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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   722 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 18, 2026

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Via evolving parenthood experience, it's recently come to my attention that the Boy Scouts no longer exist, but rather a co-ed institution called "Scouting America". Boys and girls welcomed equally. No scout troop for males only.

Girl Scouts? Same as it ever was. Girls only.

How is this not a layup discrimination lawsuit? I can't even find any online discourse about it; any attempt to Google the topic simply directs me to the scouts "anti-discrimination" efforts.

When stuff like this happens, I think back to my time in the boy scouts 30 years ago. Or rather, cub scouts. Our den leader was a woman, and women weren't allowed to lead boy scouts (age 12 up), and the couldn't find a guy to do it, so the whole thing just disbanded once i hit age 12.

It was basically an after school activity. We sang songs, ate snacks, and made crappy home ornaments with glue and paper mache. No woodworking, no camping, definitely no knives or guns. It was very much not a macho activity. I feel like making it coed would have been... completely fine and natural actually?

There's probably a place for a more "hardcore" scouting that's boys only, but that was not my experience with the group.

Because no one wants to join the Girl Scouts.

The Girl Scouts hated that change more than anybody. They even sued the Boy Scouts for trademark infringement after they rebranded and began allowing girls to join.

This is the most remarkably woke post I've ever seen on this website.

A private organization, shrinking over time and finding itself with too much infrastructure and a changing market, attempts to rebrand an old idea* to expand their addressable set of possible participants. Another private organization chooses not to expand their addressable market. This is DISCRIMINATION.

*Co-ed "Venture Crews" have been around so long that my mother was in one

Many anti-discrimination laws have carve-outs with reasonings like "to redress historical injustices" etc., which is how womens' groups of all kinds remain legal.

Technically, aren't most of these groups private clubs, who can be as discriminatory as they like? You can have your white men’s club just as much as you want(although dues are likely well beyond your price range).

You can have your white men’s club just as much as you want

Ha. Good one.

They literally exist. Many fraternities and unions are this in practice, a few country clubs maintain it as explicit policy, and of course there’s the hells angels.

Don't gaslight me. The federal government has come down HARD on all-white organizations for a long time. I seriously doubt you can find any explicitly all-white country clubs. If there are still one or two, it must be at the cost of extreme social censure.

Also, you left out prison gangs.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) belongs to an "all white + jews" club. He's very serious about systemic racism, but he just keeps forgetting to check and see if the private, exclusive club he belongs to has admitted any brown people yet. Stop snickering. It's [D]ifferent.

No scout troop for males only.

Last I checked, for the troop level, units are still single-gender. I think they were trying a true co-ed troop concept recently, but decided against it. There are some pairs of boy/girl troops that meet at the same place and interact quite a bit, but at least around here it's less than half of them, I think. There are also all-girl units. From talking to some friends who are leaders, starting a girls unit can be difficult just because of the number of people you need to commit to regular involvement (IIRC 5 registered adult leaders and at least one female leader present at all activities with female youth).

The other levels like Cub Scouts are co-ed, as is Venturing (which has been for a long time). The Cub Scouts are mostly too young to care about it, and other than having a lot more girls present at larger events, it seems a lot like it did when I was a kid.

For one thing, you have to understand that the integration of Boy Scouts was, as much as any other reason, an indictment on the sorry state of the Girl Scouts of America. As much as woke is to blame, a lot of the pressure from parents to let girls join the boys also grew out of the simple fact that GSA was failing to organize and deliver an organization/experience that girls wanted to be a part of. They were working as unpaid labor for a glorified cookie company while they saw the Boy Scouts out there actually doing cool shit; sitting outside a grocery store soliciting from strangers while their male classmates built and raced pinewood derby cars. Girls wouldn't have felt resentment about not being able to become Eagle Scouts if the Girls Scouts actually made any effort to have the Gold Award mean a damn.

No one cares that Girl Scouts is girls-only because no one really cares about the Girl Scouts in general anymore beyond getting their annual box of Thin Mints.

It's not a discrimination suit because, despite the name similarity, the Boy and Girl Scouts are two different private organizations. Make no mistake, the Girl Scouts were not happy with this decision. They view Scouting America as poaching their girls. Which, yeah, they kind of are. Although I'd have much more sympathy for the GSA if they hadn't spend decades making themselves into an organization with no place for girls who just want to go camping and do outdoors stuff.

the Boy and Girl Scouts are two different private organizations.

Well I feel silly. Again, I'm new to all of this.

Because these are not government organizations? You can make a girls-only club. You can make an all genders club. If you want an all-boys club, you can make that too.

Yeah I can't think of a single all-boys club, anywhere in the U.S.

Really? Fraternities have been in the news again.

Social outcry is not the same thing as a legal barrier. In my metroplex one of the more prominent country clubs still requires that every member family be headed by a white male. Unions often have similar policies.

Trail Life USA is a Christian scouting organization that is only open to boys.

If you want an all-boys club, you can make that too.

Observably, no, you can't.

There are only two genders: male, and political. The political genders are allowed to segregate as they please. The men are not.

There are still all male country clubs and a lot of the fraternal organization are all male, fraternities too.

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