Don’t let the National Council down in Irving fool you. This whole “girls in Boy Scouts” is less about SJWism than it is about membership numbers, which have been falling rapidly over the past couple of decades despite everything National has tried to stop it.
But I feel like the BSA has finally gone down a road that has a cliff at the end of it.
As a youth, I never felt the need to have girls in the troop; that’s what Girl Scouts were for. As a currently-active adult leader, despite what I’ve grumbled about in earlier posts, I can’t really say much about the whole “girlz” issue, since my current active leadership is in a Venture crew (which has allowed girls since the Venture program began — albeit they have to be at least 14 and they can’t (or couldn’t) participate in regular Scout advancement).
But I’m about ready to retire from active Scouting (again) in a couple more years, as I’ve also mentioned before. The policies coming out of Irving don’t jibe with my concept of the way Scouting ought to be, although I’ve felt that way since they tried to make the program more “urban” in the early 1970’s. And by “urban” I don’t mean “more black”, because I don’t give a shit what color you are. By “urban” I mean “less emphasis on camping and fieldcraft”. And the changes that were made back then to advancement — specifically “skill awards” — were just a sop to the concept of instant gratification.
The entire operation has been numbers-driven for years. At one point I had several separate registrations (because you have to have a registration for every position you hold) — and they all had different registration numbers. Not, as you might expect, the same registration number across the board indicating that I was one person holding several positions, but so far as the records showed, I was multiple people holding one position apiece. I was told that they were counted that way, too, inflating the numbers to make the organization look bigger than it really was.
I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I can’t imagine any other reason for it.
But the dirty little secret for many years was that we had a lot fewer people than we were claiming.
And that’s the only real reason I can see for letting girls into the program now. There’s no good SJW reason to do it; there are plenty of male-only organizations in the US (the regular Freemasons haven’t yet admitted women — knowingly — and probably will be the last holdouts) and the whole feminist attack on males is pretty much spent, in my book.
What is truly sad is that the program at both National and local council levels has been aimed for years at numbers and making SJWs happy — and not so much at making boys into men.