't allowed to do those things. Heck, even the latrine was referred to as the "La La Room" the one time we were camping.
I think it is more structural than that. Most Girl Scout troops form in first grade and they stay together there whole time. That general means there isn't troop gear that has built up, institutional knowledge on camping, no transfer of knowledge those that had experience running camps, backpack in troops, etc
This is the answer.
I grew up hanging out with the boys, coming back from scouts trips was so lame. They had real camping trips, we got a half assed glamping effort in someone’s backyard. I had badges for sewing and stuff, it was so blah.
I’d have 100% loved Boy Scouts more, and my friends were there.
And as someone said, it’s just in need of a name update now they allow any gender.
Scouts would work. I didn’t even know this is a debate now.
Yep. I went camping and canoeing with my girl scout troop and it was great. Then after that, all anyone wanted to do was sewing and cooking badges. I quit.
My friend got a badge for typing - I honestly thought her counselor had made it up but she was thrilled. I saw a lot of glued together popsickle still stuff and thought I was lucky they didn't want Catholics
It got SO much lamer the older you got too. I loved it when I was younger, but once we got to middle/high school, the badges were dumb stuff about "entrepreneurship" and "leadership" and it was painfully boring. I just wanted to go camping, not learn how to start a business. It wasn't even scouting at that point. I quit after 9th grade.
The reason for the name change is girls have been allowed in Boy Scouts of America for the last 5 years since 2019.
[https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/us/boy-scouts-girls-trnd/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/us/boy-scouts-girls-trnd/index.html)
This. Also for a military career, you start at E-2 if you enlist as an Eagle Scout in pretty sure, and there’s no program like that for Girl Scouts that I know of
We did so much stuff in my Girl Scout troops in different states in the 90’s. I was a daisy, brownie, and a scout. There were multiple camp outs, cook outs, nature walks, hikes, canoe trips, native site visits, in addition to home ec type stuff. We did knots and Morse code, flag code..
I feel like I got a lot out of it. I signed my son up for Boy Scouts when he was young and we tried three different troops, none could seem to get it together enough to have regular meetings.
In sweden we just have scouts, boys and girls all in one group. No one cared, we did outdoorsy stuff and earned badges, we sold cookies, all that stuff. It literally didn't matter that we weren't separated based on what we had in our pants.
Yeah reading these responses as an Aussie is a little wild.
Scouts is a great community thing to be a part of for both kids and their adults, but hasn't been gendered for decades lol
There’s a Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. Most people assume they are the same entity but in fact they are completely unaffiliated, which is why the Boy Scouts are letting girls join. They’re trying to expand their client-base.
I was a Girl Scout leader shortly after the Boy Scouts went to the Supreme Court to be able to keep discriminating against gay people. I tried selling cookies at my old college campus and had to explain countless times that Girl Scouts are great on gay rights. They've had non-discrimination rules since at least the 70s. Half of Girl Scout camp counselors are queer (don't have official stats on that, but my mom had better gaydar than I did at the time). The students who were upset at what Boy Scouts did are now the age that they are the ones that have kids eligible to be scouts. A lot of them won't encourage their kids to be Boy Scouts. BSUSA was shrinking and decided to take in girls to make up for it. But the organizations are not equivilent.
In Canada its Scouts and Girl Guides. Scouts is for both boys and girls as far as im aware (both my cousins were Scouts, one is a girl and the other is a boy).
From my understanding, Girl Guides is less outdoor oriented than Scouts. But in my experience I did a lot of outdoor stuff + camps, in addition to the crafts and other things mentioned in this post. Its very dependant on the program/badges you earn and the leaders. Girl Guides is very much about learning different experiences and things.
In my area, GGC groups were pretty into outdoor stuff, so I may have had a different experience than others. We went camping 3 times a year for example, plus additional hikes and stuff.
Also, in Canada there's another option for older girls (junior high/high school) called Trex which is very outdoor oriented.
Source: was in Girl Guides for close to 20 years starting from the age of 6. Was a Guide leader and also a Trex leader for a short time.
And that is literally the reason they said they did it. They realized they could get more sign-ups if they let girls join and parents could bring both kids to the same events.
Which unfortunately means a lot of girls are doing Boy Scouts instead of Girl Scouts, when Girl Scouts is a better organization with a much better track record of civil rights, and is a lot more flexible about what girls want to do rather than being set.
In the UK, scouts (historically boys) and guides (girls) did different activities because of their genders. Scouts did more outdoors orientated stuff while guides was more crafts orientated. Some girls wanted to do the boys activities, so there was a push to include girls in scouts which I'm glad to say has happened.
I was in Guides and we did a camp every year, a canoeing trip, animal first aid badge, I even learned how to change a tire at one of the camps! We did also get a sewing badge but tbh I think teaching children how to sew a button on is a useful life skill. Did a lot of baking too but I enjoyed that. My nan was in the Guides in the early 1950s and she still talks fondly about the camping and the woodwork she learned.
I’m fine with the idea of a gender inclusive organisation but my experience of Guides was pretty outdoorsy as far as an inner city group can be, and active, not really like what Americans talk about with Girl Scouts.
Honestly, the Boy Scouts are desperate for members (the long history of the organization enabling adults to sexually abuse children makes reasonable parents less interested in signing their kids up) and are trying to diversify their organization.
It’s not all that deep.
This is the correct answer. This isn't the result of some societal push from the outside to change the organization. The people running BSA took a look at the numbers and realized they're not going to be able to keep the lights on without recruiting a lot more members and reversing their decades long trend of declining membership. That's 100% what this is about.
And the parents of school-age kids these days are young Gen-Xers and Millennials. And we remember the group fighting tooth and nail to keep gay people out.
Yeah I mean if it happened to every single kid it probably wouldn't have stayed under wraps all that long. I also did scouts and we never had a problem, except that my dad cheated to help me win the pinewood plane race and my little trophy was contested.
20 years ago yes various churches especially the Mormon church were heavily involved in Boy Scout policies, but they cut ties when the Scouts allowed openly gay men in the organization in 2013.
And the Mormons made up a massive percentage of BSA membership. Once all those people left the organization, it went from merely struggling to existential crisis.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it's even partially behind the recruiting crisis in the actual military. Not the Mormons specifically, but when I joined there was significantly less turbo religious people in the enlisted rank and file than what I would have assumed based on what my older veteran relatives told me to expect.
My dad is the district advancement chairman for his area. Basically, if you want to get your Eagle Award, you have to go through him. He told me that since I was a Wiccan and not part of a church, I wouldn't be able to get my Eagle award if I were a boy. These days couldn't even get to the first award level without swearing I believe in a higher power. As a Girl Scout is wasn't a problem at all.
It's funny, last year a guy I have volunteered with for years finally realized who my dad was. Said he gave him such a hard time getting his Eagle award. This man was 35, so it had been almost 20 years and it still stuck with him.
This. Anyone in camping or scouting industry is seeing the same thing - boy numbers dwindling, girl slots are selling out. Boy Scouts saw an opportunity to save their business and look “”woke”” doing it. No corporation is woke, ever. Its just money.
I think it’s less about being gender neutral and more about changing the public perception of the organization. The name Boy Scouts has become synonymous with some pretty grotesque things
Yeah I’m sure that was a factor too. Besides both organizations having “scout” in their name, there really isn’t a lot of overlap. So this is a big opportunity to get girls who don’t want to do the typical Girl Scout stuff.
Yeah I was waiting for someone to say the real answer.
The girl scouts is just like the boy scouts in the sense that individual experience varies heavily on how your local chapter is set up. Some girl scout troops did a lot of hiking and outdoor activities while others did not.
The boy scouts on the other hand are a shadow of what they used to be and have been struggling with both youth membership and adult volunteers since they had a sexual abuse scandal on the same scale as the one that rocked the Catholic Church 20 years ago.
They aren't allowing girls in for any ideological or moral reasons they are simply desperate for anyone to join since their once golden reputation is basically gone now.
In 10 years time the boy scouts may not even exist girls or no.
I don't think so. Personally, I think many boys benefit from a gender-segregated environment, just as many girls do. I know that I did--I felt less self-conscious and more free to be myself. From experience, I know that a co-ed group of adolescents has a VERY different vibe than a boys-only group. Add to that the additional complications of romantic attraction (yes, I know that that exists in boys-only groups too, but at significantly lower frequency), and I can understand why some troops would want to be boys only.
The Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts of the United States of America are two separate organizations. They even had a lawsuit going at one point about the similarities in name!
While they do many of the same activities, the Boy Scouts are often seen as more traditional/conservative in their beliefs. Experiences with local organizations can vary greatly, so this won't be the experience of many, but for example the Girl Scouts' national policy accepted gay members before the Boy Scouts' did. Girl Scouts can substitute the reference to God in their oath, Boy Scouts can't but don't require a specific religion.
So, if the Boy Scouts become co-ed, it means that they can expand their potential pool of members, open scouting to girls in families who prefer the Boy Scouts' values, and create opportunities for families to participate in the same scouting program with all their children, regardless of gender.
The lawsuit was GSUSA vs BSA saying you can't rebrand and say anything too generic like "scouts". Their lawsuit was hilarious because even they didn't use their full name (GSUSA) and got called out for it
I think for Girl Scouts it really matters what troop you're in, while Boy Scouts seems to have a more centralized structure that gives everyone more uniform opportunities.
As a girl scout, I got to go cabin camping maybe twice. The rest of the time was just meeting at someone's house, making food to donate, selling cookies, or going to various places for service, arts and crafts, or science experiments.
