OT: Boy Scouts of America changing name, dropping "Boy"
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/05/02/boy-scouts-sc…
It's cool. I respect your opinion and don't ever take what I post on this blog too seriously. I agree. Always have to look at the individual. I like boobs though and I look to look at the ladies. When I see a hot lady, I don't assume she is nice or mean or anything. I just see a nice looking lady, which I think is fair since I haven't met her yet. Now if I did meet her and I treated poorly or like an object then that would be bad. My point is if there are more boobs around I'm cool with that, but that doesn't mean once I meet the person the boobs are attached to I treat them poorly or not like a person.
And here's where we should draw the line with MeanJoe. Good lord.
You can't play the jokey oversexualized koala in one post and then try to play the intellectual when someone calls out your schtick as being boorish. While nothing you say in this post is necessarily wrong, it is a pretty clear white-washing of the joke you just made.
I AM a jokey oversexualized koala. The joke is when I pretend to be intellectual. This is why you'll often see me argue both sides of the same thing.
For example, I think changing the name of Boyscouts is a fantastic idea. It never made sence to divide up the boys and girls anways and is very inconvenient for parents. Boyscouts and Girlscouts often do the same activities anyways and this doesn't mean they can't split up into groups to change clothes or do girl and boy activities or do things that aren't appropriate to do around eachother. Really this is a business decision and the crazy conservatives will be butthurt and spew nonsense about the "crazy liberals" and their agenda. Boys and girls interacting is healthy and it makes no sense to seperate them entirely when the mission of scouts is to help kids develop skills and become healthy adults. That is something that applies to everyone, not just boys or girls.
since she was a Daisy. She ran a anti bullying program at her elementary school for her Bronze award. She just received her Silver award for a program helping at a local Hospital. This whole issue has become an indictment on the Girls Scouts and their failure to address the evolving change in what interests most girls as they get older. They should have taken a bolder approach to STEM programs for the middle teens and into High School. This might have attracted a significant higher interest in the Girl Scouts. My daughter is working on the Gold award that she will be getting as she graduates from High school which should look pretty good on her college application. It should have the same emphasis of the Eagle Scout from the Boys program but it doesn’t and that is the fault of the Girl Scouts and the decision-making from them. If they wanted to protect the Girls Program they should have put more effort into making it relevant. Just my two cents. Go Blue!!!
Can we bring up the bigger issue? People not knowing how acronyms work...
Going by "Scouts BSA" means they are now the "Scouts Boy Scouts of America". That just sounds dumb.
I was a boy scout for a number of years, and I have kids who will likely give both the BSA and GSA a shot as they grow older (or maybe not, it's up to them). And as a general rule, I'm a fan of integration between different groups, especially when they are younger and biases are less ingrained. But I do wonder if this will lead to cannibalization of GSA troops in certain areas or if it will simply be a way for troops to form in areas where sex-specific ones simply don't have enough of a membership footprint to survive.
I do think there is a benefit for younger kids to hang out with members of their own sex alone, though these kids are already in school and likely on sports teams and the like with mixed rosters. I'm legitimately interested in seeing what this change leads to, even with all the bullshit that adults will foist upon this decision.
Cub Scouts will remain separate - Boy Dens & Girl Dens. Girls will either be in dens with other girl cub scouts, or the entire pack will be a separate girl pack. For cub scouts, the logistics will be incredibly challenging from the perspective of finding additional adult leaders for the girls. New Den leaders will be required for each new girl den, and if an entire pack is created, additional new leaders will be needed for Cubmasters, Pack Committee,etc. As mentioned before, the Charter Organization makes the decision whether they will allow girls to participate in their program.
So young kids will remain mostly separate until the middle/end of 5th grade when they crossover to Scouts.
GIrl Scouts>(Boy) Scouts for one reason and reason only... all of those delicious cookies!
Unpopular opinion time: Girl Scout Cookies are overpriced and not that great. And yes, I know what I'm talking about - I'm the parent of a Girl Scout.
I agree that they are overpriced BUT I have to disagree with your "not that great" opinion... I love those things!
