AwakeEnergyScouter

So it looks like a bunch of posts did get moderated in the end, which is probably just as well for the good name of the BSA because what was still there is the same old gender essentialist stuff I've heard since I was my scout's current age and that still doesn't ring true. It didn't ring true even before I studied emptiness and it certainly isn't going to now that I have. I have so much to say about that that I end up with nothing to say because it's all been said for decades if not generations, in books and around dinner tables. There's nothing I'm going to say here that's going to change a

Thanks for the warning. I'll go back and read that, prepared for the usual from the "manosphere". Hopefully no one held Andrew Tate out to be a male role model for male Scouts to emulate. I hear the root of all modern society problems is that men don't walk around with swords enough 😂 he's a true paragon of being morally straight, that man is 😂 No death threats or rape threats from anyone here though so that's a plus. I wish I was being sarcastic but the chans set the bar real low. Don't think anyone's doxxed me and no SWAT teams have shown up so everyone is verifiably holding up to that

A major drawback to discussing anything even tangentially related to feminism on the internet is Schrödinger's unpleasant person (https://imgur.com/gallery/wEhXGrr) and the hordes of people in the state of Angry Jack. It seems a lot of the folks here are older and maybe didn't grow up with the Internet, especially the influence of 2chan, 4chan and 8kun on Internet culture. The reason I was up front with that I know I am biased towards assuming the worst about possibly misogynistic posts on the internet is that I have seen a lot of it since I was a teen. I'm middle-aged now. So I know I co

Thanks, @Eagledad, I appreciate the response. It seems we've had very different life experiences, so I doubt we're going to convince each other of the value or lack thereof in gender segregated scouting, but that doesn't mean we can't be civil.

Also forgot to add the Declaration of Independence to the list of places where inherent equal human value shows up. Probably the most famous line of the whole thing.

I want Thank you for saying this. This is exactly right - scouting isn't gendered. Its raîson d'être is not gender identity exploration. Like someone said above, we can't be doing every good thing there is to do, we should stick to our core activities which is outdoor adventure. Up until you said this - spontaneously without my prompting, even - it seemed quite possible that you were in the camp of people who do think gender-segregated gender identity exploration is in fact a core part of scouting. So now it's clear that you're not, thank you. Well, my friend, you entere

Exactly. Scouters who think that women have less intrinsic value than men are not going to be able to do a good job of growing units with girls, and if they're teaching boys that, then they are also failing to deliver good moral training. Clarifying whether we have such problems is practically important. I doubt Eagledad is trying to recruit girls, but this is not a private conversation and girls reading something in that direction here aren't going to be magnetized.

Do you have anything at all supporting this theory? In my experience, groups of just or almost only girls/women are prone to Mean Girls dynamics, and groups of almost only boys/men (and so presumably also only men) are prone to Dude Bro dynamics. Enough boys breaks up the mean girl dynamic and enough girls breaks up the bros, and both genders get the opportunity to see the strengths of the other gender's default way of handling something. Whatever gender you are, you can learn something from others. When it comes to character and integrity, I'll just share my observation that there

Do I understand you correctly to be saying that all the millions of scouts that have scouted in gender-integrated programs over the decades did not develop the best character or integrity?

What does "the patriarchy" mean to you? What exactly do you think is laudable about it?

Yes, yes, and yes! This is our "thing", our wheelhouse. April is Earth Month... It's not too late to plan LNT training, OC-focused hikes, conservation projects, etc to teach scouts to respect their mother 😉 Our pack just set the aim that our cubs should all master LNT by the time they leave us.

They have the lineage and the Scout Promise and Law to go with it, do they not? What makes you say that two aligned scouting organizations are only similar in name?

I'm not really sure what you mean by my program - the Cub Scout Program? Scouterna? For Cub Scouts, single-gender dens are allowed. In Scouterna I don't actually know because who would want that? Hard to imagine. So I'm going to guess that single-gender units are not allowed in Scouterna.