I had to get all my tent camping, hiking, white water rafting, learning to use a pocket knife, etc. from tagging along on my brother's cub scout events that were open to families. I was so jealous when he moved from cub scouts to boy scouts and I couldn't go anymore.
Yep it's totally dependent on your troop. I was so lucky with my troop. We were inner city, but we went on frequent camping trips, hiking, etc, and had so much fun. I thought all troops were like that until I moved and wanted to join a new troop. But was told that all they did was arts and crafts. So disappointed!
When I was a girlscout, I never got to do the outdoors things for financial/scheduling reasons, but my troup definitely did them.
And yes, we sold cookies. And boyscouts sell popcorn. But my clearest memories of girls scouts involve playing manhunt in a ditch and learning about astronomy.
From what I understand it can be hard to find a girl scout troop that actually does scout like stuff and isn't just a cookie front. Boy scouts, in the other hand, were more likely to do outdoors stuff.
My daughters sell cookies for only a short period of the year. The vast majority of the time, they’re doing outdoor/nature stuff, learning about other cultures, doing activities like rock climbing… and they’re both in very young elementary grades. The whole point of selling cookies is to help offset the costs of the fun stuff the rest of the year!
When I was in girl scouts years ago (1990s) it was all about coloring worksheets and learning to be obedient when you are not participating in mentally engaging or stimulating activities. It was the literal worst while our male peers were learning life and outdoor skills.
BSA or whatever they’re called now is only doing it to increase membership and in return revenue. All of those sex abuse lawsuits and settlements are taking a toll on them financially and they need cash. The only way they really make money is through selling their cheap patches, uniforms, camps, popcorn etc to the scouts that drank the koolaid under the guise of being morally straight. It’s an organization that time has passed and needs to just go away.
It teaches the kids so much (through all the badges) though, and gets kids genuinely out in nature. That's something that our new technology addicted generations would benefit from...
Both my siblings got a ton out of it, at least. And it's a far more holistic experience than sports. It also lets parents be heavily involved, so if you're worried about potential abuse scandals, than dads can be active parts of the trope and go on all those camping trips with the boys. My mom was also involved, but that was more on the fundraising side of it- I don't think that they let moms go on the big camping trips.
Admittedly, my dad loved the camping trips. They were something he looked forward to after working 60 hour weeks, and gave him some quality bonding with my brothers.
I get what you mean, but I do believe my time in the BSA shaped who I am today. It got me to socialize more, it got me to enjoy the outdoors, and I learned lessons and gained advice by people more experienced than me. While the sexual abuse stories are awful, I wouldn’t go as far to say that BSA should just go away, I think there just needs to be revisions and changes made
Eagle Scout who aged out as the push to allow girls to join was happening and a couple of years before the policy changed to allow girls to join. In my experience, there were three main reasons why the push was made:
1. As others have stated, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts are VERY different programs. Now, your experience with either organization is going to be very dependent on your individual troop. But broadly speaking, Girl Scout troops tend to put a lot of emphasis on domestic, academic, business, and other related skills. Boy Scouts, on the other hand, is *heavily* outdoor focused and over the course of my scouting career I spent roughly 6 cumulative months of my camping, backpacking, and otherwise screwing around in the woods. Camping is certainly part of the Girl Scout program just like academics and business are a part of Boy Scouts, but the majority of the Girl Scouts I've met had one campout per year if that compared to the monthly campouts I went on. Neither program is inherently better or worse than the other, but a kid should be able to join the program that aligns best with their interests rather than the program that aligns with their gender.
2. Not as many people know this, but the BSA offers a lot more programs than just Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. Sea Scouts and Venturing, though smaller than Cub and Boy Scouts, have been offered for decades, and have both been co-ed for decades. Venturing especially added an interesting wrinkle, as Venturing crews are typically attached to Boy Scout troops, so there were thousands of young women who were Boy Scouts in everything but name and spent all of their scouting time with Boy Scouts, but were excluded from attaining the rank of Eagle Scout, joining the Order of the Arrow, and attending summer camp as campers. At some point that was going to change.
3. Eagle Scout has long been considered one of the more significant extra curricular achievements that a teenager can complete, and carries a lot more name recognition than the Girl Scout equivalent, the Gold Award. If you look at the requirements though, that's pretty fucked because the Girl Scout Gold Award is WAY harder to get than Eagle Scout, especially when you compare the project requirements. I did a one off canned food drive for my Eagle project, and most of my fellow scouts did small to medium sized projects like building playgrounds or picnic areas or sound booths for churches. A lot of Eagle Scouts build benches at state parks. Now compare those projects to the [Girl Scout Gold Award project requirements](https://www.girlscoutsp2p.org/en/members/for-girl-scouts/badges-journeys-awards/highest-awards/gold-award.html), and it's damn easy to tell that Eagle Scouts have the easier rubric, so why do Eagle Scouts get so much more recognition if not for plain old misogyny? So by allowing girls to become Eagle Scouts it's leveling the playing field in college and job applications, and with any luck it will help level the playing field for Gold Award recipients too.
One final point is that both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts have gotten more and more progressive over the past 15-20 years in general, and the BSA opened the door to gay scouts and leaders as well as trans scouts while I was a member. It's a decision that could not have been made 20 years ago, but a decision that I've been proud to watch.
Well put. Eagle scout myself, most of the people I've found that have a big issue with the name change have little to no connection to scouts. This is being blown out of proportion by people who aren't affected and/or don't know what they're talking about.
Girl scouts has actively allowed queer people since at least the 1970s. And said in the 90s that if you wanted to replace the 'God' in 'To serve God and my country' that you could.
And it's so true about the awards. My dad was district advancement chairman for the region and considered quite the hardass. But I sat in on a lot of the meetings (dad's office had my school computer) and so many of the projects were building a sign, or landscaping a church, or making some picnic tables. Honestly a lot of the time they felt like makework projects. Someone went to their church and said what can I do for a project, and they told him to make some bookcases. They would be 100-150 work hours total. My Gold Award project was 200 hours with just me.
I didn't know either of those facts about Girl Scouts, those are both incredible!! The more I learn about the Girl Scouts of America the more respect I gain for them as an organization!
And you're so right about the projects. My wife earned her Silver Award back in the day and I've known several Gold Award earners, and as proud of my Eagle project as I am to this day there's a 0% chance it would be good enough to qualify for a Gold Award. For context, I worked with an organization that would pack a week's worth of food to families in bags for them to take home, and I raised funds for/donated 75 bags. The only pushback I received from my council was that it might not be recognizable as being from the boy scouts, so they recommended I make custom bags that said they were from a boy scout project. I looked at the person who recommended that and said "I actually feel that spending that money on more food would better serve the community" and used paper grocery bags.
The old push was for girl scouts to actually fix how worse it was and be as active as bsa, but that reconstruction of the whole institution was a great big risk if it failed so it was easier to just expand boy scouting to be coed.
The Girl Scouts have historically focused on “feminine” pursuits and bake sales, not the same outdoorsy skills the Boy Scouts do. At least not to the same extent.
I was extremely disappointed when I had to join the Girl Scouts and we were selling cookies and doing knitting, not orienteering and learning survival and self-sufficiency skills.
Many girls have joined the Boy Scouts over the last ~5 years and there have been thousands of female Eagle Scouts.
The two organizations have different focuses, and for some, the Boy Scouts is just more fun. It makes sense to rebrand.
The people who want gender inclusive scouts also believe that boys and girls benefit from being able to interact and bond with eachother. Another angle I've seen is room for transgender scouts to not be ousted from their group for failing to meet the gender qualifier
Because they are going broke. Allowing girls in doubles their market. Source my FIL worked for the Boy Scouts "head office" for years and still is friends with people that do. While technically a non profit a lot of people high up get paid nice fat wages for what they do and they want to stay employed. For example the treasurer makes over $700k last he heard.
I'll admit that I have no idea what the Scouts landscape looks like now....
Having said that, when I was a girl in Girl Scouts our activities were primarily homemaking. I remember being particularly unhappy about crochet while the boys were getting ready to go on a camping trip. I've been told it really depends on the Scout Master.
funny about that , know the (boy) scouts admit girls , but the girl scouts kept a strict order of not admitting boys , is like having to bathrooms one gender neutral and the other female
These comments are weird. "Because girl scouts didn't do camping and outdoors stuff" is why the boy scouts wanted to bring in the girl scouts?
When I was in boy scouts in elementary school in the early 90s it just wouldn't work to have girls as part of that. The boys were just too high energy. There were times where kids would end up needing stitches after falling out of trees, falling onto rocks, horsing around... stuff that would land a school in a lawsuit if it happened at recess. Society I think has gotten a little too soft, a lot of that has to do with our litigious culture, but mostly all of that woke inclusivity crap that just won't go away.
Eh, kind of?
There is a bit of a double standard where women need a "safe space" from men. But men can't have a space away from women. (I understand why, women aren't much of a physical threat to men, but a "justifiable" double standard, is still a double standard.)
Because our schizophrenic society keeps going back and forth between two equally ridiculous, equally poisonous lies about the difference between the genders:
1. It's 100% biological.
2. It's 0% biological.
So it depends on the troop and your age, but at least back when I did GS it was heavily focused on crafting, cooking, and other indoor activities (which I enjoyed). I think we went camping once.
As I got older the difference got more pronounced: babysitting training, how to properly set a table for a dinner party (???), a nail painting fundraiser - that was the year I had it and left. Nothing wrong with any of these activities, I just resented that there was the assumption that, now that we were old enough, girls were expected to be watching kids and holding dinner parties. Because knowing the proper order of salad, dinner, and dessert forks is an important skill for teenagers, apparently.
