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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   22481 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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According to an anonymously leaked preliminary memo the US military will be cutting ties with Scouting America (formerly the Boy Scouts of America). This will reportedly amount to ending logistical and medical support for the annual Jamboree, ending the use of military installations as meeting locations for Scout troops, and possibly ending the practice of conferring rank/pay benefits on Eagle Scouts.

The reasoning given is that "the group once known as the Boy Scouts is no longer a meritocracy and has become an organization designed to "attack boy-friendly spaces"", "for being "genderless" and for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.", and because "the Scouts have strayed from their mission to "cultivate masculine values."".

"Scouting America has undergone a significant transformation," the memo states. "It is no longer a meritocracy which holds its members accountable to meet high standards."

I've spoken out before as a defender of the organization, especially against the slimy, "damn you for doing better than anyone else and still feeling bad about your failures" child abuse bullshit. I've pitched it to other adults, specifically citing the fact that the astronaut program used to use Eagle as a tie breaker. I was a Scout myself (I made Life; my troop fell apart over interpersonal conflicts before I even began the push the Eagle, and I never bothered finding a new one). And I was an adult volunteer as a Den Leader.

Key word there: was.

And a large part of that is because the criticisms alluded to in that memo are not wrong... though I don't think it's necessarily the result of "feminizing leftist attacks". I think the problem is much older, much more structural, and more fundamental to the gender war in general.

Let's roll back thirty-odd years. I was one of those kids who loved asking extremely awkward questions. I was smart enough to notice certain things, and too socially stupid to realize why without just blurting it out. On one occasion, I ended up sitting next to my Den Leader in his basement while we did some crafting project.

And, with the innocence of a child, I asked: "Hey, Mr. Den Leader. You're the Den Leader, right?"

He looked down at me with his usual surly, dour mien. "Yeah."

"So, why does your wife do all the work?"

Suffice to say, this did not endear me to him, nor improve his demeanor. Later in life I better understood the elements in play, like "construction worker with chronic back pain". But the point stands that in an organization theoretically inclined towards "cultivating masculine virtues", the first five years were mostly run by women and involved an awful lot of arts and crafts projects.

This dynamic stood out even more as an adult. In the Cub Scout Pack I volunteered for, I was the only male Den Leader. We had a dad serve as Quartermaster, and another who was a nebulous Committee Member. But every other Den Leader, the Treasurer, the Secretary and the Cub Master were all moms.

I don't want this to seem like I'm attacking those women. I was quite grateful to the Cub Master (who was also a Den Leader) in particular. She was a no-nonsense, hard-headed woman... by the standards of morbidly obese women who work in HR. The problem is not that the moms stepped up.

The glaring problem is that the dads didn't.

How the hell is Scouts supposed to foster masculine virtues when there's no men to serve as examples? It's the exact same problem as all the elementary teachers being women.

The second, compounding and reinforcing, problem is the program itself. Here is the actual Cub Scout program, running from Lion to Arrow of Light, roughly K-5th grade. Each of those activities awards a belt loop, and they call them "adventures", which is honestly kind of insulting to adventure. Take a few minutes and peruse a few, if you're unfamiliar. See anything that deserves to be called an adventure?

The overwhelming majority of the program is designed to be (I'm going to be blunt here) bonus social studies classes for the biggest pussies in the grade, with a side dish of "technically counts as a gym class, if we're being generous to the huge pussies".

Oh, and I guess once or twice a year, starting in the back half, they get to shoot the simplest, safest bows or BB guns at targets 10 feet away for 10-15 minutes.

Gosh golly, that sure sounds like something that should be worth a bonus rank in the military, right?

It felt like most of the fun, exciting, interesting, vigorous or masculine things we did were things I brought to the table. Like I had to fight the program to do anything cool. The official program doesn't even call for a single one mile hike until Bear - third grade. I had those boys out and loose on every park and wild area in a 45 minute radius every month. That was the part they enjoyed and cared about. The social studies lessons in between? Boring as fuck. I'm the one who took the initiative to teach them about tracking and dangerous animals and poisonous plants. For an organization that was always styled as teaching literary Native American style woodscraft, the entire program is designed to be completed at a school playground.

The very first meeting that I hosted as a Den Leader, I cut up dozens of slips of paper with the virtues of the Scout Law printed on them, then put them in balloons I blew up. I scattered them all around the meeting room, and handed the boys a 3' wooden dowel with a pin duct taped to it, and told them to "hunt for virtue". And with each one they picked up, we had a quick discussion about what "obedient" or "thrifty" meant. The boys had a blast, and obviously escalated to practicing throwing the "spear", and one boy got a minor scratch on his leg.

None of the parents actually complained, but there were a few comments along the lines of "Huh. Are we allowed to do that?" And the answer is... prooooooobably not? If you read any of those "adventures" above, notice the massive safety disclaimer on each one?

Like @FiveHourMarathon said last week, you have to serve a master. But you can't serve two. If your highest priority is safety, you have to sacrifice fun. If your highest priority is inclusion, you have to sacrifice excellence. And if you insist on making Scouts a place where the weakest, most coddled boy in his cohort feels safe and protected, with his mom as Den Leader to ensure everything is maximally Safe and Supervised, then you're going to drive off most boys who might grow up to be special forces, or an astronaut, or a bronze age king.

AIUI, actual Boy Scouts (grades 6-12) are less coddled, even now. They're more independent, they plan their activities themselves and can choose to focus on actual adventures and range time and such. But I don't know for sure, because my own son begged me to stop with the pussified social studies bullshit before then (there were other, personal reasons involved as well, but when I bring scouts up now, a few years later, all he remembers is the boring bullshit and the too-rare hikes). And it's a moot point, because the Boy Scout Troop that his Cub Scout Pack fed into collapsed, because there was no new kids joining.

The military used to value Scouting because a boy who'd spent 12 years LARPing as special forces in the Boer War presumably had a certain independent-mindedness and a bevy of practical skills that might come in handy in a tight spot. NASA used to value Eagle for the same reason, that it showed a certain level of initiative and decision-making that might serve well when all alone with a small team in the cold depths of space.

These days, as I hear it, the Eagle program has been Goodhearted to hell and back. An Eagle rank is desirable, it helps with college, employment, the military - shit I knew a guy who kept his Eagle cert in his wallet to hand over with his license to get favorable treatment from cops. It's desirable, it's known to be desirable, so of course it's gamed to hell and back. Eagle is supposed to involve an independent project that the scout conceives and executes entirely on their own, with no adult help. But of course there are troops that are functionally "Eagle Mills", where the people signing off on the promotion are themselves coaching the kid into doing the bare minimum to technically qualify. I hear the Mormon troops were particularly bad about this, before they spun off into their own thing.

That ties into other safetyist crap. There's a nearby park that has a bunch of small wooden bridges that were built as Eagle projects. Bridges. Uninspected, built by an unlicensed 17 year old. Can you imagine? It's like something out of an irresponsible comedy show. What if something happened and someone fell three feet into knee-deep water? Who would get sued?! Forget that they've stayed up for 30+ years, and served countless thousands of people, you can't do that stuff anymore. The closest Eagle project that I'm aware of from the last 10 years was a couple of public benches.

I hope they at least talked a municipal building inspector into double-checking the work.

The problem with Scouting is that you definitely can get a great experience out of it, with a ton of valuable learning and practical skills... with the right dads, using common sense to flout the technical rules when needed. And then you get the same rank as the useless pussy who was hand-held through a badge mill.

Don't even get me started on fucking popcorn.

I honestly think, for the money you'd spend, you'd get a better experience just organizing a hiking group out of the youth members at the local gun/archery range. You just have to be willing to tolerate a bit of risk and tell the most timid moms to STFU and deal.

In conclusion, while I think totally cutting ties is kind of petty and stupid, well, so is modern Scouting America.

Feels cringe to post twice, but something stood out to me on a quick reread: the original post doesn't actually describe 2020s-era boys' interest in or aptitude for helping other people, for doing one's duty to God and country, or keeping morally straight-- much less in, per Baden-Powell's original oath, "doing my best to help others, whatever it may cost me." Instead, it sounds as though they empirically enjoyed (a) casual unfocused play-violence/chaos (pin spearing) and (b) short bouts of running around in parks and fields, i.e. two of the highest-reward, lowest-discipline, lowest-skill-demand activities possible, already familiar from videogames.

