AwakeEnergyScouter

1 hour ago, yknot said:

people like Jordan Peterson and James Damore which some of them posted to support their views, or others agreed with. The discussion dismayingly goes on for about 48 posts to page 8.  

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 level of civilized discourse so far. Can't say that for the Internet at large.

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 come with baggage. But the thing is, that baggage isn't just paranoia, and there are clear patterns in how misogyny plays out in Internet arguments. Maybe you - the reader - would never, but some would and do and keep going. So I gave you an explicit heads up on that I'm not going to be able to assume positive intent but here's something you can do real quick to show that you're not what I'm fearing.

The reason I asked for an explicit  acknowledgement of the equal human worth of men and women is that neither Schrödinger's unpleasant person or Angry Jack can bring himself to say that sort of thing, like he can't fire off that people of all skin colors have the same intrinsic human value or what-have-you. Can't make a clear moral stand on any specific aspect of the equal dignity of all human beings. So if you say similar things but have no problem saying "Oh I'm so sorry, of course men and woman have equal human value" you're obviously not Schrödinger's unpleasant person or manifesting as Angry Jack and the seeming similarity is my prejudice. Playing the plausible deniability is their game, so such a clear and straightforward acknowledgement of morality is anathema to them. They won't do it. Can't shift around in the shadows anymore and that's all the fun, trolling people from the shadows. Throw a bomb and retreat, throw another bomb and retreat and maybe play the victim to boot. Seen this game a million times and they're just trying to get a rise out of you. 

This, presumably, isn't anyone who's still here. I hope not. But I see what people who were so angry about girls being welcome said before they left, and, well... It fits certain patterns. Very familiar patterns. So I can see that being a scouter doesn't necessarily mean that someone recognizes my - or many of my scouts' - intrinsic human value. I'd like to think that in reality, all of you here do. But if someone posts the kinds of things Angry Jack or Schrödinger's unpleasant person might say, I can't be silent because that's part of the plan. If I speak up, it'll be joking (or persecution if it's Angry Jack). But if I don't, it's tacit approval. And anyone reading this should know that I will protect my scouts from that kind of BS, just like I will call the cops first and the council second if I see signs of CSA. So part of my duty is to take the attacks so my scouts won't have to. I hope.

Eagledad broke the pattern in a different way, though. He explicitly said I belong here and went on to say that there's no real practical harm in disagreeing and wished me a good weekend. Schrödinger's a-hole and Angry Jack never do stuff like that. They never stop going after you, they'll just keep shifting the arguments they're making even if it's not consistent. That's part of how you can tell the agenda is never the argument made, it's actually just going after outspoken women although they take care to find cover behind some other issue like "integrity in gaming journalism". And whatever they're claiming to be upset about is always the end of civilization, not a minor point. So while I don't think he made his point about gender segregation being required for developing the best character, it also doesn't really matter because it wasn't a front for that women are lesser than men. It's just a disagreement. Disagreement isn't a problem.

You might not be familiar with these patterns of behavior of others if you don't drift into the state of Angry Jack yourself and don't have friends who do. It is possible to live in a bubble of people with such similar good, strong morals that you just can't imagine what's actually going on somewhere else, and this could quite possibly apply to a good number of folks here.

So, here you go. If that's you - unfortunately it's a bubble, not all of reality. All of reality should be in the bubble so that it's not a bubble but we're not there yet. So people who can't stay in the bubble have to keep checking on whether they're inside or outside, but that's not a real reflection on people inside the bubble, it's a reflection on what's outside it.

@Eagledad, @qwazse, I'm not sure how you experienced this but if you truly had no idea of these patterns that others have worn grooves into the floor with then I'm sure my reaction seemed over the top. If that was the case, then I apologize.

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

On 2/6/2024 at 8:09 PM, Eagledad said:

Gender separation doesn't create integrity or character. Practicing the values of integrity and character develops integrity and character.  I can't find anything in the Oath and Law that has anything to do with gender. 

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.

7 hours ago, Eagledad said:

This has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of either gender. It's about providing a program that gives each the best opportunity for growth. We could just call the genders A & B, so the biases don't cloud the discussion.