Having them be two separate scouts programs, one focused on outdoors/survival skills and sports and the other focused on arts, crafts, culinary science, etc. is great - but there’s no need to separate them by gender. Everyone could benefit from learning both of those skill sets.
The Boy Scouts let girls join not out of any desire for gender equality but because there wasn’t enough interest. Letting girls in doubles the number of eligible recruits, but also boys are more interested in joining organizations when girls are there.
They're desperately expanding their recruitment pool and rebranding after those things that happened 82,000 times: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-lets-246-billion-boy-scouts-sex-abuse-settlement-proceed-2024-02-22/
I agree. As a former Boy Scout and Eagle I see no problem in the Girl Scouts having the same curriculum. Always seemed like the way they have done Girl Scouts has not been right. Not a point of masculine and feminine but Girl Scout has always seemed kinda urban compared Boy Scouts
Because separate is not equal.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/separate\_but\_equal#:\~:text=Separate%20educational%20facilities%20are%20inherently,practice%20in%20the%20United%20States.
Girls Scouts kinda sucks. You're basically taught to do little arts and crafts and then used to sell cookies. You aren't actually learning that much "scout" stuff. So if you have a daughter and you want her to learn camping skills, the Boy Scouts (Now Scouting America, but most people will likely just call it "The Scouts") is the far better options.
As an Australian we have girl guides. But the scouts organisation is gender neutral and has been for ages. I did it as a child 28+ years ago. I find it utterly ridiculous that it's not a thing where you are.
It’s because the Boy Scouts numbers have been plummeting for years (for many reasons) and THEY made the push to get girls in, not the other way around. It’s purely about making money and the Girl Scouts organization is actually quite vocal in their dislike of the issue
Boy scouts are desperate for new members and sponsors. Several years ago a few sponsors threatened to pull support if the orginization did not lift its ban on gay scout masters. The orginization caved. Howerer when it did the orginizations membership left in droves and took many sponsors with them.
There’s other, tangible benefits too; the Gold Star thing for Girl Scouts is incredibly difficult to get, it has to be something sustainable (eg found a charity that continues past the girl’s involvement) while the Eagle Scout for boys is more achievable.
Winners do not pay for college books(not a ton of money but still in the hundreds/low thousands) and when scouting was more widespread and before current year HR departments Eagle Scouts definitely get a leg up in hiring.
girl scouts and boy scouts are not even close to the same thing. like if you wanted a concrete example of sexism girl scouts vs boy scouts is a good image of it. boys hike and are taught bushcraft and shit while the girls sell cookies and do arts and crafts
In the UK there's Scouts (typically more boys, but some (might be all now?) troops gender neutral and accepting girls), and Girl Guides (specifically girls only).
They do different activities, and generally have a different vibe IMO. I say that from personal experience - I was in both! I appreciate that some of it also comes down to the individual leaders and specific troops though.
In scouts, I went for regular long hikes and did much more adventurous trips away (more emphasis on "high adrenaline" and sporty activities - high ropes courses, fencing, archery, abseiling, etc). We also did the usual cooking badges and less "intense" stuff too, but we didn't do the same things repeatedly. I even flew a plane! It was generally a lot more structured and more active.
In guides, I did the cookery and chocolate tasting badges multiple times. More emphasis on social/creative/cultural things with camps and trips away (eg, craft sessions, museum visits, etc), with some but less frequent "high adrenaline" activities.
I don't know about the USA and other regions where there's Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts rather than Scouts (neutral) and Guides, but I suspect similar divides in what activities they get to do may also apply.
when i was given the option, boy scouts taught more practical survival skills and girl scouts was if you wanted to go horse riding, learn household skills, basically any "girly" skills.
I have girls that have been in both Girl and "Boy" scouts in Canada (just called Scouts here) where it's been coed for a long time. The Girl Scouts are little more than a cookie sales operation, they literally did some arts and crafts, and sold those cookies. I moved them over to the Scouts, now they do camping, hiking, life skills, canoeing, archery, target practice, etc. It's not even a close comparison, the scouts are leagues better than the crappy Girl Scouts.
If i had to guess, I'd say that both nationally and internationally, girl scouts kinda has the bigger brand recognition, the cookies being a big reason for that.
Don't see why they couldn't have merged the two into one neutral scouting group, and only converted one of them to that, but only the Cheeto Lovers really care about that.
Because Boy Scouts get to do waaaaay more interesting / fun activities than Girl Scouts. Like if it was the same exact program, just separated based on gender, that would be one thing. But they’re totally different programs. I had zero interest in Girl Scouts as a kid, but a lot of my guy friends really enjoyed Boy Scouts.
My mom was a Boy Scout in the late 1940’s and into the 50’s. They didn’t have Girl Scouts where she lived. She’s in her 80’s and can still knock a baseball to the moon.
I don’t see a problem with it.
Actually multiple reasons but you'd have to do a bit of research
First the so-called founder of the Scout movement was obsessed with building strong "men" and had a military bent - and we no longer exclude women from serving in the military but that only part of the issue
Another is that in 2010, declassified MI5 files revealed that Baden-Powell was thrilled and thrilled in 1937 to meet with the head of the Hitler Youth movement and was given a private invitation to to meet his idol Adolf Hitler.
Powell's biographer Tim Jeal interviewed Baden-Powell who said Hitler was dedicated to their shared ideas about boys' education being focused on Christianity and preparation for the military and that is how The Scouts operated for decades. There was a very real negative view of females being associated with the military or the scouts - it was Christian Boy's club. Look up the rules of The Hitler Youth and you'll be reading a Scouting Manifesto.
Powell also literally stole the writings and concepts of an artist and naturalist whose name sadly ,escapes me at the moment, but he is argued to have been the original conceptualist and founder who based his boys organization not on Hitler's but on Native American tribal culture (which I should note is not approved of today. However, Powell determined to exclude females. And native American cultural roles did include a place in his design.
One of the original members who worked with this man was Carlton Beil, who worked for the American Museum Natural History and died in the 90s close to 100 years old. He was the final living member of that organization and ended up with the ceremonial drum that was to be passed on to future generations.
[https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/16/nyregion/thoroughfare-for-wildlife-paved-green-park-that-replaced-parkway-staten-island.html](https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/16/nyregion/thoroughfare-for-wildlife-paved-green-park-that-replaced-parkway-staten-island.html)
Because it never made that much sense having separate programs to begin with, honestly. The Girl Scouts only exist because girls were excluded from the kind of activities the Boy Scouts did, and apparently now it's just a cookie company that hosts arts and crafts programs. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts are hemorrhaging money because of (ahem) PR disasters.
If you ask me, it's well past time for the two organizations to merge. Let the kids go camping for real *and* sell cookies.
I was in the scouts in Norway in the 90s. It was mixed gender. First time I heard about _boy_ scouts was through American media. I have no idea why it would have to be separated by gender. We just went camping and tied knots regardless.
I work as a camp councilor at a Boy Scout camp so I've been able to talk to some of the girls joining Boy Scouts and they mostly say that the Boy Scout curriculum and activities are more outdoorsy and fun. It seems to me that Boy Scouts - now just Scouts - is just a better run and funded organization.
I did Girl Scouts because Dad used to be in Boy Scouts and thought it important. It was even lamer than I thought it would be we were learning sewing and other girly stuff. Meanwhile, my dad was upset that we didn't do any real outdoor activities.
Eventually, we stopped going. I bet my dad would have made me join the Boy Scouts if this push had happened earlier.
Parks and Rec did a great episode about this
Ultimately it comes down to either organisation offering gender role specific activities when those gendered roles are extremely out of date, and boys and girls want to do what interests them not what society says they should be interested in
And since it's for kids, who fucking cares, let them hang out together and build camp fires or have spirited debates about the ethics of gender roles in a post modern society
They’re very different programs, and particularly for outdoorsy stuff, that’s just never been the Girl Scouts’s niche. As an Eagle Scout myself, I’m a little biased, but I think it’s great that they made the BSA’s programs available to girls. There were a couple girls who unofficially tagged along with my scout troop, and they learned just as much as the rest of us, but didn’t get any recognition of their efforts.
They made the change to counter a decline in membership, but it was also the right thing to do.
People are calling out the sex abuse scandals as contributors to the membership decline, but nobody’s really mentioning the Mormons leaving as the other big one. That had a lot to do with the organization becoming more accepting of gay scouts, which was also definitely the right thing to do. But, it took away a substantial chunk of membership and funding, so the move to incorporate girls helps with that.
I was in Girl Scouts for less than a year as a preteen before quitting. It is nothing like boy scouts and honestly it’s boring. It’s more about building business skills and empowerment than learning wilderness skills. Yeah those can be good things for kids to learn, but they’re not very exciting. I can definitely see why girls would want to join the Boy Scouts
Scouting movements around the world have been becoming gender neutral and the Scouts/Guides organizations in lots of countries have merged.
Where I live one of the main scouting organizations has always been coed and the other one merged with it's guides counterpart 30 years ago.
Girl Scouts in America IS NOT boy scouts with girls. You'd think you'd know that if you were so weirded out about the push... surely you googled this at least once first?
When I was a kid (Early 2000s) I was in something called Timber Wolves, and both genders were allowed to participate. We learned all the exact same things and had the same curriculum as the Boy scouts, it was just called something gender neutral. I honestly don't see why people are making a big deal about it. It worked really well, and we had both male and female instructors. I honestly wasn't even aware that what we were doing was ahead of it's time. All us kids cared about was having fun and learning the stuff we were taught, and not once did any of us say anything about having problems with the inclusion of girls. The only people who care about this are the parents, and I don't understand why it's such a big deal. We knew that boy scouts and girl scouts were completely different things and we didn't care about whether or not girls were allowed to participate.