The OP presumes that since safety is coded feminine to him, reintroducing risk, competition and violence will naturally lead boys to develop masculine virtues. I have no problem with risk and violence per se, but the old stories from when men actually engaged in these things make it quite clear that adventure and excitement are just occasional bright spots rolled in with a lot of discomfort, self-denial, patience and ego mortification in developing assorted masculine virtues. The miles gloriosus and similar tropes actually ridicule the sorts of people who get too immediately enthusiastic about themselves as adventure heroes bound for a life of fun and excellence. Presumably, that consistent ridicule is drawing on long cultural experience that vainglorious people don't go the distance in the end.

I'd be interested to follow the further adventures of this troop, especially since it doesn't sound as though there was meaningful resistance to OP's initial experiments. I do wonder whether it's true that with danger and violence in place, today's boys would eagerly line up for the less fun parts of the Baden-Powell program. Would those kids ever have had the interest or self-command to hang out around a shop for weeks just handing tools and watching the competent guys, like the builder of those Eagle Scout bridges presumably did thirty years ago? To sit quietly in the cold for hours on a hunting or fishing trip, then gamely return if the first day or seven weren't successful like the first 10 mintues of a game? I wish somebody would try working them up to these challenges and report back.

I joined a robotics competition when I was a kid, and they were in the process of converting it into the exact same boring social studies busywork you describe. In the time I was there, the robotics part of the robotics competition was reduced from 50% of your score to a piddling 25% of your score, with the other parts being 25% for "sportsmanship" and 50% for writing a stupid essay about environmentalism.

Even as a little kid it was obvious to me that the judges didn't like that whoever had the best robot would just win on the merit of their skills, leaving the judges with no power. Better to have a system where 75% of your score is decided by judge fiat. That way they can decide who wins based on who they like the most without the vulgarity of mere skill getting in the way.

I don't think this is a scouting thing, I think this is an everything thing. It mirrors the general trend of abolishing any scale that cannot have a thumb put on it. These are the same people who want to abolish standardized testing and replace it with personal essays and diversity statements. The point is to abolish everything objective and replace it with subjectivity, thereby concentrating more power in the hands of authority.

Why is it petty and stupid? The Military is not a general charity or some kind of all-around governmental funding/hosting agency. It has a very specific (though complex) goals and needs certain means and instruments to achieve these goals. If the army would suddenly declare it is founding a set of scholarships for people to learn play Ukulele while walking a tightrope, I'd be surprised - it doesn't seem to be aligned with the Military's mission at all. That doesn't mean I think playing ukuleles or walking tightropes is evil - it may be wonderful, but it's not what the Military is supposed to concern itself with. It used to be that Scouts embody all those qualities that the Military does concern itself with, so it made a lot of sense for them to cooperate. But Scouts are a separate organization, and they may decide they want to do some other thing now. Maybe concentrate on ukulele playing and tightrope walking, maybe on learning all the pronouns, maybe evaluating all the ways to be maximally safe and inclusive and writing them down in the notebook. The organization does what it wants to do. If that happened, and the goals of Scouts and Military are no longer aligned, why is it stupid to recognize this fact and part ways?

Because some of the things they'd be taking way are very low cost, and probably even a net boon. Like letting Scouts meet on bases, or take tours. It functionally costs nothing, and it's tacitly encouraging Scouts in a direction you want to see them move.

Or cutting support to the Jamboree. It's probably justifiable just as a training exercise and a chance to show off. Citing the exemption that you can pull out for national security reasons because you're stretched too thin to handle the Boy Scouts just sounds weak.

The removal of rank/pay benefits, OTOH, are plausibly reasonable and appropriate.

Of course, it does not cost a lot for the military to give access to their facilities and conduct tours and so on on any particular case - maybe some personnel/organization costs but compared to trillion-wide budget, it's not even a rounding error. However, the military is not providing those services to every comer, and can not do so - because then the cost will eventually become noticeable, and again, it's not the military's business. They are and have to be selective in this. And once they are selective in this, it only makes sense for them to select to cooperate with groups that share their values and goals. There's no reason why the Army can't give free use of their facilities to the local ukulele club, it indeed would cost them nothing. But it's not their business to do so, so if they choose not to do so, it's completely appropriate choice.

I think it's clearly signalled as a slap in the face to encourage the Boy Scouts to change course. The administration wants to make it extremely obvious that they're not happy and are trying to demonstrate to BSA that it's not just the Left they need to worry about appeasing anymore.

it's been a long, long time since my family had anything to do with Scouts, but re: Cub Scouts and women - yes? Den Mothers? though I see you refer to the women as Den Leaders so presumably that went by the wayside in the name of equality or something. Cub Scouts, so far as I can remember, are meant to be a bunch of six year olds so you have the female Den Mother keeping them from poking their eyes out with scissors until they're old enough to graduate on to the Boy Scouts (and then go on to Venturer or whatever if they stick around into their teens).

It's possible there is some mix-up between regional terminology and technical rankings. But as I have always used them, the "den leader" term is for the actual, on-the-paperwork adult in charge of a den. A "den mother" would be another parent, probably a mom, nowadays always an on-the-paperwork volunteer (but maybe not in the Olden Days of 1990), who would focus on more nurturing aspects. Stuff like making sure no kid skipped breakfast on a camping trip, that a dad might be more likely to just ignore or shrug off.

There's a similar dynamic on my son's middle school football team. There is a group of coaches, mostly dads, all men. And there is another group of "team mom's" who do things like self-organize rotations to make sure the players are provided with Gatorade and snacks at halftime and after the game. The "team mom" role is so female-coded that they don't even bother to reach out to me (single dad) for my turn in the rotation. Instead, they contact my mother (who, in fairness, was a longtime and committed volunteer when I was little and is more than happy to keep going for the grandkids).

I remember 'den mom' was just the word for a female den leader, and that one did not become a den leader unless your son was in that den(but moms and dads had equal opportunity to volunteer). Again, I was under eleven, so maybe there's dynamics I'm missing.

There seems to be a lot of conflation of cub scouts with boy scouts in this thread. The appropriate leadership and activities for six year olds and for seventeen year olds is an unbridgeable gap.

The gender framing is catnip hereabouts, but I don't think it's the correct one in this case, because girls don't like this shit any more than boys do (though they may be conscientious enough to tolerate it for longer). In fact, several girls of my acquaintance quit Girl Scouts for approximately the same reasons: the old-skool exciting activities with real-world skills, actual exertion, exploration, challenge and risk were almost wholly replaced by boring social-studies modules with posters, web research, scrapbooking and worksheets. Girl Scouts were never that big on spearing things with straight pins (!), but they used to do lots of wilderness survival stuff, practical making, etc. that's now gone.

I'd argue all that dull safetyism is more about the general totalitarian vibes/ expansion of bureaucratic culture (you can't deny that those poster and worksheet skills are better training for a sweet nonprofit or middle-management job than spearfishing would be). Plus, frankly, most of the adults also being indolent deskilled couch-dwellers whose idea of exploration is a good long gaming session, some Twitter or Insta, and a pornhub chaser. If a bunch of men were out joyfully hunting squirrels and building racers from scrap parts, then we could rant about the feminization of scouting all you want, but from what I can see the guys are mostly just as boring, limp and abstracted as the women.

There are rednecks who would happily take the youths hunting, there's even special seasons for this. If you, as a middle or high school boy, go to a deep mechanic shop and ask if you can help so you can learn a thing or too they'll let you. Etc, etc.

Scouting used to be good at facilitating this stuff- it decided to pivot away from it.

Maybe that was the case a generation ago, but in case you haven't noticed, there's been a massive drop in interest/ skill in physical handicraft of any kind, including outdoorsmanship, among the middle classes. Even on the Motte, where a lot of folks are in theory very big on masculinity, I've never seen a single person mention any physical project in the Tinker Tuesday thread, or anywhere else on the site, for that matter.

I know a lot of those grizzled old-timer hunters, mechanics, etc. that you mention, and they are mostly entering the frail part of old age, some still holding gatherings and events that would welcome interest from younger men and teens, but with zero attendance from anyone Gen X or younger. Your average Millennial fortysomething PMC dad could go hunting or visit the classic cars meetup or whatever, but he mostly doesn't. (For that matter, do you?)