I'm not a lawyer, but given that they lost the trademark infringement lawsuit I don't see how they could win another as long as 'girl' isn't part of the new name. (E g Girl And Boy Scouts of America.) They might not like it, but girls can be WOSM NSO members and them's the rules. They are assured by the same rules that BSA under any name can't join WAGGGS, because the US MO slot is already taken by them, so I'm not sure what they'd be worried about. If the two organizations did merge in the future, I would expect the new joint organization to be both in WAGGGS and WOSM like most others. Pure p

Yes, this I agree with. I'm a cub scouter so haven't had to deal with this yet, but yes, it seems quite wasteful and/or muddling the leadership roles. I'm expecting that this will become obvious as this goes on and someone at National will say "this is dumb, let's just all scout together." It's also possible that what I see right around me will create on the ground pressure in the same direction. We have some tight-knit AOL, Webelos, and Bear dens in our pack that are talking about all picking the same troop to join. One AOL felt very strongly about a particular one, and so all of our AOL

Honest question - what additional support did you have in mind? All scouting is local, of course, but looking around I don't really notice anything missing for girls. Our council (Alamo Area) went out with a social media campaign to announce that girls are welcome that included boys saying they thought including girls was good, the pack closest to our house was a participant in the family pack program and so we're all scouting together as normal, and we were explicitly told we were welcome by the leaders and the male scouts never did a thing to imply otherwise. The old Cubmaster has said

Perhaps authorized practicioners of similar traditions, or tribe members with the proper authorization, can offer ceremony/sadhana from the old ways, the nameless religion, the Way, Shinto, Bön, Siberian shamanism, Samí old ways, etc at Scouts' Own if those ways are of more general interest.

Something's not right in at least some councils, I see. What mechanism is supposed to create transparency on the progress of the paperwork? Who's accountable, the SE?

That first conversation is why I haven't made it to any in-person training. It's not that I don't see the value, it's that my non-scout partner doesn't, at least not compared to having to run the household all by themselves.

Plus, coordinating on checking practices makes it easier to incorporate learning from all youth-serving organisations. One got through somewhere? Let's plug that hole everywhere. While protecting scouts is our job here, all normal adults want all children everywhere protected and if we could get there with a little coordination of procedures then let's do it!

Saw this today, adding it here in case this scanner tip is helpful to someone out there keeping scouts safe. Sounds like looking for lenses is the best way. Also makes sense in that you can't get rid of the lens no matter how small the electronics are. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/22/how-to-find-a-hidden-camera-in-a-hotel-room-or-house-we-tested-5-ways-.html

I earned a sewing merit badge that included sewing on my badges on my own scout shirt, so after that pride wouldn't let any of us have our parents sew the badges on anymore. (You could definitely tell at that point if we'd done it ourselves or not.) Just a tip to offload parents and encourage independence 😉 I'm not buying any badge glue, environmentally unfriendly plastic badge holders, or paying someone at council to sew my scout's badges on. No, I will sew theirs on the old-fashioned way that prepares you for life, so that mastering the skill yourself instead of working around your

Re: parental permissions - mine is only a cub, but digital parental policies are a hot topic at birthday parties and there is definitely a whole contingent of parents who will refuse to give scouts phones until they're older teenagers and will balk at Discord and a lot of social media and messaging apps. What can work will depend a fair bit on the scouts' parents' digital policies in addition to scouts' preferences so it might make sense to ask about that to avoid wasting time and/or making some scouts feel like "everybody" is allowed in corners of the Internet that they're not. (If momentum b

Things are always coming together, and things are always falling apart. It sounds like you've done more than your part to serve scouts. Thank you, and scout salute! 🫡

If it helps, here is a historian to point him to to back up what SSScout said. https://www.jstor.org/stable/572005 https://www.jstor.org/stable/572003 These are publicly available previews of an argument among historians about us and BP. As a scout yourself, you'll know who's right. Thank you for protecting your scouts and the movement as a whole.