My wife tried running a Girl Scout Troop. They are a complete poop show compared to the BSA. Poor organization, poor progression. They provide little to no support for the troop leaders. I'm so excited about the Boy Scouts changing their name to Scouts and admitting girls.
About time.
72Subabeetle said:In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
This is another example of the leftist liberal berkeley-tards ruining a good thing.
Well then please enjoy reminiscing about history as this is where you will be relegated... Aslo.. Mr. New Reader.. this is what we call a flounder. Leave this talk out of our forum... listen to your elders.
I was also a boy scout and you know what.. I'm good with this and as a father of a girl.. completely good with it..
We should keep them fags from being troop leaders, too. Don't want kids catching the gay. 
The Girl Scouts are likely unhappy about this.
spin_out said:The Girl Scouts are likely unhappy about this.
Based on the ONE post about it- had they been doing a better job, this may not have ever happened.
Like boys, not all girls enjoy the same stuff.
Fueled by Caffeine said:72Subabeetle said:In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
This is another example of the leftist liberal berkeley-tards ruining a good thing.
Well then please enjoy reminiscing about history as this is where you will be relegated... Aslo.. Mr. New Reader.. this is what we call a flounder. Leave this talk out of our forum... listen to your elders.
I was enjoying the fact that he shared a different, contrary opinion based on personal experience...until that last line.
As for the topic at hand, I was never a boy scout and don't have kids, so I have no dog in this fight. I am interested to hear more opinions about it. I have a friend that was employed full time by the Scouts as a fund raiser. Her son is an Eagle Scout and currently thru-hiking the AT solo before starting college. She absolutely loved scouting until she worked for them. We've discussed the changes. I find the different experiences and outlooks on this fascinating.
In reply to ultraclyde :
Yeah he really screwed the pooch on that last line.
One of my employees used to be an employee of the BSA. It's a bit of a tough org. They have high expectations with low levels of investment. I get the impression it's like working for a PE firm...
72Subabeetle said:In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
As an Eagle Scout, I have to disagree. This will dramatically change the tone of Boy Scouts as girls are different in so many ways than boys. (I am a father of 2 girls myself). Boy Scouts allowed me the freedom to grow up and be a 'boy' outside of my parents oversight. Adding girls to the mix right when puberty hits will create nothing but drama. We went camping 10 weekends a year and backpacking for a week in the summer. If there had been girls on these trips I would have forgotten about nature and spent my time trying to get in their pants.
Just to clarify, everything that I'm reading about it says that the plan is to have the Scout units be separated by gender. So boys won't have girls in their units or vice versa. This should eliminate concerns about issues that might arise having teenage boys and girls in the same groups. As far as I can tell, this change just allows young girls to do the same scouting activities as young boys if they want to. That seems fine with me.
Scouting has been coed for over two decades in Canada. We haven't seen any issues.
My eldest Daughter has been involved for close to 20 years and is now a troop leader. She loves it.
Fueled by Caffeine said:My wife tried running a Girl Scout Troop. They are a complete poop show compared to the BSA. Poor organization, poor progression. They provide little to no support for the troop leaders.
I am an ex-Girl Scout troop leader, and this is absolutely the truth. My wife and I co-ran a troop for 5-6 years. We finally gave up and quit when GSA moved away from the badge system, which offered tons of hands-on, real experiences in new activities most of the girls may never had opportunity to try. Instead the national organization forced us into some new "Journeys" program which was the same watered-down socialization / anti-bullying / whatever crap the kids were already getting plenty of at school and everywhere else.
Eventually it was all pretty much filler between fundraising campaigns. It was fun while it lasted but by the time we finally gave up we totally hated it.
My wife as a Girl Scout, I was a Boy Scott to Life (troop disbanded because not enough scouts were interested in Eagle).
My wife hated the experience, said it was way to gender-norm-reinforcing. Always wished she could be out camping, making camp fires, backpacking, doing archery, etc.
She'll be stoked to hear this news, as she always said "if I have a daughter I want them in Boy Scouts even if they are the only girl."
My kids are no longer in scouting. It's been clear for a while now that the organization is heading in the wrong direction.
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
once they got away from the short shorts and high sockls.. It was all down hill after that.
For what it's worth, I remember my mom telling me stories of being in Girl Scouts when I was 6 or 7. I thought that it was cool, and asked if I could join. The feeling I got when my mom told me I couldn't because I was a boy was awful. It didn't occur to me that my gender, or anyone's, would be an issue.