Some working-class folks do seem to keep up interest in fishing/working on cars/etc., particularly in the Hispanic community, but working-class families in general have less opportunity to encourage their kids to do organized activities, so I doubt there's much intersection with the Boy Scout clientele. You can trace pretty clear lines from Charles Murray Coming Apart- type trends.

I post deer processing on the tinker tuesday thread most years. We've had several bike modification projects posted and woodworking features occasionally too. Obviously the motte is not 'average'.

This has got to be related to increasing urbanism, right? If I wanted to go and ‘play in the outdoors’ I could travel five minutes to a park packed with people where I’m not allowed to do anything, or more than an hour to the countryside.

If I wanted to do woodworking, the first step would be to get a new job so I could afford to move to a new house with the room to do it.

WhiningCoil's had multiple woodworking projects, dr_analog's project was focused on hardware but to support biking, and we've had a couple DIY car repairs (or people like me complaining about car repairs: I'm actually fighting with door power window repairs again myself). My rant about FIRST and STEM outreach is the geekier side of physical handicraft, but it's still more about assembling and greasing gearboxes or running CNC machines than it is about the comparatively entry-level code side of things. As, more prosaically, was the war on dandelions.

There's some genuine drop in interest and development along those lines, especially post-COVID, but it's also hard to talk at length about it, especially here.

I had missed WhiningCoil's woodworking posts, will have to check those out. Thanks!

Absolutely no shade on dr_analog, whose work sounds very cool - but on some level, I wonder how hydroacetylene's redneck hunters and mechanics would rate the manliness of a hardware-focused tech project to support leisure biking.

That's fair, but I'd caution about stereotypes. I work with a different sort of mechanic than, say, hydroacetylene, but there's a lot more overlap between the techie side of things and the automotive maintenance bro these days, just because tech stuff is much harder to avoid these days. I've helped hunters make a psuedo-shot-spotter tool for their range, traded some car advice for tips on hooking neopixels up to an offroad atv, and maybe half of the mechanics have or have access to a 3d printer.

((That said, they'd probably have at-best-mixed feelings about helmets on adults for leisure biking.))

Even on the Motte, where a lot of folks are in theory very big on masculinity, I've never seen a single person mention any physical project in the Tinker Tuesday thread, or anywhere else on the site, for that matter.

I fly model helicopters. Like real helicopters, they require more time spent repairing than flying. And it's a ridiculously male hobby. I also do my own bicycle maintenance and general fixing of stuff (e.g. I restrung my blinds and fixed my humidifier recently), though that's instrumental rather than for its own sake.

There's no real shortage of hunters, at least once you get out of New Jersey (Pennsylvania: America Starts Here).

Anyone who stepped up to offer those things would get nothing but criticism for only being willing to volunteer for the fun things but not the hard things.

Probably, yes.

And I think someone elsewhere mentioned the child abuse stuff. Anyone who attempts to step up is going to be told "Well, you'll need to take this online course about child abuse, then you'll need to get fingerprinted at the police station, and sign this form to allow a criminal background check." At which point said redneck is going to say "You want me to WHAT now?"

...Rednecks do that shit all the time.

Get fingerprinted at the police station? Maybe, but not VOLUNTARILY.

I see you got a downvote for that. I feel like the Motte needs a bit more sense of humor.

Well, freedom of association was never in the Constitution to begin with.

(Not that it helps nations that have it in theirs; their problem is more that they put a "we're not obeying this fuck you lolol" in the header instead.)

Then "society" has made its choice. You can make people jump through flaming hoops to be considered moral enough to associate with children (Padme: Other than your own, right? Anakin: ... Padme: Other than your own, right?), or you can have an ample supply of volunteers. You can have neither but you can't have both, and counterarguments involving the word "should" (as in men "should" be willing to go through these simple and vital procedures) are not really arguments but just social pressure to avoid this point being made.

You can have neither but you can't have both

Sure you can- clearly, all you need to do is to become a public schoolteacher. After that, you may sexually interfere with kids all you like (generally with the regime's blessing; so all you have to do is align yourself with the regime).

Sure, you will still generally get arrested if you actually get physical with them- but for molesters, that interference is the end goal (they're getting off on it), so that doesn't actually hinder them any.

are not really arguments but just social pressure to avoid this point being made

Internalized misandry hurts men and lying flat under these conditions is the correct "negotiating tactic". What is sabotage (including inaction) if not bargaining -> negotiating -> politics -> warfare by other means?

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Life getting safer makes men and women believe that delegation and training is riskier and may be delayed, preferably (and observably) indefinitely.

So it becomes less important, thus the need to accommodate for it is less, thus the concept that it should even occur passes away.

Little known fact, the Scouts were a thing in India, a leftover from British colonial rule. I was a member, and I got fuck-all out of it. I think I joined because someone vaguely promised me that I'd get to shoot a gun at some point, but that never came about.

I found it immensely boring, but the Indian version had very little of the "scouting" that Americans enjoy (or did). Going for a week long hike in the woods? What woods? It was urban living and farms for several hundred miles till you ended up in a national park or a mangrove swamp. I think it was wise not to make a bunch of kids into (big) cat food.

We didn't do girly arts and crafts as far as I remember, they taught us a few knots (which I was never good at and have entirely forgotten), lit fires in the middle of a field, marching and so on. The only highlight was the one time an excursion had a lunch, and I got extra servings for helping prep food.

Masculinity? We had the fruitiest troop master known to man, who was our kindergarten teacher at some point. He became a she at some point, which I suppose is something.

Ah... Good times, it beat being in class, but not enjoying my summer vacation in front of a TV.

AIUI, actual Boy Scouts (grades 6-12) are less coddled, even now. They're more independent, they plan their activities themselves and can choose to focus on actual adventures and range time and such. But I don't know for sure, because my own son begged me to stop with the pussified social studies bullshit before then (there were other, personal reasons involved as well, but when I bring scouts up now, a few years later, all he remembers is the boring bullshit and the too-rare hikes). And it's a moot point, because the Boy Scout Troop that his Cub Scout Pack fed into collapsed, because there was no new kids joining.

That was pretty much what happened to me. I remember going to cub scout meetings and mostly just being bored, doing a lot of cheesy arts and crafts project. All the den leaders were women. I looked forward to doing the cool outdoorsy stuff that I saw my older brother doing in the boy scouts, but then it collapsed before I was old enough to join because the Boy Scouts still insisted on having a male scout leader for that, and none of the men in my area wanted to do the job.

I will also say... Looking back, yeah, I can see how being an Eagle might have benefited my life in a lot of ways (like looking good on college applications). But as an 11 yr old kid I had absolutely no concept of any of that, I just wanted to have fun with my friends. So it's not surprising to me that a lot of the kids grinding Eagle Scout are just getting pushed by their parents to munchkin the merit badges.

edit- Probably a big factor in why no men wanted to do it, is that it was an after school program. That meant they had to be available from 3-5 PM on weekdays, and most of the men were busy working at that time. Also they probably wouldn't allow some random unemployed dude to do it, and it's not a paid position so... I don't know how they expected it to work.

It's not just "not paid", it costs money to register as a volunteer every year.

I wonder to what extent there is room for RETVRN scouts in the world. There appears to be a mostly moribund Baden-Powell Traditional Scouts thing independent of the BSA. But why not integrate it into the BSA organization as an alternative?

Scouting has long had sub-programs alongside the flagship Boy Scouts. Venture Crews and Sea Scouts have long operated under different rulesets. My mother was in the Venture program in the 1970s.

If there is demand for a return to Scouting's frankly paramilitary roots, then Scouting could develop a troop concept built around a more intensive and classically masculine program. One with real requirements rather than a focus on inclusivity. In areas with numerous troops, like mine, it wouldn't hamstring the mainline Boy Scouts troop to have a Hard Scouts program fifteen minutes away.

Boy scouts have long varied with the troop anyway. Why not formalize it?

What would such a program look like in your mind?

There's approximately seven zillion scouting knockoff organizations running around, ranging from the scouts of europe to the adventure guides. None of them have reached the popularity of the BSA, or even seriously competed- American Heritage Girls are at least noticeable next to girl scouts of America. None of the others are. I've heard parents prefer the scouts of Europe to the troops of St. George because at least the former has a program, but it's still tiny next to the BSA.

Which is why I'm saying that it would behoove BSA to create a harder core program within the umbrella.