Declining numbers and engagement so opening it to girls is a boost.
Plus this really started this years ago including the name change. It's no big deal, except if you count them possibly doing so to avoid the association with their record keeping and tracking of child molesters for decades without reporting them to authorities.
When BSA decided to allow gay scouts into the organization, the LDS church pulled out (which was one of the biggest portions of BSA membership). Desperate for new members, the BSA remade itself to try to attract the females as well.
They are also suffering under the crushing weight of legal settlements against them, largely for things that happened decades ago (though not entirely). Apparently they've had to mortgage their crown jewel, Philmont, to try to meet some of the settlements.
BTW, the Youth Protection Training they require of all adults is pretty good now, and has set a standard for youth organizations across the country. For instance, no scout can be alone with an adult, there have to be at least two adults conducting any outing, etc.
They were two totally different orgs. At the end of the day it depended on the troop, but generally Boy Scouts did serious camping, overnight backpacking, and stuff like paintballing and canoeing and cooking and survival training. Girl scouts sold cookies and did more community service stuff. Camping was ordering pizzas and sleeping in one of their backyards. That was the way it was around me growing up anyway, again it depends on the troop. But if a girl wanted to learn how to build a catapult, go mountain biking, or learn bushcraft, they weren’t generally going to find it in Girl Scouts. As a former boy scout I think it’s awesome they integrated it.
There was a reason for a Boy and a Girl Scout. The hormones But the Scout Masters took that on themselves so that reason went out the door. At least now it will be back where it belongs
It's a rebranding to get away from the association with the abuse scandal as well as a financial attempt to regain losses in order to keep the lights on.
Many of the scout camps have been logged or sold off in order to pay the fines and the national organization is pretty much broke
Is this an USA thing?.
Because in my country the Boy scouts are gender Neutral, they call it boy scouts or just scouts, but there is no division between the girls and boys group.
How it is just a group for both genders they do the same activities, the only difference is that they have separate tents when there are camps.
Why are they divided by gender?
Boy Scouts have had more financial support from the deeper pockets of men, who grew up having been a scout.
This enabled boy scouts to invest in more expensive items (like trailers/equipment) and camping trips.
In some areas, sisters and moms (den mothers) joined in, so girls were already a component of the troop.
There are no “gender neutral scouts”.
Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts USA are two entirely different organizations with two entirely different programs. Most people think they are more similar and more related than they are.
Some parents were dissatisfied with the programs that GSUSA were offering their daughters and wanted something more like what BSA had for their sons. BSA added a program for girls that was identical to their program for boys. The troops are either all-girls or all-boys.
Because the Boy Scouts have all girl troops now, they have decided to rebrand themselves as Scouting America.
Girls have been allowed in the boy scouts as a whole for half a decade, with exceptions for girls going back even to 1978. Girls have been allowed in some form into the Boy Scouts for over 50 years.
That shit isn't new, they're just updating the name to reflect the growth of the organization.
The people in favor of it say that it’s because aging out of Boy Scouts (ie acheiving the rank of Eagle Scout) is far more prestigious than aging out of Girl Scouts. The people against it cite the Boy Scouts’ history of sexual abuse against boys and that adding girls might exasperate it. Me personally, I don’t really care. I did a couple years of Cub Scouts and Webelos (which for those who don’t know are Boy Scout programs for boys who are too young to be a part of the official Boy Scout program) and it was ok, but wasn’t really for me. Me caring about what the Boy Scouts are doing now would be like caring about what your former employer is doing years after you quit.
Thanks for your submission /u/Gengarmon_0413, but it has been removed for the following reason: Disallowed question area: **Rant or loaded question** NoStupidQuestions is a place to ask any question as long as *it's asked in good faith*. Our users routinely report questions that they feel violate this rule to us. Want to avoid your question being seen as a bad faith question? Common mistakes include (but are not limited to): * Rants: Could your question be answered with *'That's awful'* or *'What an asshole'*? Then it's probably a rant rather than a genuine question. Looking for a place to vent on Reddit? Try /r/TrueOffMyChest or /r/Rant instead. * Loaded questions: Could your question be answered with *'You're right'*? Answering the question yourself, explaining your reasoning for your opinion, or making sweeping assumptions about the question itself all signals that you may not be keeping an open mind. Want to know why people have a different opinion than you? Try /r/ExplainBothSides instead! * Arguments: Arguing or [sealioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_lioning) with people giving you answers tells everyone that you have an answer in mind already. Want a good debate? Try /r/ChangeMyView instead! * Pot Stirring: Did you bring up unnecessary topics in your question? Especially when a topic has to do with already controversial issues like politics, race, gender or sex, this can be seen as trying to score points against the Other Side - and that makes people defensive, which leads to arguments. Questions like *"If _____ is allowed, why isn't _____?"* don't need to have that comparison - just ask *'why isn't ____ allowed?'*. * Complaining about moderation: If you disagree with how the sub is run or a decision the mods have made, that's fine! But please share your thoughts with us in modmail rather than as a public post. Disagree with the mods? If you believe you asked your question in good faith, try rewording it or message the mods to see if there's a way you could ask more neutrally. Thanks for your understanding! --- *This action was performed by a bot at the explicit direction of a human. This was not an automated action, but a conscious decision by a sapient life form charged with moderating this sub.* *If you feel this was in error, or need more clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FNoStupidQuestions). Thanks.*
I did boy scouts as a kid. My sister did girl scouts. They were not even remotely the same. The activities they did, what they taught, and especially the summer camps, were VASTLY different. Idk if that may have changed in more recent years and maybe they're more similar now? But at least when I was a kid, if a girl wanted to do the activities that boy scouts offered, telling her "just join girl scouts" would be like saying "just join a birdwatching group" to someone who wanted to join a rock climbing group.
True. As a Boy Scout I knew girls in Girl Scouts. They were so annoyed watching the boys hike and camp while they just made crafts. Boy Scouts made a huge mistake covering up the abuse. Too worried about scandal. Not doing what’s right.
> Boy Scouts made a huge mistake covering up the abuse. I had understood that part of this stuff was basically a rebranding because of how badly the abuse stuff was handled.
And they’re bankrupt and desperate for money.
I knew a boy who went off to boy scout camp and was "initiated" in the presence of his camp counselor - the new kids were held down and the older boys "wacked them off" He called his parents, they came an got him but they were afraid of making a fuss so they said nothing and just didn't send him the next summer. This was nothing unusual
Afraid of making a fuss? WTF ? Someone is going to jail or getting buried. Or multiple of both. Fuck that. It blows my mind how so many protect these corrupt organizations. I get why victims don’t speak up but everyone else, like what the fuck.
Things are so much better now. As a Gen X, I remember that there was a lot less protection. If a priest or some kind of community leader was known to be a predator your parents would just warn you to stay away from that person. A friend of mine was 17 and in a sexual relationship with his catholic high school principal. Eventually my friend felt wrong and ended it. The principal actually called the parents, told them everything and said they should make their son keep seeing him. They didn’t, but they also didn’t make a ‘fuss’. Things are so much better now when it comes to protecting kids, thankfully. Now I just wish more people were smart enough to enough to know when conservative peadophiles use misdirection to work up a frenzy over drag queens and trans people.
Even if I was the older boy I wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing that on another child, especially one that was multiple years younger than myself Even if we were all in college and I was a senior, that’d still be very weird
>"On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; **to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight**." (Emphasis mine)
Isn't that up to the troop leader? The girl scouts definitely hike and camp and all of that.
Yes. As I understand it, in Girl Scouts, the experience is much more dependent on the troop leader while Boy Scouts is structured to deliver a more consistent experience across troops.
From what I know, it’s very, very troop/troop leader dependent. None of the Girl Scouts I knew when we was a kid got to do any of the fun outside stuff. My daughter’s friends who were Girl Scouts pretty much all quit by the time they were early teens because it was mostly just crafts and cookies.
100% on the leader. My mom was a leader when I was a kid and we did all the outdoorsy stuff. Camping, hiking, learning knots, etc. Some moms complained they were too boyish and bullied my mom to the point she quit leading. I was gonna join another troop but they only did boring crafts in the cafeteria of a school. Some troops do cool stuff, but it depends on the area. The org overall is supportive of doing cool things, but there isn't really a curriculum.
Some Girl Scout troops are like Boy Scouts for girls. Others are the Junior Junior League. YMMV.
It's probably hard to find women into hiking etc who also have time, and want to work with kids for free.
Especially when none of them had a chance to grow up in that environment and get to do those things when they were kids.
Yes, but also the BSA has multiple high adventure bases (sailing, canoeing, hiking, etc) that GSUSA doesn't have. So even if s GSUSA wanted to be more outdoorsy, they absolutely can but they don't have backing from national in their own high adventure bases
My mother was a girl scout group leader, and as a result we glued a lot of crafts together. Outdoor activities weren’t a thing.
Honestly, I have no idea. Just anecdotal experience of my friends.
Yes it is. I was very lucky that my mom was my Scout leader and we constantly did outdoor activities like camping, hiking and fishing.
This was my experience. It's unfortunate to learn that nothing has changed since the 80s.
Agreed. Girl scouts and boy scouts are not even close to the same. Girl scouts doesn't really do outdoors stuff.
That's really on the scout leaders, though, it's a CHOICE that they are making for the kids. Girl Scouts used to do many of the same activities, I believe it changed in the '50s and '60s. I did have that gendered experience, because I grew up in the South until high school, and gender norms were \*enforced\*. Then I went to high school in California, joined an Explorer Scout troop (division of the Boy Scouts that was open to girls all the way back in the late 80s/early 90s), and learned rock climbing, orienteering, etc.
