Thoughts on scouting

I've long been dubious about girl scouting, confessing that I'm an avid indoorsman at heart, and but more importantly, because any wannabe efforts to channel girls' energies to mirror boys' are shallow constructs. Boys work naturally well together, for the most part (brawling aside, which eventually mushrooms up amidst most activities). Their brains seem acclimated to team efforts, since men from of old have had to collaborate to slay the woolly mammoth and build barns adequate to surviving periods of want. Women work more independently, sharing skills, learning from mentors, and arranging their lives around the needs of family and the inevitable chores.

 It is no wonder that little girls looked enviously at their brothers who joined the Boy Scouts and frowned upon their own stitching, which is boring compared to slingshots and penknives. But creating a feminine alternative to the boys' group is more difficult than what is surmised at first glance. What is the end of scouting?

For boys, it's to build manly skills that a group of wise older folk found helpful in their own lives. Little feats of engineering are both instructive in the physical application and the satisfaction that a man finds in taking ownership of his piece of turf and turning it to his ends. Is that what girls want? I don't know, but some who lead girls now do surmise what girls need: freedom from patriarchy and oppressive family constructs. From the 51st Girl Scout National Council Session and Convention held recently in Indianapolis:

Patriotism has been replaced with globalism. This year, the traditional flag ceremony was trashed. The girls didn't respectfully carry the U.S. flag into the hall. Instead, it was bunched together with the flags of other countries and pulled in by a golf cart to the nonsensical – some say drug related – '70s Chicago tune "25 or 6 to 4." After the girls recited the promise, the band broke into "September" by Earth, Wind and Fire.

Keynote speakers included left-wing political activists actress Geena Davis, who starred in "Commander in Chief," and former Ms. Foundation President Marie Wilson, who founded the White House Project and Take Your Daughter to Work Day.

On the way to these sessions, the Girl Scouts could visit displays that feature the Sophia Dolls collection to help them find their "inner goddess." According to the manufacturer, which donates a percentage of all sales to the Girl Scouts, these dolls "serve as a personal empowerment tool by allowing you or your daughter to connect with inner wisdom to guide in expanding and balancing life roles."

The highlight of the convention was the unveiling of the latest "Journeys" program inspired by the Ashland Institute and created with the help of Brian Bacon of the Oxford Leadership Academy, who is a practitioner and teacher of the Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga and a "senior member" of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. These programs are billed as a "leadership experience." Girls are encouraged to become "agents of change" – ah, there's that word again – for the global good.

These programs are egocentric and devoid of any mention of family. There is a strong anti-boy tone. Instead of mother and father, the books refer to "trusted adults." Gone is the Judeo-Christian tradition on which the Girl Scouts was founded. The emphasis is on moral relativism and "self." The books are salt and peppered with Eastern religious practices. Girls are encouraged to make a Zen garden, use yoga and martial arts as a form of relaxation and use a Japanese tea ceremony to "clear the mind."

Now others [in combox responding to the article above] strongly reject the notion that Juliet Gordon Low ever meant for the Girls Scouts to embody Christian principles, noting that she included Native American folklore and ceremonies from the start. The Girl Scout statement on diversity is solid enough, though it may be doublespeak for a hidden agenda. Time will tell. Fair enough. But it's troubling to see that a search for "motherhood" comes up with ... nothing. ("Parenthood," evidently, is not on the agenda, either.)

Many good things are fostered (nota bene: mainstreaming ssa is among the projects honoured), but overall, one would have to say, caveat emptor.

Comments

[Karen]

So, going outdoors is not feminine? I'm going to ask again for you to please list the Approved Female Activities so that I can be sure I don't accidentally trespass into male territory, even though I really think that being feminine by your definition means being a cowardly dimwitted weakling.

[gsk]

Karen: please take off your "angry goggles" when you read my posts so that you don't misconstrue what I'm saying. I personally never liked scouting because I'm not outdoorsy. Any spare time -- in childhood and now -- is spent curled up with a book. Inside.