When I came out of cub scouts, I could have joined any of about four or five equidistant troops in my area. We actually visited them all as part of our Arrow of Light process. The BSA could have a specific program or designation for troops that are less inclusive and more intensive. I don't think it will help the boy scouts program in general to try to become more exclusive, but I think there's room within the program to have a more aggressive program under their aegis.

Don't make it a knockoff, make it a program within the same org. Join troop 80 over at the Lutheran Church and you have the current Boy Scouts experience with one meeting per week and one camping trip or 8-10 mile hike every month; join troop 88 over at the Unitarian Church and you get one meeting per week, one physical training session per week, and a 15-20 mile backpacking trip every month, but you have to pass a fitness test to join. That kind of thing. Similar to how local baseball leagues have both the regular anybody who wants to join league, and the tryout travel league.

What you're talking about already exists. They're just called Venture Crews, and they don't have any fitness tests and are variable in how active they are. Realistically, 11 is too young for them to make that kind of choice. Even if the kid can pass some kind of test, they aren't going to keep up. My program was geared toward Venture crews and older scouts and while there were a few 12 and 13 year olds who slipped through for various reasons and invariably did fine, there's generally a pretty clear skill progression with age, and when I worked with younger kids on the side there's no way I'd want them anywhere near my program as a matter of course. If you were to try to separate these kids out right after crossing over all but a few would go to normal troops and the pipeline would dry up pretty quickly because no one wants to join a troop without their friends. Aside from the fitness test, nothing is preventing anyone from starting a troop like this as it is, but saying you want to be more active runs up against the reality that it requires active adult leaders and kids who are also willing to put in the work as far as planning is concerned. Last year I had to tag along with my old troop because a few kids wanted to get the cycling merit badge and needed a second adult to go on the 50-miler. The first adult was a 22-year-old who hung around after aging out. I hadn't been involved with the troop in 20 years. None of the dads were willing to ride 50 miles, even if the scouts were. And by the end of the ride, the kids, who were all fit and reasonably active, looked like they never wanted to sit on a bike again. I think it's easy to sit here as adults and think of what we would have like d in retrospect, forgetting that we weren't always stronger than we are now and didn't have as much tolerance for pain as we do now.

Aside from the fitness test, nothing is preventing anyone from starting a troop like this as it is,

The fitness test is more or less the point here. In current rules you can't exclude anyone, which is pretty much the whole point of this hypothetical. Ordinary boy scout troops have to admit weak, fat, uninterested, special needs kids. This obviously limits the outer boundaries of what can be done.

I think it's easy to sit here as adults and think of what we would have like d in retrospect, forgetting that we weren't always stronger than we are now and didn't have as much tolerance for pain as we do now.

Absolutely, I'm musing here to push the conversation in a new direction, is it something that would be practical to create or not? And if it won't work, then why are we complaining about the direction the boy scouts have gone in?

Alternatively, the more intense scouting path could be a badge track within the boy scouts. If Eagle has been Goodhart'd, the Department of War could collaborate on designing a new set of qualifications that would deliver those results for the military?

I think it's easy to sit here as adults and think of what we would have like d in retrospect, forgetting that we weren't always stronger than we are now and didn't have as much tolerance for pain as we do now.

I'll note in the way of reminiscence that I'm not entirely speaking out of turn here, I wanted my scout troop to do more outdoor events, so I started going on hikes and camping trips with the other troops my friends were in. There were other scouts who similarly wanted more activities, and the paths for achieving that goal within the scouts were limited. So I do think there exists some subset of boys who are interested in more activities. And the world is full of men who want to mentor younger boys in physically intense activity! Guys love to coach baseball and basketball and jiu jitsu etc.

So I'm questioning if part of the problem is the lack of exclusion. Without exclusionary principles, there's no real urge to progression.

Let me try to restate my argument, because I think we're talking past each other. What kind of test are you going to have and what is it going to entail? What I'm getting at is: What percentage of 11-year-olds crossing over is it going to exclude? 80%? 90% 50%? It honestly doesn't matter what number you pick, because unless you're only selecting for the top 1% you're using a test that any 14-year-old is going to be able to pass easily unless he's fat, special needs, etc. IF you're talking about a troop, where you do the full complement of scout activities and advance towards Eagle, you need a steady pipeline from Cubs, or the troop withers and dies. I've seen power struggles before where the Cubmaster loses faith in the local troop and sends the kids elsewhere, and it takes a long time for the troop to recover, if it can at all. So any troop that decides to exclude is at a disadvantage initially, even if their reputation enables them to draw from a wider geographic area.

But all you've really done is exclude for an 11-year-old with the fitness of a below average 14-year-old. And any 14-year-old who is that out of shape doesn't want to do the more difficult activities anyway. The goal of Venturing is to move away from advancement and focus on high-adventure group activities. Selecting for motivated 14-year-olds does a better job than selecting for fit 11-year-olds, and since advancement is an afterthought the group can focus on activities. I haven't seen any Venture crews who participated in my programs that included people who shouldn't have been there. I saw more 14-year-olds who could pass a fitness test but were some combination of lazy, unskilled, or petulant, while these kids never seemed to show up in Venturing. In any organization that relies on people acting locally (rather than the council-level program), some groups are going to be more active than others. I don't think creating a new kind of class is going to do anything, and in the years I spent heavily involved in Scouting and Venturing, nothing led me to believe that something like this would have any benefit.

How did you get into Venturing? I wasn't even aware it was a thing when I was young. And when I was an adult volunteer, everything made it sound like a thing for older kids who couldn't let go, a way to hang onto scouting after Eagle until you could drink.

If it's more of a parallel to existing BSA program, maybe that's the a good chunk of the answer I was looking for... just poorly advertised.

Looks like there are none in my county, but 25 miles isn't too far. My 14 year old might be more into that than the social studies stuff.

Yeah, I remember venture scouting was a thing for older boys- they made it sound like you got your eagle and then pivoted to venture scouts if you didn't want to hang around helping mentor eleven year olds in the troop.

One problem with traditional scouting is it emphasizes conformity with society and obedience to authority. But traditional scout activities today are forbidden or fenced around with so many rules and regulations to be essentially so. So an organization doing them today would have to be transgressive, and that's exactly the opposite of Scouting.

The Chinese finger trap of post-modernity: when rebellion is the teaching of the mainstream authorities, submission is the radical act of rebellion. But submission to whom?

The obvious answer is religion and a more ethereal concept of the Nation.

Though England isn't exactly doing all that hot these days anyway, I see the wisdom in the philosophical conceit of Hart

The ideal king would rather be like the king in chess: the most useless piece on the board, which occupies its square simply to prevent any other piece from doing so, but which is somehow still the most important piece.

Powell said specifically that a Scout was loyal to his King. This captures the concept of submission and nationalism, without making explicit religious or political commitments to actual controversies. A Scout isn't a Tory or a Whig or a Liberal, necessarily, a Scout is Loyal to his King and Country, a more ephemeral concept of the nation.

The mainstream does not teach rebellion; it teaches conformism (as always) with some of the outward trappings of rebellion. It's what it is teaching conformism TO that no longer fits Scouting.

Whatever they do, can they make it less boomer-cringe (that's the only way I can describe it). I read the 12 Scout Oath and Scout Law thing some one linked earlier and would have died of second hand embarasment if I had heard some one recite these with a straight face IRL.

Since the younger generations seem to have a weird fascination with Nazis, maybe they could bring it back as the Hitler Youth instead. I think that was basically the "scouts" for 1930s German kids.

I believe the Hitler Youth attended several international scouting events at the time.

But obviously, we should be bringing back Reagan Youth.

'Nazi' is a youth subculture now, like Emo or Goth. When was the last time you heard of one of them running a scouting org?

sigh I suppose it's up to us middle-aged men to lead the way. who wants to help me start a Hitler Youth scouting organization? (kidding obviously, I don't really want to do that)

Hi. I was a Scout, and I did indeed recite them every time with a straight face. Same with the Pledge of Allegiance when I recited that. We need a society that's able to recite things like that without cringe.

Yeah I think if worrying about being earnest and lame is a problem, Scouts (or the military for that matter) are just not going to be for you. It predates boomer cringe by multiple generation, it's Boer War cringe.

You're supposed to read it with an old-timey radio mid-Atlantic accent.

