There was once a time when a parent, usually a father, wanted his son to join the Boy Scouts. It was an opportunity for his son to do boy things. Make campfires. Tie knots. Dads gave their sons pocket knives so they would have a tool on them when they needed to fix something, cut something, even just whittle a stick in a down moment. Guy stuff.
I was never a boy scout. One of my best childhood friends was, and his father was the Scoutmaster. They kept trying to get me to join, even invited me to the Jamboree. But I declined. It wasn’t that I didn’t like doing guy stuff. I did. It was just that I wasn’t big on joining things.
My son wasn’t a boy scout. I offered him the opportunity, but he declined. He, too, likes doing guy stuff, and we had great times doing it together, but he wasn’t a joiner either.
One of my son’s friends was a boy scout, going for Eagle. He asked me to be his counsel at his Eagle Scout interview. I did, and I was honored to do so. He was a great kid, and I put in a surprising amount of time learning what I needed to know to guide him through.
But the Boy Scouts of America struggled with changing norms, particularly when the issue arose of whether a gay man could be a scoutmaster. It was an understandable conflict, there being a long tradition of confusion about homosexuality and a strong, perhaps impenetrable, bias against it. But just as a heterosexual man doesn’t go around molesting young girls, there was no logic to the prejudice that a homosexual man would go around molesting young boys.
Being a scoutmaster had nothing to do with sexuality, fears to the contrary notwithstanding. And so, the Boy Scouts of America eventually lifted its ban on gay leaders. Then gay boy scouts, because who cares about a scout’s sexual preference? This wasn’t a sex club. It was irrelevant.
The issue now was whether the Boy Scouts of America would accept a transgender scout. And this time, with less fanfare or prejudice, they did.
It took several decades of legal challenges and funding boycotts for the Boy Scouts of America to lift its ban on openly gay Scout leaders in 2015. Remarkably, organization leaders deliberated for just a few weeks before deciding to allow transgender male scouts to participate in all programs.
This sensible policy, announced on Monday, came about after Joe Maldonado, a transgender boy from New Jersey who turned 9 on Wednesday, was expelled from his Cub Scout pack late last year. “I’m way more angry than sad,” he told The Record newspaper at the time. “My identity is a boy. If I was them, I would let every person in the world go in. It’s right to do.”
Well done, BSA. If a person who is anatomically a girl sincerely wishes to live his life as a boy, what difference should that make to anyone?
That simple, yet profound, logic persuaded the national organization to update its admission policy. Instead of accepting only boys whose birth certificates list their gender as male, the organization will now welcome boys who identify as such in an application form.
Well, let’s not get crazy. That was not “logic,” profound or otherwise. That was values, and the value of accepting a young person into an organization dedicated to making boys into men because that’s who they are and what they hope to become is a wonderful value. To the extent this means there will have to be an accommodation at the Jamboree, so what? They can handle it. That’s what men do.
What might seem like a small administrative change sends a powerful message of inclusion at a time when transgender people are having to fight in courts, legislatures and schools for basic rights and dignity.
Is that the message it sends? Because if so, then the message is somewhat conflicted. The nature and existence of the Boy Scouts isn’t about turning males into genderfluid advocates, but about turning boys, or those who choose to be boys, into men.
Is there something wrong with being male, with wanting to do the things males want to do, males enjoy doing? Is the only good male a female? Is masculinity toxic? Apparently, Joe Maldonado from New Jersey doesn’t think so, because he’s chosen to join the Boy Scouts.
Will it be acceptable for a transgender male to want to be a guy, but unacceptable for those born with male genitalia to want to do guy stuff? The problem here isn’t that transgender youths shouldn’t be allowed to join the Boy Scouts, but whether a group called the Boy Scouts should be allowed to exist at all, given that its purpose is to accomplish something that the deeply prejudiced despise: turn boys into men.
You can’t have it both ways. And frankly, it doesn’t really matter whether you like the Boy Scouts, or what they do, or what any young man, transgender or otherwise, wants to do with his time. Men don’t need the permission of women or the New York Times to be men. They just are. And welcome to any transgender youth who also wants to grow up to be a man.
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I must honestly say that I am conflicted by BSA’s decision to allow transgender boys into the organization. On the one hand, I don’t wish to unfairly discriminate, but on the other hand I fear for some of the problems this will create.
I guess I’m just glad to that my two older boys got the Eagles and aged out and my youngest is one step away from his Eagle rank. I have too many real battles to fight . . .
That the BSA continues to exist at all is something of a shock, given the trends. There may be no clubs for boys of any gender identity soon.
I have not been involved with BSA since the late 1980s, but even then the program was in trouble, and it would have been worse without a close alliance with the Latter Day Saints. I don’t know what enrollment is now, but back then the Cub Scout program was much stronger than the Boy Scouts per se. Cub Scouting is a much more family-involved program.