They're tasty, for sure, but if you're going to go out and buy cookies for $4-5 a box you can do a LOT better.
You obviously have experience as the parent of a Girl Scout and I am a big fan of cookies in general, what are some better/more cost effective alternatives and/or options?
If you have a good local bakery, their cookies are almost certainly better than any prepackaged cookies. But even if you're buying prepackaged cookies, there are a lot of companies that do it better. I'm sorry that I can't recall any specific brands.
Even when it loses it wins
Can you please elaborate how ceasing to exclude kids from scouting based on their gender is related to proletariat control of the means of production?
From Urban Dictionary, Cultural Marxism is "the gradual process of destroying all traditions, languages, religions, individuality, government, family, law and order in order to re-assemble society in the future as a communist utopia. This utopia will have no notion of gender, traditions, morality, god, or even family or the state." --https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cultural%20marxism
It's just a boogeyman the right throws out to scare people into thinking being more inclusive and understanding is evil. There are literally no marxists or political theorists talking about "cultural marxism".
Urban Dictionary is always a good source for discourse though.
it's the only reason I ever learned what "Donkey Punch" means.
It happened to state the idea rather well, so I cited it. It's not just about being "inclusive and understanding;" it's also about the ramifications for a society that destroys its cultural identity so it can be more inclusive. You can use Wikipedia to look up 'balkanization' if you'd like to see what happens next.
1. No conspiracy required; just dogma insisting that male-only spaces are bad and must be converted to co-ed (but female-only spaces are important and must be protected). This trend has been consistent for several decades now, and will likely continue for everything except for sports.
2. Not worldwide; only talking about the US.
3. The US has been a monoculture; it's only when people living in the US embrace cultural relativism that it becomes a polyculture that balkanizes.
The US has literally never been a monoculture. Tons of unique ethnic histories of different European immigrants, Black Americans, Native Americans, Latino Americans. There are different cultural characteristics of white rural populations, white urban populations, white northern populations, white southern populations, small religious sects like the amish, mormons, quakers, etc.
The US has literally never been a monoculture, there is no nation-state that is a monoculture, and the idea that any state can contain a monoculture apart from maybe some tiny city-state is ludicrous.
I'd argue diverse ethnic backgrounds is an important part of American culture. After all, America's appeal was that anyone can come to America and make a life for themselves regardless of where they came from. You know, American Dream-related stuff. Or do you think people just sailed across oceans because it was easier than hopping borders in Europe?
More important to the conversation are cultural aspects every American gets to enjoy. Here's an obvious example: The Civil War was fought over cultural differences between free states and slave states, and would have balkanized the US had the South won.
You really don't have a coherent argument here. Those European immigrants came because land was cheap/they were fleeing political or religious persecution. They practiced their individual religions, married in their traditional way, celebrated traditional holidays, spoke their own language.
Are you trying to say the monoculture is multicultural? The victory of the Union in the Civil War didn't erase southern cultural differences.
The theories that (1) being inclusive inevitably leads to some kind of horrible slippery slope, and (2) multiculturalism inevitably leads to Balkanization are frequently thrown around, but never seem to be supported.
is not the place to write a Ph.D thesis, I'll just show the different sides of the debate.
My side: Roman history, Ottoman Empire history, in-group preference of people, society trend to de-emphasize masculinity correlating to the following problems of present-day USA:
--decline in marriage fraction
--birth rate trending below replacement
--rise of single-parent households and its effect on communities such as PoC
--rise in male suicide rate
--decline in female happiness, contradicting the Hedonic treadmill, while male happiness remains constant
Your side: protect [the marginalized people] from [the oppressors], blind faith it'll all work out for the betterment of everybody
Seeing as how I'm not THE_KNOWLEDGE, I don't know what the future holds. Seeing as how 'inevitably leads to' is an impossible standard of evidence even for you, I'll just lean on the wisdom of intellectual giants.
What exactly is your argument in regards to the Ottomans and Romans?
Just FYI, if you're referring to Gibbon's argument that the Western Empire collapsed because of the feminiziing influence of Christianity, no one's really taken that seriously since the 19th Century.