The Scout Oath is from 1908. The oldest of the WWII generation was still too young to join at the time (Cub Scouts not yet existing). The author, Baden-Powell, was two generations before that. If you want trad you're stuck with cringe, but the boomers had nothing to do with it.

I guess the past ain't what it used to be. Conceptually I am for something like the scouts, but if it should exist it should be ran less like my grandma and a saturday morning cartoon sidekick had a brainstorm together.

Ironic detachment is strictly a postmodernist invention.

Diogenes laughs in Ancient Greek.

Diogenes did it in bad faith.

What would such a program look like in your mind?

One of the ideas that I had in mind, that I never got the opportunity to do because orienteering wasn't on the curriculum until Webelos was to bury caches of water balloons and water guns in our main wooded park, and then divide the scouts into teams. Give each team a map, and then let them loose to secure weapons and munitions and then wage war against each other.

It took me about $50 to build an ax-throwing range in the back yard. The local gun range charges $10 a head for an hour of archery, and would absolutely give discounts for a Scouts or Hard Scouts type regular event, and would almost certainly involve a subject-matter expert helping out. Bullets are expensive, but I'm sure something could be arranged, and the rentable 50 cal sniper rifle they offer would be a hell of an incentive to reward 12 year olds.

Beyond that, hard hiking and roughing it. Physically intensive activities, especially involving mud and filth. Mud Runs would be a good fit and fuck it, I'm signing up for the Philly one tonight. Manhunt in the woods at night. Paintball. Airsoft. Reach out to local law enforcement, military, and academic institutions for specific trainings. See where you can overlap with ROTC, (there's a term for junior police academy, but I've had a bunch of wine at dinner and can't think of it). Reach out to local universities and zoos for help with teaching about local wilderness hazards and wildlife.

Seriously physical conditioning. What are the optimal amounts for pre-teens? My son talks like he's terrified of "Coach Tyler sprints" at football... but he also complains when they get skipped. What does an optimal 2-3 times per month workout for young boys look like?

And let's go even more intensive. Movie nights with films like Tremors 1-2 and Red Dawn. Monthly book clubs featuring Gary Paulsen and Jack London and Rudyard Kipling.

The hard part would be maintaining standards, but I think with 15-20 hours per month between meetings and training and assigned readings, you could get some impressive results out of a program like that.

One of the ideas that I had in mind, that I never got the opportunity to do because orienteering wasn't on the curriculum until Webelos was to bury caches of water balloons and water guns in our main wooded park, and then divide the scouts into teams. Give each team a map, and then let them loose to secure weapons and munitions and then wage war against each other.

I remember, I must have been seventeen or so because all the young Indian kids had joined our troop already, we did a civil war reenactment weekend. Every troop was assigned "randomly" to either the Union or the Confederacy with appropriately colored T shirts (someone had the brains to make sure the majority black troops were mostly like us in the Confederacy), and the end of the day was a water balloon fight between the two sides. As I recall, we won the battle by giving everyone only two water balloons and holding the rest in reserve along with a couple troops, so we were able to draw them in and then finish them off, while the Union wasted all their ammo early driving off our initial attack. Our final charge yelling "FOR SLAVERY" was a ton of fun.

I wonder if they still do things like that.

The reasoning given is that "the group once known as the Boy Scouts is no longer a meritocracy and has become an organization designed to "attack boy-friendly spaces"", "for being "genderless" and for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.", and because "the Scouts have strayed from their mission to "cultivate masculine values."".

Other criticisms of Scouts aside, "LARPing at being a Park Ranger" and "masculine values" is a false equivalency (And I say that, having totally wanted to LARP as a Park Ranger and grow up to be Indiana Jones, when I was a kid, and being sad that my parents didn't go for it!) and I'd be more convinced Scouts was failing to teach Park Ranger LARPing, if not for Hegseth's "masculine values" BS.

Indiana Jones

Seemingly canonically Indiana Jones was born July 1, 1899. He would have been amoungst the first cohort of scouts, the BSA having been founded in 1910.

I haven’t been following any of this in detail but what’s wrong with Hegseth’s statement? I’m pretty sure the left thinks the Boy Scouts are practically the Hitler Youth under Trump anyway, so they shouldn’t object to it’s closure.

I don't want to judge a description of a draft memo, but if the actual memo doesn't include evidence that the Scouts are failing to train valuable skills, the statement isn't good for much - competency isn't masculine or feminine, is it?

Competency is competency regardless. In that sense I’m wholly meritocratic. If it stops being about that, I’ve got to start asking questions.

Boy Scouts(before it got ruined(And, if I'm being extremely charitable, still is today)) is alot like martial arts.

When it's good, it's really, really good.

When it's not, it's the metaphorical equivalent of a mcdojo.

Sadly, there's no uniform way you're going to be able to enforce that level of discipline other than getting the weird and interesting people whom are passionate about Odd Things into joining.

Recalling my own scouting days, come to think, all the weird and wonderful things that we got up to where specifically because of the guys running stuff were all Weird and Interesting in thier own unique ways. From Baptist Preachers to Ex-military to old-school Ham operators to... Well, you get the idea.

So. While the announcement that the military is basically backing away from scouting... well, I wish I could say I'm surprised. But I'm really, really not. Still a shame, though - I can remember many a time when scouting activities were being held on miltiary bases and whatnot, and getting to visit them were actually really cool.

Enshittification continues apace, I suppose.

Enshittification continues apace, I suppose.

Lol. I’d actually like to see Cory Doctorow make a statement on this now.

I'm an Eagle Scout, I worked for the Boy Scouts for a period of time as High Adventure Director for my local council, and I've regularly volunteered since at the council level, though my involvement over the past decade has waned and been more at the direction of others rather than of my own initiative, though I did agree to attend a meeting this Saturday evening to discuss certain things. Complaining about a program compared to what it used to be is only valid if you actually knew what it used to be like. So when you say something like:

It felt like most of the fun, exciting, interesting, vigorous or masculine things we did were things I brought to the table. Like I had to fight the program to do anything cool. The official program doesn't even call for a single one mile hike until Bear - third grade. I had those boys out and loose on every park and wild area in a 45 minute radius every month. That was the part they enjoyed and cared about. The social studies lessons in between? Boring as fuck. I'm the one who took the initiative to teach them about tracking and dangerous animals and poisonous plants. For an organization that was always styled as teaching literary Native American style woodscraft, the entire program is designed to be completed at a school playground.

For full disclosure I was a Cub Scout and Den Chief as a kid but other than that I had little involvement with Cub Scouts. As a professional, I helped out with program during special winter weekends we hosted but I never did anything beyond that, and I never served on the Cub Committee as a volunteer. But I had a lot of colleagues and friends who were involved heavily in the Cub program, some of whom continue to be involved to this day. This program was completely overhauled in the early 2010s, with changes taking effect in 2015. It is now significantly more masculine, or whatever, than the program it replaced, which was basically a continually tweaked version of what they had been doing since at least the 1950s. I checked the requirements, and yes, Bears need to do a 1-mile hike, and a 3-mile hike is part of the Webelos program. Before that it was zero.

Cub Scouts was deliberately separate from Boy Scouts, intended to be a more family-oriented program. Your parent signs off on the requirements, not someone with the Troop/Pack. The program was thus designed around things you could do at home with your family. Except different families do things differently. Some families just aren't going to go camping, or hiking, or whatever, and while there was always that opportunity at the Den or Pack level, they weren't going to make it part of the requirements. Cub Scout leadership is also more transitory than in Boy Scouts. Parents usually only participate while their kids are there, then cross over to Boy Scouts with them. It's not like with Boy Scouts where you have old Scoutmasters who can't give it up and college kids who hang around as adult leaders. Therefore, the program has to be doable by the kind of person who isn't as dedicated as a typical Boy Scout leader.