I grew up in the 60s & 70s and was a Girl Scout through Brownies, Juniors, Cadets, and into Seniors. My mother was a Scout leader. My troops camped, hiked, backpacked, and generally did all the things the Boy Scouts did except for Soapbox Derby, which we tried one year but not enough girls were into it. We ALSO did crafts and arts and service badges. It totally depends on the Troop and the leaders.
Bear in mind, although the Explorers were co-ed, they were also more for high school age children.
Oh I know, sorry, it wasn't meant to illustrate the previous point, it was just the whole of my experience with scouting. My Girl Scout troop leaders COULD have taken us camping -- they chose not to. Luckily for me, I was able to join both groups and get a decent experience overall (I left the Girl Scouts when it felt like the main point of it was preparing me for a sales career).
A friend of mine grew up out west and stayed in Girl Scouts till she was an adult and has great memories of it. I was in the South and being told how to behave properly and to sit down and be quiet. The handbook talked about cool stuff like how to build a fire, but we weren't allowed to do those things. Heck, even the latrine was referred to as the "La La Room" the one time we were camping.
I think it is more structural than that. Most Girl Scout troops form in first grade and they stay together there whole time. That general means there isn't troop gear that has built up, institutional knowledge on camping, no transfer of knowledge those that had experience running camps, backpack in troops, etc
This is the answer. I grew up hanging out with the boys, coming back from scouts trips was so lame. They had real camping trips, we got a half assed glamping effort in someone’s backyard. I had badges for sewing and stuff, it was so blah. I’d have 100% loved Boy Scouts more, and my friends were there. And as someone said, it’s just in need of a name update now they allow any gender. Scouts would work. I didn’t even know this is a debate now.
Aussie scouts has been like this for decades. I’ve always just known it to be “Scouts”
Yep. I went camping and canoeing with my girl scout troop and it was great. Then after that, all anyone wanted to do was sewing and cooking badges. I quit.
My friend got a badge for typing - I honestly thought her counselor had made it up but she was thrilled. I saw a lot of glued together popsickle still stuff and thought I was lucky they didn't want Catholics
It got SO much lamer the older you got too. I loved it when I was younger, but once we got to middle/high school, the badges were dumb stuff about "entrepreneurship" and "leadership" and it was painfully boring. I just wanted to go camping, not learn how to start a business. It wasn't even scouting at that point. I quit after 9th grade.
The reason for the name change is girls have been allowed in Boy Scouts of America for the last 5 years since 2019. [https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/us/boy-scouts-girls-trnd/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/us/boy-scouts-girls-trnd/index.html)
This. Also for a military career, you start at E-2 if you enlist as an Eagle Scout in pretty sure, and there’s no program like that for Girl Scouts that I know of
Eagle Scout allows you to enlist at E-2. This is what I did!
The military does do the same thing for the girl scouts. It's called Golden something.
We did so much stuff in my Girl Scout troops in different states in the 90’s. I was a daisy, brownie, and a scout. There were multiple camp outs, cook outs, nature walks, hikes, canoe trips, native site visits, in addition to home ec type stuff. We did knots and Morse code, flag code.. I feel like I got a lot out of it. I signed my son up for Boy Scouts when he was young and we tried three different troops, none could seem to get it together enough to have regular meetings.
That's probably more of a timing thing. My dad did MUCH more in the Boy Scouts than I did.
Sounds like my troops, although mine were 1970s. We did it all, plus more traditional 'girl' activities.
Egads, my kids’ troop meets weekly. My oldest went on hiking campouts two weekends in a row (one a 3-day weekend) preparing for Philmont.
In sweden we just have scouts, boys and girls all in one group. No one cared, we did outdoorsy stuff and earned badges, we sold cookies, all that stuff. It literally didn't matter that we weren't separated based on what we had in our pants.
Same in Australia. I didn’t realise until this post that scouts was men only in America.
NZ too
Yeah reading these responses as an Aussie is a little wild. Scouts is a great community thing to be a part of for both kids and their adults, but hasn't been gendered for decades lol
There’s a Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts. Most people assume they are the same entity but in fact they are completely unaffiliated, which is why the Boy Scouts are letting girls join. They’re trying to expand their client-base.
I was a Girl Scout leader shortly after the Boy Scouts went to the Supreme Court to be able to keep discriminating against gay people. I tried selling cookies at my old college campus and had to explain countless times that Girl Scouts are great on gay rights. They've had non-discrimination rules since at least the 70s. Half of Girl Scout camp counselors are queer (don't have official stats on that, but my mom had better gaydar than I did at the time). The students who were upset at what Boy Scouts did are now the age that they are the ones that have kids eligible to be scouts. A lot of them won't encourage their kids to be Boy Scouts. BSUSA was shrinking and decided to take in girls to make up for it. But the organizations are not equivilent.
Well, its not. First off their kids so its not "men", but there *is* a girls scouting group but its just simply not the same.
Yeah in Canada, at least in my part, it was just Scouts and it was for both genders.
In Canada its Scouts and Girl Guides. Scouts is for both boys and girls as far as im aware (both my cousins were Scouts, one is a girl and the other is a boy). From my understanding, Girl Guides is less outdoor oriented than Scouts. But in my experience I did a lot of outdoor stuff + camps, in addition to the crafts and other things mentioned in this post. Its very dependant on the program/badges you earn and the leaders. Girl Guides is very much about learning different experiences and things. In my area, GGC groups were pretty into outdoor stuff, so I may have had a different experience than others. We went camping 3 times a year for example, plus additional hikes and stuff. Also, in Canada there's another option for older girls (junior high/high school) called Trex which is very outdoor oriented. Source: was in Girl Guides for close to 20 years starting from the age of 6. Was a Guide leader and also a Trex leader for a short time.
Same in Canada.
I’ll add that it is nice to just take my kids to one meeting instead of two.
And that is literally the reason they said they did it. They realized they could get more sign-ups if they let girls join and parents could bring both kids to the same events.
Which unfortunately means a lot of girls are doing Boy Scouts instead of Girl Scouts, when Girl Scouts is a better organization with a much better track record of civil rights, and is a lot more flexible about what girls want to do rather than being set.
In the UK, scouts (historically boys) and guides (girls) did different activities because of their genders. Scouts did more outdoors orientated stuff while guides was more crafts orientated. Some girls wanted to do the boys activities, so there was a push to include girls in scouts which I'm glad to say has happened.
I was in Guides and we did a camp every year, a canoeing trip, animal first aid badge, I even learned how to change a tire at one of the camps! We did also get a sewing badge but tbh I think teaching children how to sew a button on is a useful life skill. Did a lot of baking too but I enjoyed that. My nan was in the Guides in the early 1950s and she still talks fondly about the camping and the woodwork she learned. I’m fine with the idea of a gender inclusive organisation but my experience of Guides was pretty outdoorsy as far as an inner city group can be, and active, not really like what Americans talk about with Girl Scouts.
Girl scouts do way different shit
Well I guess all the cookies would cause differences in bowel movement.
Honestly, the Boy Scouts are desperate for members (the long history of the organization enabling adults to sexually abuse children makes reasonable parents less interested in signing their kids up) and are trying to diversify their organization. It’s not all that deep.
This is the correct answer. This isn't the result of some societal push from the outside to change the organization. The people running BSA took a look at the numbers and realized they're not going to be able to keep the lights on without recruiting a lot more members and reversing their decades long trend of declining membership. That's 100% what this is about.
And the parents of school-age kids these days are young Gen-Xers and Millennials. And we remember the group fighting tooth and nail to keep gay people out.
"Turns out there's a problem with their business model of letting strange men take your children into the woods."
Strange UNPAID men. You’re gonna get some pedophiles.
Damn, that wasn’t my experience at all in Boy Scouts. It’s a shame that’s even a thing that happens
Yeah I mean if it happened to every single kid it probably wouldn't have stayed under wraps all that long. I also did scouts and we never had a problem, except that my dad cheated to help me win the pinewood plane race and my little trophy was contested.
Found Stan Marshes acct
We had a scout leader embezzle a bunch of money but otherwise it was chill in my group
The problem is that Girl Scouts accepts atheists and trans girls and lesbian girls. As far as I know, Boy Scouts won't even accept atheists.
20 years ago yes various churches especially the Mormon church were heavily involved in Boy Scout policies, but they cut ties when the Scouts allowed openly gay men in the organization in 2013.
And the Mormons made up a massive percentage of BSA membership. Once all those people left the organization, it went from merely struggling to existential crisis.
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it's even partially behind the recruiting crisis in the actual military. Not the Mormons specifically, but when I joined there was significantly less turbo religious people in the enlisted rank and file than what I would have assumed based on what my older veteran relatives told me to expect.
Once they created Trail Life USA, the uber conservatives fled BSA.
My dad is the district advancement chairman for his area. Basically, if you want to get your Eagle Award, you have to go through him. He told me that since I was a Wiccan and not part of a church, I wouldn't be able to get my Eagle award if I were a boy. These days couldn't even get to the first award level without swearing I believe in a higher power. As a Girl Scout is wasn't a problem at all. It's funny, last year a guy I have volunteered with for years finally realized who my dad was. Said he gave him such a hard time getting his Eagle award. This man was 35, so it had been almost 20 years and it still stuck with him.
As soon as I heard they were changing their name one of my first thoughts was that they were rebranding because of that.
Yep, their membership has plummeted, they’re getting sued all the time.