I appreciate the detailed answer, but as I'm sure you know, correlation doesn't equal causation. That's especially true when you're trying to tie together things that have no obvious causal connection, like the decline of masculinity and the decline of political organizations.
Agree that this isn't the best forum to discuss this, but your characterization of my perspective is a huge fucking straw man, and I suspect you knew that, so maybe we'll end this here.
The problem with your analysis is "being inclusive and understanding" is always a one way street with zero end in sight.
Oh, so it's a label that people apply to whatever they don't like in order to avoid intelligent discussion of the real issues. Got it!
Then again, every label when used as a pejorative is applied to whatever is disliked in order to avoid intelligent discussion of the real issues. The provided definition is the underlying context for when it gets applied.
you should post more often!
jdon
WTF even is cultural marxism? do you think some small intelligentsia group is sitting around trying to socially engineer the destruction of your traditional white culture or something? Like, a group that somehow controls all the banks, yet also wants to create communism? Are they some sort of ethno-religous group that you're trying to scapegoat for the social dislocation caused by technological and socio-economic change?
Eagle Scout here, longtime adult volunteer in the program. Not surprised at a lot of the narrow-minded comments in this thread about scouting at large--it's a macho sports blog, after all.
I think this is great. The GSA refused to play ball for years, the BSA couldn't figure out how to make Venturing work, and all the while, both programs suffered. The BSA decided to take a proactive step to rebuild their membership, taking a huge risk in angering some of its biggest constituencies (Mormons, Methodists, and Evangelicals, the largest chartering bodies in the organization). They'll take a hit, but nothing that probably wouldn't happen eventually anyway. Meanwhile, the GSA has to figure out their situation, particularly in programming and retention.
Definitely don't think it's the last step on these kinds of changes, and feel this is probably something that should have been rolled out at the same time as the coed program. Is it the best name? No. But I think there are a lot of adjustments that need to be made here, and they're doing the best they can. This is uncharted territory, and there will be hiccups here and there.
Remember, until the policy change, the United States was one of the few places in the world where coed scouting wasn't the norm. Talk to people who work in the programs in Europe, and you'll discover they manage to do stuff like coed camping trips, everyday troop programming, etc. without even batting an eye. They don't understand how the US hasn't managed to figure it out.
Basically, a lot of guys on this thread are mad because the BSA made a business decision.
Most of this anger seems to be directed towards the Girl Scouts for some reason. The GSA and BSA are not the same entity. The GSA have no input on the enrollment decisions of the Boy Scouts.
I hate the "narrow-minded" characterization of the argument and am REALLY tired of that bit of ad hominism being deployed every time someone tries to simply dismiss something, people on this blog are supposed to be smarter than that(see I can make a dumb generalization, too). I never said I want there to be exclusion and I never said I don't want Girls to have opportunities to do more active outdoor activities.
I said it's important for boys to have space to interact with other boys and girls to do so with other girls and that Scouts has fulfilled that role for a long time and Frankly, should continue to do so.
I will agree that the organization won't fundamentally change and it's not like I'd withdraw my son from it as it'll still be a very valuable experience for him, but it's fair to wonder if they're losing something important here.
"Narrow-minded" was more out of the "they're still going to get beat up on the playground," "Scouting is for dorks" hot takes.
Cool beans, sorry for the over-heated response.
Girls and Boys are the same and they don't need to be separated ever. They don't develop differently and aren't better off having space to grow and mature. Most guys WANT to go through puberty and everything that goes along with that alongside girls obviosuly. If you suggest any other mindset, you're clearly narrow-minded and probably sexist. Also dont say that "on average" girls want to do different activites than boys. The idea that girls and boys have different preferences on average is also sexist and using sexist facts to support a sexist view.
"They don't understand how the US hasn't managed to figure it out."
I know exactly why. To quote Cooper from EuroTrip, America was founded by prudes.
We've made it 90 minutes already.
i'm impressed.
jdon
I just lost twenty bucks to a coworker.
jdon
I'll freely admit my thoughts mean a bit less than others here since I was never a scout, but.... I'm gonna guess this - like most things - will be something the kids handle fine while adults on either side of the ledge have a collective flip-out.