I can be the only kid, boy or girl, who felt this way.
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
Hey, now. Those aren't short shorts. They're just shorts. Everybody wore shorts like that in the 70's. Check some old NBA footage. That stuff they're wearing now aren't even shorts. They're Capri's!
Fashion. I refuse to be a slave to it! 
So are the girl Scouts going to be accepting boys now too?
On the surface, I think this is stupid as hell.
But I'm also still under the assumption the girl Scouts did the same things the boy Scouts did, except being all female. If that isn't the case, then this is fine and makes some sense.
Anymore it seems like the scouts organizations, both of them, are just ways of teaching kids to fundraise and little else, so if this can start teaching people some life skills again I'm all for it.
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
The boyscouts carried those short shorts through the early 1990's as uniform.. I remeber look at them and going, no thanks back int he day.
When I was a scout, we'd sometimes do joint activities with the Canadian scouts, who are co-ed. They always seemed like they were having just as much fun as we were, and maybe even a little more. I say we follow the rest of the world's scouting example and let everyone get in on exploring the great outdoors
RevRico said:So are the girl Scouts going to be accepting boys now too?
Who cares.. they are such a poorly run organization they are litterally only around because of their cookies.. Given a good alternative for girls, they will go away.
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
That really is all they do anymore isn't it?
Aside from buying cookies and popcorn, I've been away from scouting for 20 years, I have no idea what they do these days.
are camping, archery, fire starting, animal identifications, bird house building still things that get done? I've been concerned that fun activities had been deemed "unsafe" by the fun police.
At least with my daughter turning 3 this year, there should be time to get things sorted out by the time she's old enough to join groups like that.
werent adventure patrols co-ed?
I stayed in until first class and coasted until I moved and didnt hook up with a new troop.
Every bit I have heard about girlscouts seemed to indicate that they werent teaching anywhere near the same skills that BSA was and was much more fundraising based. I did A LOT of volunteer work and high adventure activity in scouts, I actually miss it. Looking forward to getting re-involved when my son gets old enough.
The first problem is, girl scouts were founded at a time where every girl was supposed to grow up and be June cleaver. God forbid one wanted to do something harder than cook a pot roast.
The second problem is on both sides. Both organizations are so archaic in so many respects that the sheer concept of letting boys and girls mix, or letting girls do "boy stuff", or letting boys do "girl stuff" is on par with the berkeleying moon landing in terms of outlandish. They stuck to their guns for way too long, and society moved on without them. BSA survived because BEING A MAN is a traditional value that's only being challenged with this generation. Combine that with the aforementioned organization (and the fact that they do really teach better life skills than GSA I'd argue) and BSA would have probably continued for at least one more generation. Gsa was doomed the minute someone figured out that girls should be equal, and starting allowing their daughters to do stuff.
As far as letting boys and girls mix- YMCA has been doing it for decades. I went to summer camp (with girls, holy E36 M3!) Back in the 80s. My parents did it in the 60s. I'm fairly sure no one got pregnant, and we were our own clothes. No offense to anyone, but BSA uniforms are about as attractive as the virgin keeper glasses they give you in the military. Ill probably regret saying this, but I doubt theres a sexy boy scout calendar out there.
I just finished my one and only year as a Cub Scout Assistant Den Leader. I won't be going back. And not because of the girls thing. I found the organization to be poorly run, at all levels. Granted at the Troop and Den level it is all volunteer based, but every single aspect of the organization seems to be unorganized, timid, and lame. You tell kids "join the Scouts, we'll be outside camping and shooting bb gun, bows and arrows, and making fires". Yeah once a year there is a large camp out with all that, and once a year there is a Troop camp out. But it isn't boys being boys. It's boys sleeping in a tent and doing crafts outside. I won't go into the Pinewood Derby cars made by parents, or the ridiculous price of popcorn sales with very little coming back to the organization or Troop, or that you can't discipline and wild child without if having some weird ramifications...
What ended my whole thing was when my son said he didn't want to do scouts anymore, because "it's not fun anymore". That was all I needed to hear. We finished out this year and we are no done.
The only good thing I can see from our scouts experience is that our Troop participated in a flag remembrance ceremony at one of the camp outs. My son still talks about that and how it made him feel.
In reply to octavious :
My son is saying the same thing and I doubt we will be back next year.
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