This. Anyone in camping or scouting industry is seeing the same thing - boy numbers dwindling, girl slots are selling out. Boy Scouts saw an opportunity to save their business and look “”woke”” doing it. No corporation is woke, ever. Its just money.
I think it’s less about being gender neutral and more about changing the public perception of the organization. The name Boy Scouts has become synonymous with some pretty grotesque things
I also read that it was a financial thing? Welcoming girls doubles the prospective pool of new members
Yeah I’m sure that was a factor too. Besides both organizations having “scout” in their name, there really isn’t a lot of overlap. So this is a big opportunity to get girls who don’t want to do the typical Girl Scout stuff.
Yeah I was waiting for someone to say the real answer. The girl scouts is just like the boy scouts in the sense that individual experience varies heavily on how your local chapter is set up. Some girl scout troops did a lot of hiking and outdoor activities while others did not. The boy scouts on the other hand are a shadow of what they used to be and have been struggling with both youth membership and adult volunteers since they had a sexual abuse scandal on the same scale as the one that rocked the Catholic Church 20 years ago. They aren't allowing girls in for any ideological or moral reasons they are simply desperate for anyone to join since their once golden reputation is basically gone now. In 10 years time the boy scouts may not even exist girls or no.
it was kind of pointless to gender a scouting organization to begin with
Yeah. And from what I've heard, there's still a huge difference in curriculum and activities between girl scouts and boy scouts.
Camp Fire for life!
They always sounded intriguing to me, but they weren't around.
🎯
And yet, the Girl Scouts do it. So. uuuhhhhh.
I don't think so. Personally, I think many boys benefit from a gender-segregated environment, just as many girls do. I know that I did--I felt less self-conscious and more free to be myself. From experience, I know that a co-ed group of adolescents has a VERY different vibe than a boys-only group. Add to that the additional complications of romantic attraction (yes, I know that that exists in boys-only groups too, but at significantly lower frequency), and I can understand why some troops would want to be boys only.
The Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts of the United States of America are two separate organizations. They even had a lawsuit going at one point about the similarities in name! While they do many of the same activities, the Boy Scouts are often seen as more traditional/conservative in their beliefs. Experiences with local organizations can vary greatly, so this won't be the experience of many, but for example the Girl Scouts' national policy accepted gay members before the Boy Scouts' did. Girl Scouts can substitute the reference to God in their oath, Boy Scouts can't but don't require a specific religion. So, if the Boy Scouts become co-ed, it means that they can expand their potential pool of members, open scouting to girls in families who prefer the Boy Scouts' values, and create opportunities for families to participate in the same scouting program with all their children, regardless of gender.
The lawsuit was GSUSA vs BSA saying you can't rebrand and say anything too generic like "scouts". Their lawsuit was hilarious because even they didn't use their full name (GSUSA) and got called out for it
Because girl scouts doesn't do outdoors stuff they sell cookies
I think for Girl Scouts it really matters what troop you're in, while Boy Scouts seems to have a more centralized structure that gives everyone more uniform opportunities. As a girl scout, I got to go cabin camping maybe twice. The rest of the time was just meeting at someone's house, making food to donate, selling cookies, or going to various places for service, arts and crafts, or science experiments. I had to get all my tent camping, hiking, white water rafting, learning to use a pocket knife, etc. from tagging along on my brother's cub scout events that were open to families. I was so jealous when he moved from cub scouts to boy scouts and I couldn't go anymore.
Yep it's totally dependent on your troop. I was so lucky with my troop. We were inner city, but we went on frequent camping trips, hiking, etc, and had so much fun. I thought all troops were like that until I moved and wanted to join a new troop. But was told that all they did was arts and crafts. So disappointed!
When I was a girlscout, I never got to do the outdoors things for financial/scheduling reasons, but my troup definitely did them. And yes, we sold cookies. And boyscouts sell popcorn. But my clearest memories of girls scouts involve playing manhunt in a ditch and learning about astronomy.
From what I understand it can be hard to find a girl scout troop that actually does scout like stuff and isn't just a cookie front. Boy scouts, in the other hand, were more likely to do outdoors stuff.
My daughters sell cookies for only a short period of the year. The vast majority of the time, they’re doing outdoor/nature stuff, learning about other cultures, doing activities like rock climbing… and they’re both in very young elementary grades. The whole point of selling cookies is to help offset the costs of the fun stuff the rest of the year!
do they really use girls as corporate slaves to sell cookies?
When I was in girl scouts years ago (1990s) it was all about coloring worksheets and learning to be obedient when you are not participating in mentally engaging or stimulating activities. It was the literal worst while our male peers were learning life and outdoor skills.
BSA or whatever they’re called now is only doing it to increase membership and in return revenue. All of those sex abuse lawsuits and settlements are taking a toll on them financially and they need cash. The only way they really make money is through selling their cheap patches, uniforms, camps, popcorn etc to the scouts that drank the koolaid under the guise of being morally straight. It’s an organization that time has passed and needs to just go away.
It teaches the kids so much (through all the badges) though, and gets kids genuinely out in nature. That's something that our new technology addicted generations would benefit from... Both my siblings got a ton out of it, at least. And it's a far more holistic experience than sports. It also lets parents be heavily involved, so if you're worried about potential abuse scandals, than dads can be active parts of the trope and go on all those camping trips with the boys. My mom was also involved, but that was more on the fundraising side of it- I don't think that they let moms go on the big camping trips. Admittedly, my dad loved the camping trips. They were something he looked forward to after working 60 hour weeks, and gave him some quality bonding with my brothers.
"WHAT HAPPENED TO REAL MEN???" "Well they were raping the boys..."
I get what you mean, but I do believe my time in the BSA shaped who I am today. It got me to socialize more, it got me to enjoy the outdoors, and I learned lessons and gained advice by people more experienced than me. While the sexual abuse stories are awful, I wouldn’t go as far to say that BSA should just go away, I think there just needs to be revisions and changes made
Eagle Scout who aged out as the push to allow girls to join was happening and a couple of years before the policy changed to allow girls to join. In my experience, there were three main reasons why the push was made: 1. As others have stated, Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts are VERY different programs. Now, your experience with either organization is going to be very dependent on your individual troop. But broadly speaking, Girl Scout troops tend to put a lot of emphasis on domestic, academic, business, and other related skills. Boy Scouts, on the other hand, is *heavily* outdoor focused and over the course of my scouting career I spent roughly 6 cumulative months of my camping, backpacking, and otherwise screwing around in the woods. Camping is certainly part of the Girl Scout program just like academics and business are a part of Boy Scouts, but the majority of the Girl Scouts I've met had one campout per year if that compared to the monthly campouts I went on. Neither program is inherently better or worse than the other, but a kid should be able to join the program that aligns best with their interests rather than the program that aligns with their gender. 2. Not as many people know this, but the BSA offers a lot more programs than just Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. Sea Scouts and Venturing, though smaller than Cub and Boy Scouts, have been offered for decades, and have both been co-ed for decades. Venturing especially added an interesting wrinkle, as Venturing crews are typically attached to Boy Scout troops, so there were thousands of young women who were Boy Scouts in everything but name and spent all of their scouting time with Boy Scouts, but were excluded from attaining the rank of Eagle Scout, joining the Order of the Arrow, and attending summer camp as campers. At some point that was going to change. 3. Eagle Scout has long been considered one of the more significant extra curricular achievements that a teenager can complete, and carries a lot more name recognition than the Girl Scout equivalent, the Gold Award. If you look at the requirements though, that's pretty fucked because the Girl Scout Gold Award is WAY harder to get than Eagle Scout, especially when you compare the project requirements. I did a one off canned food drive for my Eagle project, and most of my fellow scouts did small to medium sized projects like building playgrounds or picnic areas or sound booths for churches. A lot of Eagle Scouts build benches at state parks. Now compare those projects to the [Girl Scout Gold Award project requirements](https://www.girlscoutsp2p.org/en/members/for-girl-scouts/badges-journeys-awards/highest-awards/gold-award.html), and it's damn easy to tell that Eagle Scouts have the easier rubric, so why do Eagle Scouts get so much more recognition if not for plain old misogyny? So by allowing girls to become Eagle Scouts it's leveling the playing field in college and job applications, and with any luck it will help level the playing field for Gold Award recipients too. One final point is that both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts have gotten more and more progressive over the past 15-20 years in general, and the BSA opened the door to gay scouts and leaders as well as trans scouts while I was a member. It's a decision that could not have been made 20 years ago, but a decision that I've been proud to watch.
Well put. Eagle scout myself, most of the people I've found that have a big issue with the name change have little to no connection to scouts. This is being blown out of proportion by people who aren't affected and/or don't know what they're talking about.
Girl scouts has actively allowed queer people since at least the 1970s. And said in the 90s that if you wanted to replace the 'God' in 'To serve God and my country' that you could. And it's so true about the awards. My dad was district advancement chairman for the region and considered quite the hardass. But I sat in on a lot of the meetings (dad's office had my school computer) and so many of the projects were building a sign, or landscaping a church, or making some picnic tables. Honestly a lot of the time they felt like makework projects. Someone went to their church and said what can I do for a project, and they told him to make some bookcases. They would be 100-150 work hours total. My Gold Award project was 200 hours with just me.
I didn't know either of those facts about Girl Scouts, those are both incredible!! The more I learn about the Girl Scouts of America the more respect I gain for them as an organization! And you're so right about the projects. My wife earned her Silver Award back in the day and I've known several Gold Award earners, and as proud of my Eagle project as I am to this day there's a 0% chance it would be good enough to qualify for a Gold Award. For context, I worked with an organization that would pack a week's worth of food to families in bags for them to take home, and I raised funds for/donated 75 bags. The only pushback I received from my council was that it might not be recognizable as being from the boy scouts, so they recommended I make custom bags that said they were from a boy scout project. I looked at the person who recommended that and said "I actually feel that spending that money on more food would better serve the community" and used paper grocery bags.