Now my preferences are simply ... preferences. They have nothing to do with gender identity.

The reason I questioned whether scouting is a naturally feminine pursuit is because of its structure -- which imitates a naturally male model. I said that I didn't think that women were inclined to group activities as much as boys were -- but it doesn't mean that such women are unfeminine.

In my bizarre worldview, I still think women can camp, and hunt and fish and even ski.

[gsk]

BTW, Karen, you've asked this same question before and I answered here:

http://feminine-genius.typepad.com/femininegenius/2008/09/taking-on-now.html#comment-form

and here:

http://feminine-genius.typepad.com/femininegenius/2008/05/great-family-fu.html#comment-form

I would think that if you're sincerely interested in the topic, you would stop dangling pejorative questions having to do with stereotypes and agree with me that sex differences suggest different approaches to engaging life to the fullest.

[Teresa]

LOL -- I liked your "...I'm an avid indoorsman at heart..." comment -- I think I might use that one, if you don't mind! I was in scouting for a brief couple of years. I liked everything BUT camping. A cold, damp, spider-riddled tent was not fun for me and I always returned home with a miserable cold. I thought your statement was a funny one and I understood it to be a personal reflection, not an indictment on girls who like the outdoors. I think when some women get a little touchy and react knee-jerkily, they tend to promote the stereotype that women are too high strung... and dimwitted.

[K]

Caveat emptor indeed. I'm a mom of a Girl Scout and I help lead our troop. The GS program is indeed a pale imitation of the far far better Boy Scouting program, and has been taken over by rad-fems at the national level. However, at the girl level, the experience is entirely up to the leaders involved. Our group is very traditional, very family-centered. We focus on providing a variety of fun & educational activities for the girls that they might not otherwise get in school/family/whatever. Some girls even enjoy the camping, ya know?

As for the new programs, you mentioned "Journeys," these come and go. We review them thoroughly and take what is good and leave the rest. It's not rocket science. We leader-moms know these programs are written by urban childless women with advanced degrees, not by experienced mothers -- it is so obvious, and therefore easy to amend. We do not consider ourselves enslaved in any way to the orders of anyone at national. And there are good things in the programs, and we are glad to take those things away with us.

We had one older girl "go global" and participate in one of the official GS international travel events -- a rare thing, truth to tell -- and she was accompanied every step of the way by her mother. As always, it boils down to mothers being mothers -- being there, being aware, providing guidance. If the mother is out of the picture, all kinds of nonsense can ensue, but then that's nothing new.

In fact, there are a handful of girls in our troop who could use a little more mothering than what they're getting at home, and I have seen our leaders provide some of that for them. If not for our GS troop, a couple of girls would not know how to pack clothes for a trip, for example. In that sense, what we do is an outreach ministry, even if the national rad-fems would have a cow if they knew that.

Like they say in the movie "ignore the man [in this case rad-fem women] behind the curtain. The national level publicity does not reflect the reality of the individual troops with mothers firmly in charge.

[gsk]

How blessed those girls are to have you and your companions to guide them, K! I think you've amplified my points, as well as making the case for subsidiarity -- which is an essential point for families and other communions of persons. The feminine genius is exemplified when your "antennae" pick up on the specific needs and then provide for them with love. I'm so impressed!

[Renee]

I was a girl scout for some time as a child, it is up to the leader of the troop. They only reason I stuck in it, was that they needed someone to sell cookies in the neighborhood because the other girls got older. Girls don't even sell cookies anymore, their parents simply do it for them or they set up shop in front of Walmart.

[Enbrethiliel]

+JMJ+

Genevieve, your post reminds me of something slightly off topic . . .