BSA has one more hurdle to cross due to a requirement to profess belief in an “higher power.” They have made it as vague and multi-cultural as possible, but it’s still there (as best I could tell from a quick Google this AM).
I think the emphasis on the outdoors gets to be harder sell as the country gets more urbanized. Hiking and building fires doesn’t have that much to do with manhood in the city. The Girl Scouts have done better at serving urban populations.
“Hiking and building fires doesn’t have that much to do with manhood in the city”
Half a million preppers can’t be wrong! Maybe that’s where scouting has ended up. Baden Powell must be rolling in his grave about the political correctness, but he would understand the preppers..
I just want to know why the Boy Scouts get to have all the fun, when the Girl Scouts I remember were incredibly boring. Seriously, I wanted to be a Boy Scout, even though I have always been and continue to be contentedly female, because they do the fun stuff. I’ve read recent commentary on this topic where quite a few other women expressed this regret/wish, so it’s not just me.
It may not be just you who wants to be in the boy scouts, but it’s just you that this comment is about. All about you, which is great because you are the most fascinating person in the world.
Don’t know why girls would want to do Boy Scout things, like wear that cool olive drab Timex field watch, when there’s a perfectly accurate clock in front of the stove.
What? Too soon in this administration for jokes like this?
I have one of those Timex watches on a cool Nato strap. Great for when I’m working outdoors. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking.
In Canada, the Scouting program went co-ed some time ago, pretty much exactly for that reason. The girls-only program was perceived as being, well, relentlessly boring, so all the girls wanted to join the boy’s program.
Better solution might be to make the Girl Scouts interesting, rather than take the Boy out of Boy Scouts.
It’s great the Boy Scouts are letting transgender boys in. The very existence of transgender people should make it obvious to the toxic masculinity, raise everyone neutral, gender is a social construct crowd that ‘men’ and ‘women’ aren’t a collective mass delusion. So let the boy be a boy. Let all the boys be boys. And make Girl Scouts interesting so the girls can have fun learning scout things while being girls.
That the girl scout troop was boring is a failure of the local girl scout troop leaders, the volunteer women who run the troop, not with the GSA, the district or service groups, or even remotely the BSA. My girls go camping, riding, work on outdoor and indoor projects, do archery, indoor skydiving, swimming and CPR, learn tech and mechanical skills, etc. The women who lead the troop are from all political stripes and backgrounds, and the one thing that spans the group is they are very goal driven people who “make it happen”, not stand around and complain. Each troop has pretty wide latitude on what they can do, and the service groups are pretty supportive, and actively coaching the volunteer parents on what’s available to them.
My youngest’s troop is taking a cruise this summer. The oldest troop has a very active out of state camp planned. One of the girls in the troop is going surfing in Costa Rica, another is going to London. (yes, chaperoned, but away from her parents)
If the troop isn’t doing what you wanted, your parents could have formed a troop of their own with that in mind. Each of my girls had a choice of two, formed when there were different desires, and have switched troops when they felt like it. At times they do joint activities, then go their own way for the next one.
“The Boy Scouts get all the fun stuff” is a cop out. I could point out other, similar cop outs that I see adults engage in, who refuse to take the slightest responsibility for their own happiness and success, but then blame sexism or racism for sitting on their ass.
The Boy Scouts don’t have a monopoly on the activities you wanted to do. That your girl scout troop elected to do something else is not the BSA’s fault. Blaming the boys for not letting you in isn’t the answer. (I hardly think that wearing a uniform and getting their badges and insignia are the activities you’re speaking of.)
For that matter, BSA formed what’s now called “Venturing”, and young women were allowed to be involved since 1969.
The boy scouts’ primary thing is to let boys learn how to be men, from men, and the same for girl scouts. My girls are there to learn, from women, how to be competent, capable women who demonstrate their own initiative, leadership, team building and agency.
This post really isn’t about whether Girl Scouts are boring. Don’t let DE take you down the rabbit hole with her.
Boy Scouts wasn’t founded to turn boys into men but to raise military readiness of the general population.
When founded in 1910, it’s purpose was “to teach [boys] patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred values.” In 1937, it’s mission statement was: “Each generation as it comes to maturity has no more important duty than that of teaching high ideals and proper behavior to the generation which follows.” So while preparation for the military would hardly be a bad thing, that was not its mission.
Am Eagle Scout. My scoutmaster liked to do life and history of lord Baden Powell at campfires. Lots of quotes and history that support the military preparedness view as to Powell’s motivation when founding.
I suppose I came off too argumentative as there is certainly an aspect of cultivating men in the culture, I just wanted to point out the impetus for the actual founding.
If you say so.