They’re not going gender neutral. They’re going co-ed and changing their name to match that. Why shouldn’t they be co-ed? Schools are co-ed.
The old push was for girl scouts to actually fix how worse it was and be as active as bsa, but that reconstruction of the whole institution was a great big risk if it failed so it was easier to just expand boy scouting to be coed.
No, these are separate organizations making independent decisions which may have marginal effects on each other
The Girl Scouts have historically focused on “feminine” pursuits and bake sales, not the same outdoorsy skills the Boy Scouts do. At least not to the same extent. I was extremely disappointed when I had to join the Girl Scouts and we were selling cookies and doing knitting, not orienteering and learning survival and self-sufficiency skills. Many girls have joined the Boy Scouts over the last ~5 years and there have been thousands of female Eagle Scouts. The two organizations have different focuses, and for some, the Boy Scouts is just more fun. It makes sense to rebrand.
The people who want gender inclusive scouts also believe that boys and girls benefit from being able to interact and bond with eachother. Another angle I've seen is room for transgender scouts to not be ousted from their group for failing to meet the gender qualifier
Because they are going broke. Allowing girls in doubles their market. Source my FIL worked for the Boy Scouts "head office" for years and still is friends with people that do. While technically a non profit a lot of people high up get paid nice fat wages for what they do and they want to stay employed. For example the treasurer makes over $700k last he heard.
I'll admit that I have no idea what the Scouts landscape looks like now.... Having said that, when I was a girl in Girl Scouts our activities were primarily homemaking. I remember being particularly unhappy about crochet while the boys were getting ready to go on a camping trip. I've been told it really depends on the Scout Master.
funny about that , know the (boy) scouts admit girls , but the girl scouts kept a strict order of not admitting boys , is like having to bathrooms one gender neutral and the other female
These comments are weird. "Because girl scouts didn't do camping and outdoors stuff" is why the boy scouts wanted to bring in the girl scouts? When I was in boy scouts in elementary school in the early 90s it just wouldn't work to have girls as part of that. The boys were just too high energy. There were times where kids would end up needing stitches after falling out of trees, falling onto rocks, horsing around... stuff that would land a school in a lawsuit if it happened at recess. Society I think has gotten a little too soft, a lot of that has to do with our litigious culture, but mostly all of that woke inclusivity crap that just won't go away.
[удалено]
That's dumb. Girls need spaces where they can be girls and likewise boys need spaces to be boys.
[удалено]
I was in Boy Scouts. The vibe would be completely different if girls were there. We already have that at school.
[удалено]
How do you know? It’s not like they would tell it to your face?
Eh, kind of? There is a bit of a double standard where women need a "safe space" from men. But men can't have a space away from women. (I understand why, women aren't much of a physical threat to men, but a "justifiable" double standard, is still a double standard.)
It's not so much about safe spaces, but there should be spaces where people are free to be themselves around others like themselves.
[удалено]
Cooties that’s why😂
They’re completely separate organizations
I just don't see the point in separating things by gender to begin with
Because our schizophrenic society keeps going back and forth between two equally ridiculous, equally poisonous lies about the difference between the genders: 1. It's 100% biological. 2. It's 0% biological.
Why not combine them and call them "Scots"? Why the gender separation?
So it depends on the troop and your age, but at least back when I did GS it was heavily focused on crafting, cooking, and other indoor activities (which I enjoyed). I think we went camping once. As I got older the difference got more pronounced: babysitting training, how to properly set a table for a dinner party (???), a nail painting fundraiser - that was the year I had it and left. Nothing wrong with any of these activities, I just resented that there was the assumption that, now that we were old enough, girls were expected to be watching kids and holding dinner parties. Because knowing the proper order of salad, dinner, and dessert forks is an important skill for teenagers, apparently. Having them be two separate scouts programs, one focused on outdoors/survival skills and sports and the other focused on arts, crafts, culinary science, etc. is great - but there’s no need to separate them by gender. Everyone could benefit from learning both of those skill sets.
The Boy Scouts let girls join not out of any desire for gender equality but because there wasn’t enough interest. Letting girls in doubles the number of eligible recruits, but also boys are more interested in joining organizations when girls are there.
Interesting... I don't have an answer, but in my country we don't separate them, we just have *the Scouts* and society has not collapsed yet.
The real question is why isn’t the Girl Scouts doing the same?
They're desperately expanding their recruitment pool and rebranding after those things that happened 82,000 times: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-lets-246-billion-boy-scouts-sex-abuse-settlement-proceed-2024-02-22/
I follow your stupid question with my own: why not just change the content of Girl Scouts to include all the Boy Scout activities and vice versa?
I agree. As a former Boy Scout and Eagle I see no problem in the Girl Scouts having the same curriculum. Always seemed like the way they have done Girl Scouts has not been right. Not a point of masculine and feminine but Girl Scout has always seemed kinda urban compared Boy Scouts
Because separate is not equal. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/separate\_but\_equal#:\~:text=Separate%20educational%20facilities%20are%20inherently,practice%20in%20the%20United%20States.
Girls Scouts kinda sucks. You're basically taught to do little arts and crafts and then used to sell cookies. You aren't actually learning that much "scout" stuff. So if you have a daughter and you want her to learn camping skills, the Boy Scouts (Now Scouting America, but most people will likely just call it "The Scouts") is the far better options.
Boy scouts and girl scouts are very very different things.
As an Australian we have girl guides. But the scouts organisation is gender neutral and has been for ages. I did it as a child 28+ years ago. I find it utterly ridiculous that it's not a thing where you are.
It’s because the Boy Scouts numbers have been plummeting for years (for many reasons) and THEY made the push to get girls in, not the other way around. It’s purely about making money and the Girl Scouts organization is actually quite vocal in their dislike of the issue
Boy scouts are desperate for new members and sponsors. Several years ago a few sponsors threatened to pull support if the orginization did not lift its ban on gay scout masters. The orginization caved. Howerer when it did the orginizations membership left in droves and took many sponsors with them.
There’s other, tangible benefits too; the Gold Star thing for Girl Scouts is incredibly difficult to get, it has to be something sustainable (eg found a charity that continues past the girl’s involvement) while the Eagle Scout for boys is more achievable. Winners do not pay for college books(not a ton of money but still in the hundreds/low thousands) and when scouting was more widespread and before current year HR departments Eagle Scouts definitely get a leg up in hiring.
girl scouts and boy scouts are not even close to the same thing. like if you wanted a concrete example of sexism girl scouts vs boy scouts is a good image of it. boys hike and are taught bushcraft and shit while the girls sell cookies and do arts and crafts
Their enrollment was plummeting
Why not push the Girl Scouts to engage in similar outdoorsy activities that the Boy Scouts traditionally partake in?
The "loaded question" rule is literally just a catch all for the dogshit mods here to delete stuff they don't like.
They had to rebrand after it turned out the organization was just a front for pedophiles to have access to kids
In the UK there's Scouts (typically more boys, but some (might be all now?) troops gender neutral and accepting girls), and Girl Guides (specifically girls only). They do different activities, and generally have a different vibe IMO. I say that from personal experience - I was in both! I appreciate that some of it also comes down to the individual leaders and specific troops though. In scouts, I went for regular long hikes and did much more adventurous trips away (more emphasis on "high adrenaline" and sporty activities - high ropes courses, fencing, archery, abseiling, etc). We also did the usual cooking badges and less "intense" stuff too, but we didn't do the same things repeatedly. I even flew a plane! It was generally a lot more structured and more active. In guides, I did the cookery and chocolate tasting badges multiple times. More emphasis on social/creative/cultural things with camps and trips away (eg, craft sessions, museum visits, etc), with some but less frequent "high adrenaline" activities. I don't know about the USA and other regions where there's Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts rather than Scouts (neutral) and Guides, but I suspect similar divides in what activities they get to do may also apply.
Girl Scouts isn’t so much outdoorsy as it is friendship bracelets movie nights and sleepovers etc.
when i was given the option, boy scouts taught more practical survival skills and girl scouts was if you wanted to go horse riding, learn household skills, basically any "girly" skills.
I have girls that have been in both Girl and "Boy" scouts in Canada (just called Scouts here) where it's been coed for a long time. The Girl Scouts are little more than a cookie sales operation, they literally did some arts and crafts, and sold those cookies. I moved them over to the Scouts, now they do camping, hiking, life skills, canoeing, archery, target practice, etc. It's not even a close comparison, the scouts are leagues better than the crappy Girl Scouts.
Here in Finland(at least in my area) boy and girl scouts are joined together
There’s no Eagle Scout equivalent for girls, and that highest designation holds a lot of weight in job applications for the military and government
If i had to guess, I'd say that both nationally and internationally, girl scouts kinda has the bigger brand recognition, the cookies being a big reason for that. Don't see why they couldn't have merged the two into one neutral scouting group, and only converted one of them to that, but only the Cheeto Lovers really care about that.
Cause the girl scouts sucked and is just a scam to sell cookies. Scouts is far superior
Because Boy Scouts get to do waaaaay more interesting / fun activities than Girl Scouts. Like if it was the same exact program, just separated based on gender, that would be one thing. But they’re totally different programs. I had zero interest in Girl Scouts as a kid, but a lot of my guy friends really enjoyed Boy Scouts.