The reason for the changes was similar to the reason for the admission of girls, and the same reason that underlies the lion's share of decisions the BSA has made over the past 15 years: Numbers. The problem we had was that there was a lot of interest in the Cub program but crossover rates were in sharp decline. The idea was that if we modeled the Cub requirements as junior versions of the Boy Scout requirements it could ease with the transition. Girls were admitted because, when you're looking to increase numbers, it doesn't help to exclude 50% of the youth population. Even in my program things were liberalized a lot more than I would have expected. National Standards had a list of activities that were prohibited in all circumstances. Some of them were inherently dangerous (exploring abandoned mines) and would never be approved under any circumstances, but others were normal recreational activities that the conservative brass in Iriving thought weren't in the Scout Spirit. Then they not only removed ATV riding from the prohibited list but made it part of the camp program. I don't think I'm terribly conservative when it comes to this, but this kind of thing irritates me more than anything they do with politics. I'd rather see it it turned into a woke DEI paradise than have it degenerate into a third-rate tourist trap where our camp offers paddle boats and miniature golf. Part of the reason I left was that I saw things trending in this direction, and my own program was expected to do things that I wasn't comfortable with and knew I couldn't sell to leaders. But that's another story.

Therefore, the program has to be doable by the kind of person who isn't as dedicated as a typical Boy Scout leader.

I think this expectations mismatch might be the heart of the problem. I wanted something more rigorous and active and, well, manly. Even as a child I wanted grueling endurance challenges, not a gentle stroll that meets a PBS Kids definition of "being active". My favorite memories are things like winning a fire-building contest, teeth chattering in the wet snow, at the Klondike Derby. Or later on, after some Troop drama left me siding with a small break-away faction we did a "summer camp" that in retrospect was not actually an authorized Scouting event beyond the fact that the dad who took us was our new Scoutmaster. He just had a friend who owned a large expanse of wild property, and we spent two weeks loose and barely supervised on an Appalachian mountainside.

The things I remember fondly and want to recreate for my own kids are the things that were hard. If we're setting the standard to "easily accomplished by basically any family that cares to show up"... what is even the point? Is that sort of lowering of standards actually expanding numbers? Or is that why they're still dropping?

As a note, I don't have any problem with opening the program to girls. My own daughter did it for a while. In any county, there's going to be at least a troop's worthy of hardy, outdoorsy girls, and they deserve something more intensive than selling cookies.

This program was completely overhauled in the early 2010s, with changes taking effect in 2015. It is now significantly more masculine, or whatever, than the program it replaced, which was basically a continually tweaked version of what they had been doing since at least the 1950s. I checked the requirements, and yes, Bears need to do a 1-mile hike, and a 3-mile hike is part of the Webelos program. Before that it was zero.

I can find older lists of Boy Scout requirements, but not anything for Cubs. I have to wonder though - is this actually an increase in standards and manliness? That goes against the grain of the BSA changes. Or is this something that was being made a requirement because it used to be an assumed default baseline that didn't even need to be mentioned? If the revamp happened in 2015, that's just a few years after Obama ended the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.

Part of the reason I left was that I saw things trending in this direction, and my own program was expected to do things that I wasn't comfortable with and knew I couldn't sell to leaders. But that's another story.

I would like the story, if you don't mind, even if it needs to wait until after the holiday. You seem to have been more involved in this stuff than I was, and I'd appreciate reading your take.

If we're setting the standard to "easily accomplished by basically any family that cares to show up"... what is even the point? Is that sort of lowering of standards actually expanding numbers? Or is that why they're still dropping?

I had a fairly outdoorsy upbringing through the 90s. I built my first fire when I was 5, shot a .22 when I was 8, did archery somewhere in between, and spent a lot of time outside sleeping in a tent. There was no point (in my mind) to joining the Cub Scouts. "Oh those nerds making macaroni pictures for their moms? Pass." So at least for me, that is definitely why I never got involved in scouting.

I think of my childhood as a triptych. In school, I was a nerd and then I came home and reread Redwall books on loop. Then, after a few hours of reading, I went to sports practice for my jock third, where I did football, hockey, basketball, baseball, crew, and year round swim teams. And then, on the weekends, I went to the farm a few towns over where my best friend lived to spend 48 hours as a feral redneck, loose on quads in a few hundred acres of woods with BB guns and slingshots and M80s until we stumbled back at dusk, exhausted and filthy.

That best friend tolerated Scouts for a grand total of 36 hours before he was sick of it, and demanded his parents pick him up from the summer camp. And while that might sound weaksauce, he also bagged his first buck a month after he turned 10, alone with a shotgun in a tree stand on his family property.

I was a scout in the middle of the transition to 'general early step on the cursus honorum for highborn youths'. Eagle scout rates, across all of the BSA, had just reached 6%. We had orienteering, ten mile hikes, backpacking trips were optional. I didn't get my eagle but eagle projects were invariably minor construction projects for sympathetic sounding but not hard case institutions- think 'put in a new flowerbed at the nursing home'. There were dads at the campouts, but they were in their own section, watching from afar. We had our own campfire, cooked our own food, were basically unsupervised. The older boys(teens) ran the program for the tweens. I liked that part, but the advanced ranks seemed like BS paperwork to burnish a resume.

Now don't get me wrong, I did learn some cool stuff, like orienteering, firebuilding, whittling safety, etc. We had .22 rifles for marksmanship, no archery. They ran some cool merit badge programs- pioneering and horsemanship in particular were some things I probably wouldn't have otherwise learned. But you're basically right.

But the point stands that in an organization theoretically inclined towards "cultivating masculine virtues", the first five years were mostly run by women

RAND just published: The Limited Presence of Male Mentors in the Lives of Boys and Young Men

The Brookings Institution noticed this problem quite awhile back. I pointed it out in a discussion once to someone who was in denial. Conversation came to a close after that.

I saw a study offsite about the lack of male role models and there was a lot of anxious whining about how men are afraid of being seen as creeps/pedophiles but I think any attempt to explain the problem without accounting for the general reasons why men are under-included in communities in general is going to fall prey to occam's law. It seems obvious to me that a satisfyingly complete explanation for why men don't join the scouts will also explain...

  • Why men volunteer less
  • Why men commit suicide more often
  • Why men so often abandon their children
  • Why men are more politically inactive

... And so on, and so forth.

But agreeing on that explanation is near-impossible because nearly without exception, people work backwards from their preffered solution to determine what the cause of the problem is. Anti-safetyist mottizens want to make scouting dangerous again, anxious redditors want counter-propaganda to convince women to not be afraid of men, women want to pressure single fathers into taking responsibility, and I even saw one dude that thinks the solution is masculine bonding via class warfare. If any of these groups is right, I suspect it's mostly by accident.

Why men are more politically inactive

??? Politics has always been a principally male thing? Roosevelt, Reagan, Trump, Mitterand, Blair, Putin, Xi... In political theory, there's Rawls, Hayek, Schmitt, Sartre, Foucault... Some women emerge: Thatcher, Merkel, Rand, Hilary Clinton but not as many as men.

Women are more likely to sign petitions for social movements but its men who actually implement politics in so far as they riot and overthrow governments. Jan 6th was overwhelmingly male as were basically all of the revolutions in history.

Men are the agentic sex, they're more likely to do good or evil, killing themselves, killing others, creating new things, implementing large-scale plans or reforms (Deng Xiaoping, Gorbachev, Ataturk, Rao in India's market reforms, Keating in Australia). Again Thatcher is the only woman I can think of who made big changes...

The most politically active individuals remain men, but as a cohort men are less politically active

Maybe men shouldn’t be shamed every time they stick their head up to get involved. There are all kinds of stories about men being assumed to be a pedophile for the crime of taking his own child to the park. Men don’t dare to volunteer to work with kids because again, the meme of “any male showing interest in kids is dangerous” means that the male who gets involved in scouting is assumed to be grooming.

I have definitely heard the rules the scouts maintain for youth protection --- no one-on-one contact, two adults at all times, for example --- described as protecting both the kids and the adults.

Yes, that's what they say about the Pence Rule as well, which exists for the exact same reasons.