Barry

Well, my friend, you entered this discussion waving a lot of flags that seem to be red, as did Qwazse in his post earlier. (Bringing up that gender integration is a mistake in response to someone saying that it was the best thing the BSA has done in 50 years, saying and confirming that you do not think that I or any of the other former scouts in my family have the best character or integrity, counting your life experience but not mine as evidence, declaring your experience as normal reality but mine as not normal, dismissing a classic movie based on a bestseller written by a counselor about girls' behavior as generalization without offering any specifics of your own.) 

Maybe others' past behavior has made me so weary that I'm seeing light pink flags as red, or perhaps they're actually white but the sun is setting.. So before jumping to conclusions, I'm asking you both to tell us what hex color your flags are. In response, you throw up more red-looking flags and refuse to answer. So... if I am mistaken, it shouldn't be hard to clear the misunderstanding up, right?

On 2/6/2024 at 8:09 PM, Eagledad said:

OK, I even looked up intrinsic human values and still didn't quite understand the question in reference to this discussion. But, I'm wondering if you view this discussion as males vs females. I know my part hasn't approached it that way. But, If males are different than females physically, is it so far out there to believe they instinctively and intellectually are different as well?

I view this conversation as a time to step in as a protector to see what this situation needs. My loyalty to the scouting movement may require that I protect scouts, mine and those in other units, from confused beliefs. Many people who say similar things to what you're saying here - and 100% what @qwazse said about patriarchy - do not believe that women have equal intrinsic value to men (and sometimes no intrinsic value at all, only extrinsic value), and this causes them to harm girls and women both mentally and physically, and like I said earlier scouters who believe that aren't going to be able to help the BSA grow. So clarification of whether you and Qwazse believe that both men and women have equal intrinsic value or not is very important. 

I thought that all Westerners were familiar with the philosophical concept of intrinsic human value. If you had to look it up, then perhaps I should clarify for all what I'm talking about.

Kant wasn't the first, but is in the West perhaps the best known proponent of the moral philosophy of intrinsic moral value, something he considered a moral categorical imperative.

“What is related to general human inclinations and needs has a market price; that which, even without presupposing such a need, conforms with a certain taste has a fancy price; but that which constitutes the condition under which alone something can be an end in itself has not merely a relative value, that is, a price, but an inner value, that is, dignity … Morality, and humanity insofar as it is capable of morality, is that which alone has dignity.” (Kant's Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals)

So, intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic value is for its own sake; in this case, that women are not valuable for their usefulness to men, but rather we have value for our own sake. It shows up as EU value number one:  Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected, protected and constitutes the real basis of fundamental rights. It shows up in a number of Mahayana sutras, such as (of course) the Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra, in these cases in a somewhat different philosophical system than Kant's. So - could you please confirm whether you do or do not believe that men and women have equal inherent human value?

2 hours ago, yknot said:

Well, I think a culture of growth would incorporate different attitudes and practices towards girls in scouting.

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.

1 hour ago, Eagledad said:

Yes. Each gender grows and matures differently and mixing the genders dilutes the strengths of the program for developing character and integrity.

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 is a very tight inverse relationship between how much time men spent around girls when they were kids - before puberty - and how much they objectify women. It's striking on the individual level and mirrors rape and other sexual assault statistics at a country level. Men who spent a lot of time around girls as children clearly have a much easier time recognizing that we are also human beings like them.

If gender segregation created people of high integrity and character, Saudi Arabia, India, and Pakistan should be paragons of integrity and character. I submit that they are not, because of the general lack of respect for women.

Or - and I want to clarify that I'm only asking because someone else actually brought this up earlier - do you think that viewing women as having the same intrinsic human value as men is also a mistake, and as such not related to character and integrity?

6 hours ago, Eagledad said:

So, mixing genders can, and does, interfere with the best potential of developing mature decision makers of integrity. For the best development of character and integrity, some folks would rather use the environment of single gender units, at least up to puberty. 

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?

47 minutes ago, qwazse said:

Sometimes, the patriarchy is worthy of the occasional nod.

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

3 hours ago, Jameson76 said:

True - oh so true.  When we are out and about during the outing closing etc leadership always tries to bring up that the state parks, WMA's, National Forest, National Battlefields etc are preserved areas and it takes support to keep them.  We mention that as Scouts we may have have camped / hike at the same place.  We need to do what we can to help preserve and promote the public lands.

