PSA on the BSA

So, the big news of the day, other than it being the International Day of the Girl and National Coming Out Day, is that the Boy Scouts of America, aka the BSA, has announced that it will now be accepting girls into its programs. 

And of course this has caused controversy.

A few truths here to start out this post. First of all, to all the naysayers out there, this is not happening tomorrow. In fact, the organization itself said that it will be two to three years before the organization is fully co-ed, since they will start having girl cub scout dens, and eventually units as they grow up. Second of all, this doesn’t make anyone who is already a Boy Scout any less of a Boy Scout. It’s not always about you.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way…

Not that I follow news in the world of scouting (other than APO, which has been co-ed since 1976), but it was an unexpected move by an organization that has, in the past, been pretty strict on its membership. The Girl Scouts have allowed boys and non-gender-binary kids to participate in its programming for awhile now, and maybe it’s time for the Boy Scouts to catch up.

Then there’s the question: why would a girl want to be a Boy Scout? 

Easy. I’ll boil it down to this scenario: do you want to be in an organization where you can become known as an Eagle, or do you want to be a part of an organization that is most famous for overpriced cookies which most people in America only realize exists once a year? There’s also the issue of nomenclature. While the Boy Scouts get to be in levels known as lions and tigers, animals known for power and ferocity, groups of Girl Scouts get to be…daisies and brownies. I could imagine a girl wanting to be an awesome animal rather than a flower, or a dessert, despite the fact that brownies actually refers to brown vests. The Boy Scouts traditionally engage in activities like engineering, wilderness survival, and woodworking. While Girl Scouts do those things as well, most people probably think that they cook, identify wildflowers, and talk about their feelings. These activities are ones in which Boy Scouts  most likely do not partake, or at least not to the same degree, as they are traditionally seen as more feminine and less empowering.

On the whole, I think it’s a positive move. Who knows, maybe somewhere down the line the groups will merge completely.