"Men are afraid of being called pedophiles" seems like an insufficiently powerful explanation. While it may explain some fraction of why men volunteer less for boyscouts, it's almost certainty downstream of why men volunteer less in general, which in turn is downstream of whatever combination of factors leads to less male involvement in communities/pro-social activities/the male loneliness epidemic in general. I have a hard time believing that pedophile-accusation-risk is the reason why men commit suicide and abandon their children more often, but conversely I can imagine a satisfying explanation for suicides and absent fathers also being applicable to the problem of why men don't lead boy scout troops anymore. "Men are afraid of being called pedophiles" isn't false, but my gut instinct is that it's noncentral. Actually, the link I posted seems to hint at the real causes by looking into the crosstabs-- men with children and/or bachelor's degrees volunteer at much greater rates than single and/or uneducated men. Given that men are facing rising rates of singlehood and falling rates of education, I'd look in that direction for the true causation. Just don't make the mistake of fingering whatever most flatters your beliefs as the problem... you might not be wrong to blame misandry, or anti-intellectualism, or whatever your personal bugbear is... but a lazy epistemology isn't going to convince anyone of your point, and won't do anything to get the issue fixed.

why men volunteer less in general,

A three percentage point gap may be statistically significant, but I don't think it's very interesting or notable. There's an eight-point gap in labor force participation rate, and one full-time-volunteer wife with a working husband can get a lot of volunteer hours. Heck, with a gap that small it could be something as banal as different responses to the same activities as men and women have different standards.

communities/pro-social activities/the male loneliness epidemic in general.

Male spaces get disrupted and socially attacked. Even if whatever comes out the other side is just as good (very doubtful), the transition still causes people to leave. Also, women have the opportunity to join both women's-only and gender-neutral groups, while men only have the second set.

"Men are afraid of being called pedophiles" isn't false, but my gut instinct is that it's noncentral.

That is the most visible part of the issue, but it's not the only one. You have to go through the anti-pedophile screening, take the anti-pedophile training, follow the anti-pedophile procedures, be conscious of pedophile-adjacent actions...and finally work at the organization with a reputation for pedophilia. It just doesn't seem that attractive.

A three percentage point gap may be statistically significant, but I don't think it's very interesting or notable. There's an eight-point gap in labor force participation rate, and one full-time-volunteer wife with a working husband can get a lot of volunteer hours. Heck, with a gap that small it could be something as banal as different responses to the same activities as men and women have different standards.

Sorry I posted the wrong link. I mean to link this: https://aibm.org/research/men-and-volunteering-gender-gaps-and-trends/

Admittedly, a 5% gap still doesn't seem like as much of a difference, but you need to compare the proportions of the people volunteering. 27% vs 35% already means that the base ratio of volunteers is 84 men for 100 women. Then add in the fact that the genders choose different types of volunteering-- men are much more likely to be coaches, for example, while women are much more likely to be anything else. Finally, volunteers are going to spend different amounts of time volunteering. It all multiplies together into a crisis of male volunteers for specifically mentorship roles.

Male spaces get disrupted and socially attacked.

I occasionally hateread crystal.cafe and they complain pretty often about unwelcome males (successfully) inserting themselves into female spaces and disrupting them. My priors are telling me to that their complaints are still less relevant than yours, and I'm confident in those priors because if I wasn't I would have them, but I'm not meta-confident in those priors because I'm fully aware that my incentives as a man are to seek out information that supports pro-man priors. Generalizing, I find myself in this situation pretty often when it comes to gender-war stuff-- I'm confident enough in my object-level beliefs to argue for them, but I'm not confident enough in my confidence to accept any totalizing theories because even small changes to my priors should force me to completely rethink the specifics of a broad philosophy.

For example, I was talking to my little brother about the lack of male mentorship recently and he said he thought about doing big brothers big sisters/boys and girls club, but decided against it because he figured if he was going to be doing that sort of thing anyways, he might as well be paid for it-- like he got paid for working as a substitute teacher. If you let your eyes go out-of-focus this generally melds into the "particular gender roles are unfairly imposed on me" supertheory, but in-focus it's completely at odds with the, "men don't want to be mentors because they're afraid of being called pedophiles" theory.

I think there are two related reasons: one, motivation dies quickly after becoming mired in bureaucracy. Someone who is highly motivated to provide a mentoring opportunity for a group of boys might not be able to find the drive to complete more than a single form, let alone typing up paragraphs of baloney. Same thing hampering science IMO.

Second is legitimate fear of liability. Even if you jump through all the paperwork hoops, even a minor accident can easily result in years of expensive legal wrangling, even if you ultimately win. Insurance against this is expensive and yet scourge bureaucratic hurdle to doing anything.

As usual, if you want to make the world a better place, first kill all the lawyers.

Again, this sounds like noncentral, reasoning-backwards stuff. Women don't like bureaucracy either. Men tolerate liability when it comes to other pursuits. Other countries and organizations have varying levels of both but still face a surplus of male suicides and lack of male mentors. Without rejecting your premise that bureaucracy and liability are onerous, I find myself unconvinced by the argument that they must therefore be the principal causes of our crisis of masculinity.

Women don't like bureaucracy either.

The fact they're the only class with the power to deal with it (because the moral hazard is in their favor) but are doing fuck-all about it is the fundamental root of the problem here.

Men gave up their power to unilaterally dictate terms to women in relatively peaceful ways. Until women figure out they have to do the same- until they fully embrace the fact equality is a solved problem, as men did so many years ago- this will continue, but the fact they're on the high side of those gibs makes this unlikely.

Liability being financially ruinous because reasons (that are tangentially related to the above core) doesn't help things either.

Men tolerate liability when it comes to other pursuits.

Nobody tolerates liability unless they can insure it away, and that means accepting the constraints the insurance companies put in to prevent actually having to pay a claim.

I find myself unconvinced by the argument that they must therefore be the principal causes of our crisis of masculinity.

Yes, because you have a reason in mind (in general terms, that men, in some way, suck), which is wrong, but is the only reason within the Overton window.

Don't put words in my mouth, buddy. I'm not part of some sort of anti-man conspiracy; my position is that basically no one (including myself) should have the epistemic confidence to have a position.

Speaking very broadly, I suspect the problem is less about actual costs and more about opportunity costs-- basically, I think that most men just have better things to do than volunteer given their goals and incentives. I think I would enjoy volunteering for boy scouts, liability and bureaucracy (and the risk of false accusations) be damned. But I'm trying to get myself in position to secure a wife and kids, and to that extent the best uses of my time are earning money, getting fit, and seeking legible status. Optimizing for the intersection of those things and also enjoying my life generally leaves me focused on working, working out, and trying (so far, futiley) to get published. And I'll have to keep focusing on those things indefinitely because suddenly letting myself go wouldn't be a great recipe for keeping a wife and kids.

But to the extent that all the things I said are true, and generalizeable, I know I'm still not reaching the bottom of the issue-- I'm not getting to why these opportunity costs exist. And even discovering that wouldn't necessarily suggest which actions could or should be taken to mitigate them. I could make suggestions, but no matter how hard I tried for apolitical neutrality they would probably flatter my interests and goals in particular. So the problem remains intractable, and everyone who says otherwise without addressing the full complexities just makes more convinced that no one really knows what's going on.

Don't put words in my mouth, buddy. I'm not part of some sort of anti-man conspiracy; my position is that basically no one (including myself) should have the epistemic confidence to have a position.

If you insist on using your own state of mind as if it were evidence, prepare to have the contents of your mind interrogated.

As for the position that no one should have epistemic confidence to have a position, if that were to be universally adopted it would mean either throwing up ones hands or trying things at random. But in practice, that position is only deployed against certain positions -- usually but not always positions that imply a change should be made -- and so it is not the neutral agosticism it would appear.

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There must be other reasons. I sincerely doubt the average man is that paranoid about false accusations. Most people assume that tragedies always happen to other people, not themselves and I don't see why this should be different for accusations of pedophilia.

Internet commenters tend to be a lot more anxious than ordinary people and thus you see the false accusation points a lot online. But "internet commenters" is not exactly the group I would imagine as volunteering to quite literally touch grass regardless. So the answer should probably be found elsewhere.

There must be other reasons.

Do microplastics and hormonal inversions count? Lol. I’m slowly beginning to think there just ‘might’ be something to that…

Doubt isn't an argument. It's part of American culture, and has been for a long time now, that a man interested in interacting with kids other than his own (and sometimes his own too) is probably up to no good.

Men don’t dare to volunteer to work with kids because again, the meme of “any male showing interest in kids is dangerous” means that the male who gets involved in scouting is assumed to be grooming.

I agree that this is an issue. Another problem is that any child you've worked with can accuse you of wrong doing and cause you a world of problems. The accusation can be made years later. In some jurisdictions, the statute of limitations for such a claim is 30 or 40 years.

Given that (1) 1-5% of the population is batsh*t crazy; (2) there are a lot of activists, lawyers, etc. out there with an incentive to urge people to pursue these sorts of claims; and (3) our society has very little concern for the rights of men qua men, it doesn't seem like such a great idea for a man to do any activity which puts him in contact with large numbers of children.