Outdoor Code is more than 27 words and Leave No Trace needs to apply any time you are out in the woods.  BSA should be the experts in this and SMEs (Subject Matter Experts).

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.

3 minutes ago, fred8033 said:

The real issue is BSA and GSA are only similar in name; not much else.  Might as well say BSA should merge with 4H or Civil Air Patrol or Boys and Girl Clubs or etc, etc, etc.  

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?

47 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

Just curious, is there room in your program for units that want to be single-gender? Is it optional?

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.

1 hour ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

Girl Scouts of the USA (part of WAGGS) is simply not going to give up an $800 million dollar revenue stream to either 1) merge with the Boy Scouts of America (part of WOSM) and become one WOSM NSO, or 2) accept "Scouts of America, or Scouts USA"  as a trademark infringement which confuses their business model and target audience (although they lost that lawsuit...)

 

Finally, although in reality, a "Congressional Charter" doesn't mean squat, BSA clings to this designation as a basis to be the only legitimate Scouting organization for boys in the USA.  (Including the dog and pony show of an annual report to Congress required by the charter.) Changing their name might mean giving up their Congressional Charter, and therefore, some perceived legitimacy to monopolize/dominate the market

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 pattern guessing on my part, of course.

The Congressional Charter thing is interesting, never heard that. But it's also prima facie incorrect, and presumably National knows that.

2 hours ago, Ojoman said:

having separate units for girls seems unnecessary and burdensome. Especially when you can share sponsors, leadership, meeting space and even do events and activities together.

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 AOLs are going to that one. There are intertwined sibling and friendship ties from the current AOLs that would, if they do what they're talking about, lead to a dump of both girls and boys into that troop, which currently doesn't have a girl's troop. I have already been approached to ask if I'd be willing to be Scoutmaster for the female half of the troop the CO has been trying to start, because finding leaders has been the hangup.

So if this all plays out, the cubs that scouted together in Cub Scouts will continue to scout together in Scouts BSA, with a whole glob of adult leaders that believe in everyone scouting together following them to make it possible for them. Emotionally, they're one glob of scouts, no matter what the rules say. And with leaders that want to provide the experience of leading real-life groups - what's that going to look and feel like? Back to point one. Waste or a series of two-person committees with one man and one woman leading. 

You're also right about that if there are councils who aren't getting out there about not just letting people know but also being clear that girls are welcome they're just slacking on recruiting. It's clear from popcorn selling that there are still lots of people who aren't aware that girls and boys scout together in BSA now. We might be hyperaware here on this forum, but the public at large isn't.

Now that I think about it, there is one organizational change I'd like to see - the name of the WOSM NSO in the US. It doesn't make sense, and it's super awkward to imagine the gear with "Boy Scouts of America" in giant font on it on girl scouts. It's awkward enough to stick girls in uniforms that say "Boy Scouts of America". That made my husband very mad actually. Just Scouts of America or Scouts USA, something like that, makes sense.

I get that it would feel bittersweet at best. (Cue the people who are really angry about girls in BSA here.) But long-term... How long are we going to cling to naming ourselves after policies that no longer exist?

On 1/31/2024 at 3:42 PM, Ojoman said:

Adding girls to the program is a positive as it gives parents a 'one stop shop'. Girls have long wanted to be in the BSA. Sadly we are not properly supporting that aspect of membership. 

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 several times that even though they didn't seek out a family pack per se, he's glad they're in one in retrospect. Just had a conversation with another leader about the importance of learning to lead mixed-gender groups because that's what the real world is like. So, no question that we're welcome.

Now, from this forum I can see that it's likely that there is hostility left somewhere out there, but I personally only see it on the Internet. But that seems to be a people problem, not a program problem.

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 lack of it is the bar set for my scout. They now have my old knife, they'll get my needles too when they're ready 😂

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 builds around a tool that some scouts are explicitly forbidden from using.)

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.

Please don't throw any stones, but what was so dangerous about making the raft and sailing it? Is that a heavily trafficked shipping lane with oceangoing ships or something? I did the same thing at summer camp as an ordinary landlubber scout with the difference that we sailed a lake. Patrol competition. It was super fun. Still seems safe to me. We all had horseshoe collar life vests, and of course we were about to be missed and immediately spotted if the raft were to fall apart out on the lake.