Teaching Your Girls to Address Resistance.

This week was the birthday of the Boys Scouts of America. It turned 112 years old. That is quite an accomplishment. For 109 years the organization did not have the full participation of female members. Boys Scouts was seen as the name implies, as a boy exclusive organization. Now for 97.5% of the existence of BSA, it was an all-male organization. Many organizations were founded as gender-exclusive groups, that have successfully made the transition to being co-ed. No one thinks twice when a woman goes to work out at the YMCA - Young Men's Christian Association. Eventually, I feel that Scouts BSA will be in the same boat.  This is not going to happen overnight. With just a simple scan of social media pages, including the official Facebook page of Boy Scouts of America, you can find that many are not as excited to see the inclusion of girls. Many will openly oppose, make negative comments, or extoll the downfall of the organization due to the inclusion of female scouts. 

These are just a few comments that I was able to quickly find on the official Boy Scouts of America page. They are even more prevalent when a local or national news story is run.  When traditions change it is not unexpected to have some that push back against this change. Also, most of what I have found is that those most vocally in disagreement with the inclusion of females are not involved with Scouts BSA.  I lead with these ideas because while the vast majority of comments on social media, and interactions at scouting activities are positive, not all will be. The overwhelming support I have been exposed to at least publically is amazing. However, not every interaction my own child has had was a positive one. 

There are different settings where girls may run into opposition or oppositional comments. Teaching your female scouts how to respond is important so they can confidently, and quickly respond to naysayers. I know some will say they should need to be taught how to respond, but I took a different approach. Bullies will not back down until someone stands up for themselves. I am not saying that all of these situations come from a place of bullying.  In some cases, a lack of understanding can be the cause, and the response of the Scout can help further the aims of scouting, and inform a larger population that girls are here to stay. 

Situation 1:

    The unit is doing a community event. The girls are in uniform and acting as direct ambassadors for the Scouts BSA program.  The most common issue here is from a basic lack of knowledge that girls are in Scouts BSA. We have been asked if they were"wearing their brother's uniform". These questions are the easiest to understand and address.  I have taught my scouts to respond with "Nope, we are here with our all-female troop. They started allowing girls to join in 2019, and we are some of the first."

Often times this is met with further questions asking them about their Troop and what they are doing. Many times this is also starting a discussion with older members of the community that are happy these girls have a chance to do something they wanted to do as a child. 

It is not very easy for a person, even if they are not in favor of the inclusion of females, to be directly rude to a child right in front of them. Killing them with kindness is a great way to defuse situations. 

 

Situation 2 - Resistance from within your own Pack/Organization.

Recently at the University of Scouting, I attended a roundtable for female troops. This was an amazing experience. Under the current operational model, every Charter Organization can make the choice to allow girls to join. They can allow family scouting at the pack level and can offer to sponsor a female troop at the older stages. In the discussion with other leaders, I learned just how much the growing pains could be. Some members resigned or simply held beliefs that girls should not be involved.  When my daughter first joined her Pack in 4th grade, the decision to include girls was never discussed with the Pack on a smaller scale. The committee without much input from the Den Leaders simply said yes. 

When we signed up my daughter, it was a bit of a surprise to the den, including the current only boy members. Some of the kids were not happy that their boy hangout was being invaded by a girl. Due to my own ignorance, and assumption that the kids wouldn't care, I did not have a discussion with my daughter about how to respond to resistance from within.  The day before her first den meeting, a few of the boys were not nice to her and pushed her down on the playground. They told her scouts' were for boys and she should quit. My kid came home devastated. These were her classmates. Her friends until she tried to join their Pack. What I learned to pass along is that when something like this is new, it is important to discuss with all the stakeholders what is about to occur. Even delaying the start of the female scouts for an extra week would have allowed the dens to tell the current members, and put forth expectations for behaviors and how to welcome the new members. The happy end is that these boys ended up being some of her closest friends. They still talk, and their bond has helped them navigate life now going into middle school. This resistance was caused by a failure of adult communication. 

Situation 3- Resistance from the old guard. 

While most of the resistance I have encountered has come from outside of scouting, from people no longer active, or who have never been active, occasionally we run into other Units that are not as open to the idea that there are now girls in the camp. As recently as our Spring Camporee, we had an adult leader that did not like that the boys and girls were doing the activities at the same time. He complained that the girls were a distraction to his boys, and were not in their appropriate uniforms. Mind you the uniform was "Class B".  Our young ladies were wearing a pair of workout pants, and t-shirts. Not exactly revealing and definitely not a distraction. He went as far as complaining to the District Executive. We are fortunate that we have a very supportive council. He was shut down.  My advice here is to let adults deal with adults.  The lesson that I have given our girls is that if another leader is being inappropriate, remain calm, walk away, and get one of their leaders to address the other adult. Some are still active in scouting but do not believe that it should be open for all. This attitude will change, over the years, but we need to navigate that now.  My belief is that feelings such as this are only furthered because of the way that girls in scouting have been implemented. As long as groups can make a choice to exclude members based on sex, this will cause this issue to still fester and will allow groups to harbor thoughts and feelings without the needed exposure and experience of what girls in scouting are like.  I could not imagine if on any other basis that organizations could exclude members that this would be acceptable. However, these are the rules that we currently have. 

When our Scouts have a negative interaction with Scout from another Troop the initial response is to restate affirmatively that they belong. "I am with Troop 1019, Scouts allows for girls now, I surely belong here."  I have also taught the kids the say "A Scout is Kind", "A Scout is Friendly", or some other of the Scout Law. Showing that you are living under the same Scout Laws is important to understand one another as equals. If the other Scout does not get the message, they are again to inform their leaders and allow us to deal with it as adults. 

When done right, a coexisting of Troops is an amazing thing.  We are fortunate that at our charter organization the boys and girls share the same aims, support each other, and are learning how to interact with each other professionally. They cheer for each other in competition, they laugh with each other while doing activities, but they know the rules and expectations. We camp together 4-6 times a year. We work together, we laugh together, and we Scout Together. We call them our big brothers, and we are their sister Troop. Our Leaders are friends, we enjoy each other's company, and working with each other Scouts. This is how it is supposed to be. This is how it should be. This is how we will continue to work together to make this experience meaningful for all the Scouts we work with. 

Girls Scout Too!