Does anyone remember the 80s movie "Troop Beverley Hills"? The troop mother is an indoors woman herself. There's a hilarious scene in which she rings up another troop mother to complain that they shouldn't have been assigned a camping spot where it rained! =P Later that night, she checks her entire troop into the Beverley Hills hotel; and when called on her decision, she says (and I paraphrase!): "Ten girls and one bathroom? That's really roughing it!"

Anyway, a fellow troop mother who can't stand her tries to report all her activities--from diamond appraisal to runway modeling--to the head of the girl guides. The head simply points out that the only thing all the "evidence" proves is that the troop mother took an active interest in her girls, which was more than anyone else ever did for them.

I wouldn't mind having a troop mother like that!

[gsk]

Sounds kind of cute, actually. I guess it boils down to the age-old question: "Who is taking an active interest and why?"

No doubt most have sincere motives (even many of those pushing for contraception squads in schools) but then it falls to us to discern what is really in the girls' best interest. When it's more political or financial than personal, that's the problem. Secondary to my primary concern: "how to structure girls' activities," but also compelling and foundational.

[lar]

I was part of 'Girl Guides" for many years and i loved it.
In Australia there are Scouts and Girl Guides.BUT for some silly reason there are girls in the Scouts so they are no longer "boy Scouts". Us Girl Guides HATED the girl Scouts - we saw them as being butch try hards.

We did go camping and do some outdoor activities but mostly we did crafts, cooking,games and talked. I think that we had a very womanly approach.

Our uniform was also a lot different from the scouts - we had blue tops and a cross between a skirt and pants - i can't remember what they are called.

[Enbrethiliel]

+JMJ+

Lar:

Oh, dear! You don't mean bloomers, do you??? ;)

[gsk]

I think she means koulottes (or coulottes?) I remember that Linda Evans always wore them on "The Big Valley" when she rode horseback. Brilliant invention.

[Warren]

Juliette Gordon Lowe might have been kind of "new agey" for her day, but the early girl scout movement, like the early boy scout movement which Juliette was clearly copying, which was founded by Baden Powell on clearly Christian principles,
started out very Christian at the ground level, in the basements of Churches, and in the gymnasiums of Catholic and Protestant (christian) schools, across the US and Canada.

They have both been on a slow and steady march away from those principles. As christian values evaporate from the culture at large, Scouting (the male version) has certainly left every trace of Christian feeling behind. For boys who are Catholic, for instance, there exist alternatives like the Baden Powell Explorers, a group very much returning not only to the Christian roots of the Scouting movement, but also to his original outdoor and camping skills focus.

Should girls have outdoors skills and camping experiences? I think so. But then I think such decisions ought to be carefully considered on a case by case basis. A great many girls would probably very much enjoy an all-girls camping and outdoor skills programme, if it is consistent with the other values that her parents are trying to instill in her. I cannot recommend Girl Guides (in Canada) or Girl Scouts, if they embrace the same awful new-age values that the Scouts currently do. Here in Canada we have Girl Guides (girls only) and Scouts (one troupe for boys and girls, although oddly enough the local troupe I was a leader in had zero girls in it ever).

I absolutely detest the new-age angle, and I think that young boys and girls should have their own groups with only boys and only girls. Scouts is ruined in Canada, for these twin reasons.

My sons have some interest in this and I will see about the catholic BP Explorers group. If there was a girls catholic or even merely christian group, that did camping and outdoor skills, I fail to see how this would be then a bad idea for girls, or "unfeminine". Surely learning to build a campfire, cook on a campfire, read a compass, tie some knots, and so on, learning to survive in the real raw world as it naturally exists, is a human survival skill, and therefore valuable to both boys and girls.

Warren

[bkinfo]

At the core of Brahma Kumari practises is spirit mediumship.

Anyone becoming involved in their "soft sell" sales pitch should be aware of this.

Their mediation is not some "ancient" yoga practise. It is only 50 or 60 years old. It is the submission of mind to a spirit entity that speaks through their trance mediums and which they believe is the god of all religions.