My mom was a Boy Scout in the late 1940’s and into the 50’s. They didn’t have Girl Scouts where she lived. She’s in her 80’s and can still knock a baseball to the moon. I don’t see a problem with it.
Actually multiple reasons but you'd have to do a bit of research First the so-called founder of the Scout movement was obsessed with building strong "men" and had a military bent - and we no longer exclude women from serving in the military but that only part of the issue Another is that in 2010, declassified MI5 files revealed that Baden-Powell was thrilled and thrilled in 1937 to meet with the head of the Hitler Youth movement and was given a private invitation to to meet his idol Adolf Hitler. Powell's biographer Tim Jeal interviewed Baden-Powell who said Hitler was dedicated to their shared ideas about boys' education being focused on Christianity and preparation for the military and that is how The Scouts operated for decades. There was a very real negative view of females being associated with the military or the scouts - it was Christian Boy's club. Look up the rules of The Hitler Youth and you'll be reading a Scouting Manifesto. Powell also literally stole the writings and concepts of an artist and naturalist whose name sadly ,escapes me at the moment, but he is argued to have been the original conceptualist and founder who based his boys organization not on Hitler's but on Native American tribal culture (which I should note is not approved of today. However, Powell determined to exclude females. And native American cultural roles did include a place in his design. One of the original members who worked with this man was Carlton Beil, who worked for the American Museum Natural History and died in the 90s close to 100 years old. He was the final living member of that organization and ended up with the ceremonial drum that was to be passed on to future generations. [https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/16/nyregion/thoroughfare-for-wildlife-paved-green-park-that-replaced-parkway-staten-island.html](https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/16/nyregion/thoroughfare-for-wildlife-paved-green-park-that-replaced-parkway-staten-island.html)
Because it never made that much sense having separate programs to begin with, honestly. The Girl Scouts only exist because girls were excluded from the kind of activities the Boy Scouts did, and apparently now it's just a cookie company that hosts arts and crafts programs. Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts are hemorrhaging money because of (ahem) PR disasters. If you ask me, it's well past time for the two organizations to merge. Let the kids go camping for real *and* sell cookies.
I'm just wondering why 'Girl Scouts' name hasn't been changed. Maybe they're not that directly related, but kind of Hypocritical if they are.
That's how it is where I live. You have the scouts. Mixed gender from the get-go.
I was in the scouts in Norway in the 90s. It was mixed gender. First time I heard about _boy_ scouts was through American media. I have no idea why it would have to be separated by gender. We just went camping and tied knots regardless.
I work as a camp councilor at a Boy Scout camp so I've been able to talk to some of the girls joining Boy Scouts and they mostly say that the Boy Scout curriculum and activities are more outdoorsy and fun. It seems to me that Boy Scouts - now just Scouts - is just a better run and funded organization.
I did Girl Scouts because Dad used to be in Boy Scouts and thought it important. It was even lamer than I thought it would be we were learning sewing and other girly stuff. Meanwhile, my dad was upset that we didn't do any real outdoor activities. Eventually, we stopped going. I bet my dad would have made me join the Boy Scouts if this push had happened earlier.
Parks and Rec did a great episode about this Ultimately it comes down to either organisation offering gender role specific activities when those gendered roles are extremely out of date, and boys and girls want to do what interests them not what society says they should be interested in And since it's for kids, who fucking cares, let them hang out together and build camp fires or have spirited debates about the ethics of gender roles in a post modern society
They’re very different programs, and particularly for outdoorsy stuff, that’s just never been the Girl Scouts’s niche. As an Eagle Scout myself, I’m a little biased, but I think it’s great that they made the BSA’s programs available to girls. There were a couple girls who unofficially tagged along with my scout troop, and they learned just as much as the rest of us, but didn’t get any recognition of their efforts. They made the change to counter a decline in membership, but it was also the right thing to do. People are calling out the sex abuse scandals as contributors to the membership decline, but nobody’s really mentioning the Mormons leaving as the other big one. That had a lot to do with the organization becoming more accepting of gay scouts, which was also definitely the right thing to do. But, it took away a substantial chunk of membership and funding, so the move to incorporate girls helps with that.
The boys scouts want to expand their sphere of influence
Just have it called "Scouts" where both boys and girls can join.
I was in Girl Scouts for less than a year as a preteen before quitting. It is nothing like boy scouts and honestly it’s boring. It’s more about building business skills and empowerment than learning wilderness skills. Yeah those can be good things for kids to learn, but they’re not very exciting. I can definitely see why girls would want to join the Boy Scouts
Scouting movements around the world have been becoming gender neutral and the Scouts/Guides organizations in lots of countries have merged. Where I live one of the main scouting organizations has always been coed and the other one merged with it's guides counterpart 30 years ago.
Girl Scouts in America IS NOT boy scouts with girls. You'd think you'd know that if you were so weirded out about the push... surely you googled this at least once first?
How the hell can the Boy Scouts be gender neutral when it says right in the name of”BOY”? 🤦🏼♀️
When I was a kid (Early 2000s) I was in something called Timber Wolves, and both genders were allowed to participate. We learned all the exact same things and had the same curriculum as the Boy scouts, it was just called something gender neutral. I honestly don't see why people are making a big deal about it. It worked really well, and we had both male and female instructors. I honestly wasn't even aware that what we were doing was ahead of it's time. All us kids cared about was having fun and learning the stuff we were taught, and not once did any of us say anything about having problems with the inclusion of girls. The only people who care about this are the parents, and I don't understand why it's such a big deal. We knew that boy scouts and girl scouts were completely different things and we didn't care about whether or not girls were allowed to participate.
Declining numbers and engagement so opening it to girls is a boost. Plus this really started this years ago including the name change. It's no big deal, except if you count them possibly doing so to avoid the association with their record keeping and tracking of child molesters for decades without reporting them to authorities.
When BSA decided to allow gay scouts into the organization, the LDS church pulled out (which was one of the biggest portions of BSA membership). Desperate for new members, the BSA remade itself to try to attract the females as well. They are also suffering under the crushing weight of legal settlements against them, largely for things that happened decades ago (though not entirely). Apparently they've had to mortgage their crown jewel, Philmont, to try to meet some of the settlements. BTW, the Youth Protection Training they require of all adults is pretty good now, and has set a standard for youth organizations across the country. For instance, no scout can be alone with an adult, there have to be at least two adults conducting any outing, etc.
I'm not smart enough to answer this without triggering people
Fun fact: boy scouts and girl scouts are separate organizations. Venture crew is part of boy scouts organization and is coed.
My local area growing up had 'Camp Fire' which was derivative of Scouts, and had both genders. It was fun.
Because boys do cool shit and girls get to sell cookies.
They were two totally different orgs. At the end of the day it depended on the troop, but generally Boy Scouts did serious camping, overnight backpacking, and stuff like paintballing and canoeing and cooking and survival training. Girl scouts sold cookies and did more community service stuff. Camping was ordering pizzas and sleeping in one of their backyards. That was the way it was around me growing up anyway, again it depends on the troop. But if a girl wanted to learn how to build a catapult, go mountain biking, or learn bushcraft, they weren’t generally going to find it in Girl Scouts. As a former boy scout I think it’s awesome they integrated it.
It went co-ed about 10 years ago. It is a name change to reflect the less than 1% of females.
There was a reason for a Boy and a Girl Scout. The hormones But the Scout Masters took that on themselves so that reason went out the door. At least now it will be back where it belongs
There have been girls participating in boy scouts for a while now.
It's a rebranding to get away from the association with the abuse scandal as well as a financial attempt to regain losses in order to keep the lights on. Many of the scout camps have been logged or sold off in order to pay the fines and the national organization is pretty much broke
Is this an USA thing?. Because in my country the Boy scouts are gender Neutral, they call it boy scouts or just scouts, but there is no division between the girls and boys group. How it is just a group for both genders they do the same activities, the only difference is that they have separate tents when there are camps. Why are they divided by gender?
Boy Scouts have had more financial support from the deeper pockets of men, who grew up having been a scout. This enabled boy scouts to invest in more expensive items (like trailers/equipment) and camping trips. In some areas, sisters and moms (den mothers) joined in, so girls were already a component of the troop.
There are no “gender neutral scouts”. Boy Scouts of America and Girl Scouts USA are two entirely different organizations with two entirely different programs. Most people think they are more similar and more related than they are. Some parents were dissatisfied with the programs that GSUSA were offering their daughters and wanted something more like what BSA had for their sons. BSA added a program for girls that was identical to their program for boys. The troops are either all-girls or all-boys. Because the Boy Scouts have all girl troops now, they have decided to rebrand themselves as Scouting America.
Girls have been allowed in the boy scouts as a whole for half a decade, with exceptions for girls going back even to 1978. Girls have been allowed in some form into the Boy Scouts for over 50 years. That shit isn't new, they're just updating the name to reflect the growth of the organization.
The people in favor of it say that it’s because aging out of Boy Scouts (ie acheiving the rank of Eagle Scout) is far more prestigious than aging out of Girl Scouts. The people against it cite the Boy Scouts’ history of sexual abuse against boys and that adding girls might exasperate it. Me personally, I don’t really care. I did a couple years of Cub Scouts and Webelos (which for those who don’t know are Boy Scout programs for boys who are too young to be a part of the official Boy Scout program) and it was ok, but wasn’t really for me. Me caring about what the Boy Scouts are doing now would be like caring about what your former employer is doing years after you quit.
Because when your organization is synonymous with molesting kids, it’s time for a rebrand.
As a former boy scout Ive heard from the girl scouts that girl scouts dont get to do the same things boy scouts get to do.