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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."".
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.
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.
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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?
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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.
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.
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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.
Lol. I’d actually like to see Cory Doctorow make a statement on this now.
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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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
... 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.
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.
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"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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
Do microplastics and hormonal inversions count? Lol. I’m slowly beginning to think there just ‘might’ be something to that…
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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.
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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 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.
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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?
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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:
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:
Getting cucked by your girlfriend's stepfather or stepfather-figure has got to be one hell of a villain origin story.
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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.
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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.
Doesn't seem Courteous, Kind, Clean, or Reverent....
Definitely seems like boys though.
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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.
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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.
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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