I see why they're careful about unattached men who want to work with children.

I agree, but I think there needs to be some balance. As one person suggested, one solution could be to focus on recruiting married couples to be den leaders.

Any group that is well-known to need supervisors for children is going to attract paedophiles, because paedophiles have two brain cells and follow incentives like the rest of us. So some fraction of each intake - what fraction I have no idea - genuinely are going to be paedophiles unless you use a criteria like marriage that is pretty good for excluding that.

I'm usually in team 'Let's shame men less' but in this case I see why they're careful about unattached men who want to work with children.

There’s a question I’d never considered until now: is marriage actually a pretty good criterion for excluding pedophiles? Logically, it would make sense, but anecdotally, I seem to hear more stories of married men sexually abusing children (often their stepchildren) than single men. I assume some of that is simply due to ease of access to children, but I don’t know if that’s the only factor. That said, most of the married guys seem to abuse girls, not boys, which would be less of an issue in an all-male Boy Scout troop.

Aren't most cases of child sex abuse carried out by the mother's non-married partner?

I assume some of that is simply due to ease of access to children, but I don’t know if that’s the only factor. That said, most of the married guys seem to abuse girls, not boys, which would be less of an issue in an all-male Boy Scout troop.

There's also a disturbing number of moms pimping out their daughters to their partners to "sweeten the deal".

This... New Jersey man... that @ToaKraka posted about a few months ago is likely on the Mount Rushmore of capitalizing on such a thing:

  • March 2019: A mother notices something strange about her two daughters, 12-year-old "Kelly" and 13-year-old "Taylor". She brings them to the hospital, and is surprised to learn that they are both pregnant. Taylor gives birth a few days later. In police interviews, the daughters do not provide any leads, and deny that the mother's romantic partner is the culprit.

  • June 2019: Kelly gives birth. The police obtain a DNA sample from the romantic partner.

  • September 2019: The DNA test shows that the romantic partner is the father of both babies. The father is arrested and is charged with fifteen felonies, and then is released on his own recognizance (zero bail; this isn't mentioned in the opinion, but is indicated on the docket).

  • March 2021: Taylor gives birth again. Presumably the father made the most of being out on bail.

  • August 2022: The father pleads guilty to three felonies—impregnating Taylor at age 12, impregnating Kelly at age 11, and impregnating Taylor again at age 13. He is sentenced to 25 years in prison (without the possibility of parole).

I could only imagine the seethe toward you (the general "you") that would be triggered if you posted this story on /r/Stepdadreflexes.

However, in this case the mother claims innocence. Although, what else is she supposed to claim:

[T]he girls' mother testified during a hearing in January 2021. “Today I’m here to protect them. You don’t understand what they went through. People thinking I’m this type of woman who didn’t protect my kids."

She said she didn’t know he was abusing her daughters. “My (first) granddaughter was born three month, two months early,” the girls’ mother testified. “I thought (the father) was her boyfriend.”

Getting cucked by your girlfriend's stepfather or stepfather-figure has got to be one hell of a villain origin story.

Getting cucked by your girlfriend's stepfather or stepfather-figure has got to be one hell of a villain origin story.

Only course open to you at that point is to sleep with her mother and assert dominance.

Also, good old-fashioned eugenic sterilization would fix this. As you mentioned in that thread, it makes zero sense for capable, civilized attorneys to be out-reproduced by these lowlifes. Only progressive taxation and the welfare state can achieve such an unnatural outcome.

Maybe capable civilized attorneys should have more babies then.

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FWIW, the only people in my time in scouting who gave me "pedo-ick" were a married couple who were volunteering on behalf of their nephew, and who claimed to want to stay involved even after he left the program. It wasn't anything in particular, just physiognomy/vibe plus the oddity of being so into volunteering while having such a personal remove. I was very glad when they did not follow through and I never saw them again.

The "Eagle mills" are definitely real. I was part of several troops, and every single Eagle was essentially carried by an overzealous parent, usually his mom. There were a lot of "social studies homework" merit badges I had to do, and those all sucked. I remember being horribly embarrassed by the "sexual abuse awareness" training section of the handbook I had to read with my parents.

The most fun troop I belonged to was run by redneck dads who took us on 7-10 mile hikes on coastal islands or through hill country. The dads mostly just followed to make sure nobody died, and the SPL ran the show. We'd pick a place to camp, then the SPL would tell us to go get firewood. Me and my buds would go fuck off in the woods for an hour, whittle little spears and wooden daggers, set interesting looking plants on fire, hurl rocks and playful taunts at other patrols we encountered. Headed back to camp, cooked and ate dinner, cleaned up, made a fire, play some cards while cracking the raunchiest jokes and using the worst profanity we knew while the dads snickered and pretended not to hear. Then it was lights out, to our tents and sleeping bags where we talked about girls (90% bullshit, we knew nothing) and busted each other's balls for this or that. The dads cracked a bottle of whiskey and shot the breeze; if you were quiet enough you could eavesdrop and learn a thing or two.

Good times. Sad my sons probably won't get to experience the same thing. I'm thinking about trying to get some of my extended family together to do something like it, though.

Me and my buds would go fuck off in the woods for an hour, whittle little spears and wooden daggers, set interesting looking plants on fire, hurl rocks and playful taunts at other patrols we encountered. Headed back to camp, cooked and ate dinner, cleaned up, made a fire, play some cards while cracking the raunchiest jokes and using the worst profanity we knew while the dads snickered and pretended not to hear. Then it was lights out, to our tents and sleeping bags where we talked about girls (90% bullshit, we knew nothing) and busted each other's balls for this or that. The dads cracked a bottle of whiskey and shot the breeze;

Doesn't seem Courteous, Kind, Clean, or Reverent....

My own dad was a Scoutmaster in the 60s. Although my older brother he shepherded at least through the Cub Scouts, he never once even suggested I join scouting. I think--and I am to some degree making this up but I feel like I heard him talk about this, if not with me--that he had come to feel scouting had changed to such a degree that it was no longer what he valued, and this was in the mid 70s.

The one time I went with my brother to a Cub Scout meeting, all the guys did was take an old hubcap and tie it to a thin cord and throw it in the street when cars would pass so the driver would think he or she had lost a hub cap. They'd then pull it by the cord back into the woods. This seemed incredibly stupid and pointless to me even then, and I am not sure if we ever told my dad about it, but suffice to say this was not the Scouts he had grown up with and had been an active part of.

I write this to say that my dad was obsessive about Courteous, Kind, Clean and Reverent. He was a great role model in very many ways--for me, anyway, I feel that he was--which gives me pause when I realize that we were never close the way I would have wanted. I expect I was in some ways a giant disappoint for him, although he certainly made an impression on me.

\End needless personal tangent.

And if you burn poison ivy, that's a mistake you won't forget.

Definitely seems like boys though.

My husband was an Eagle Scout, and we take the kids out dispersed camping, though it's kind of stressful with kids who are too young to use a sleeping bag correctly, and keep crawling onto my head all night and pulling the blankets off of each other. I think husband just plans to keep doing this individually and teaching the kids, especially the son, things himself, because we're both the kind of introvert who reads disagreeable message boards and complains about them together, and organizing anything with another family feels like too much work. This is too bad, maybe we'll join some weird little Orthodox neighborhood or something, where none of the kids are allowed to have screens and have to crochet and harvest maple sap instead.

Ahh that's a shame. I would love to join you all once we (God willing) have kids. Sounds just like I want to do with my own.

The military used to value Scouting because a boy who'd spent 12 years LARPing as special forces in the Boer War presumably had a certain independent-mindedness and a bevy of practical skills that might come in handy in a tight spot.

Of course, this is double edged weapon. Someone with outdoors survival and evasion training who does not want to be in the army, has much better chance of getting out of tight spot than usual hapless conscript dragged from the streets. If you are not 100% certain about patriotic spirit and dedication of your population, better not disseminate widely these skills among them.

If you are not 100% certain about patriotic spirit and dedication of your population, better not disseminate widely these skills among them.

This is why patriotic spirit and dedication oriented propaganda tends to be a large part of the organization when Scouting was adapted/modified/mutilated into things like Young Pioneers or Hitler Youth.

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