7 ms·

Will we see a total ban on single gender clubs in the future? And is that what we want? I don't get what is so wrong about having a few kids activities that ar

• sametmax 8y ago
  It's like removing separation of genders for toilets and showers everywhere. The gender targetted marketting, clothes and pronuon. On paper, the body is natural and it's a useless artificial separation. In practice, our society is imperfect, social norms and biological instincts don't align with moral and economy and logistic are important factors. Besides, as you said, it's an interesting (and i believe benefecial) expefience to immerse one self in environnement with only your gender sometimes.
  • humanrebar 8y ago
    It is ironic when we homogenize society in the name of diversity. In most dictionaries "variety" and "diversity" are synonyms.
• Angostura 8y ago
  As a father of daughters in the UK who really really enjoy going to Scouts; camping, stupid rough-and tumble games etc, I'm glad they are able to. If the girl's organisations such as the GirlGuides weren't so tepid, perhaps there wouldn't be a need. I don't see that there's anything particularly particularly "politically" correct in this. Mind you, I've never particularly felt an overwhelming urge to "teach my children the value of femininity". Do you think I'm failing as a parent?
  • xc1005 8y ago
    No, for the girls it's fine. It is the boys who suffer long term, also from the school system that currently indoctrinates them against biology and their interests.
    • swish_bob 8y ago
      Rot. My boys both clearly gain from having girls in the Scouts and Explorers. In fact, the issues that my youngest's Scout pack are currently suffering from are pretty much all linked to the sort of crappy behaviour you get when boys are brought up the way you appear to be suggesting is a positive thing.
      • gmk2 8y ago
        OP said "long term". Probably meaning "Do they still gain after their first divorce and losing half of their assets?".
        • Angostura 8y ago
          You have solid connection between boys being involved in physical activities with girls when growing up and the likelihood of divorce? Thought not.
        • swish_bob 8y ago
          I'm confident that exposure to girls during Scouts is decreasing their likelihood of getting divorced, rather than increasing it. Or do you honestly believe that toxic masculine behaviour is correlated to staying married? I mean, I suppose that it's possible: certainly escaping an abusive relationship is documented to be harder than leaving one that's healthy, just not working, so you could be right ...
    • Angostura 8y ago
      > indoctrinates them against biology and their interests. What does that even mean? There's about a 50:50 mix in the Scout Troop at the moment. When I went to Scouts as a kid, it was all male. From what I can tell, the activities haven't changed a bit. You just have two single-sex tents on camping trips. What is the biological imperative that's being indoctrinated here? They aren't being forced into doing needle-point badges (all though, I seem to remember 40 years ago doing a sewing badge, my chain-stitch is still a marvel). I absolutely agree that there is a problem with boy's achievement and schooling (I was a school governor), but there are heroic attempts underway to try and adjust things to be boy friendly.
• gambiting 8y ago
  >>Are we all becoming so politically correct that we effectively stop teaching our children the values of masculinity and femininity? I think there is a lot of very confusing messaging nowadays, that says that "men are women are equal and identical and we shouldn't have anything just for men or just for women" while also saying "women/men bring unique things to the table so we should put more/less value on that". You can't have it both ways. We can(and should!) treat everyone equally, but denying that men and women are different is just wrong. Where I am from(Poland) scouts(harcerze) were always inclusive of both genders except for troops which tried to be more military-oriented - then women were still allowed but the groups were separate.
  • krapp 8y ago
    It's only confusing because many people want to conflate the differences between genders and downplay the similarities, for political and religious reasons. If one accepts that, yes, men and women are different but those differences don't validate all biases which delineate by gender, then the issue becomes more clear, that we can and do have both, because society, culture and gender are complex.
    • watwut 8y ago
      Then again, many people exaggerate differences, routinaly framing small difference in preferences (say 5%) rates as "boy thing" "girl thing" as if all boys were x and all girls opposite.
      • krapp 8y ago
        That's true, especially in marketing. Boys and girls more or less have separate toy sections, and many "boy" products have "girl" alternates which are just the exact same product, just pink. Because of course, girls can't simply like tools, they have to like the pink tools that are just for them.
• laumars 8y ago
  > Are we all becoming so politically correct that we effectively stop teaching our children the values of masculinity and femininity? In my experience masculinity and femininity are a concept we largely teach kids. I've seen so many boys who love musicals, dolls, dressing up, crafting and all the other activities often associated as "girls things". Yet the moment they're spotted doing it by a group of their peers, they'll flip to "i hate dolls because they're girls toys" etc just to fit in. And on the flip side, I've also seen plenty of girls who could be described as "tom boys" and really just love doing stuff that we often teach our kids to be a masculine property. So I don't see it as being politically correct, I see it as humanity finally catching up that popular interests aren't so easily defined by boolean genders. However as a former Scout I can testify that the actual reason Scouts have allowed girls into their groups was to compensate for dwindling membership. Some Scout groups resisted but many were forced to adopt mix gender simply to survive.
  • taneq 8y ago
    I've seen this same thing in action, and I've wondered whether it might be part of the reason that people end up identifying as transgender. If you've had it drummed into you that dolls and dresses and make-up are "girl things" and you like all of those, then well you must be a girl, right? And if you like tools and cars and sports then you must be a boy? If you can't even imagine it's an option to like those things if you're not the associated gender, I can see that messing with your sense of identity.
    • ams6110 8y ago
      I don't really think that gender confusion has that simple a cause.
    • CydeWeys 8y ago
      I think you're reversing cause and effect in the case of transgender kids.
  • nailer 8y ago
    Go find a lesbian mother's group. You won't find a group of kids more exposed to a year-0 style environment, where a large bunch of children are encouraged to specifically play with toys that are usually more popular with the other gender. You also won't find a more exasperated set of parents who are blown away when most of their children seek out more common toys for their gender.
• OskarS 8y ago
  I'm Swedish and grew up as a scout, and in Sweden scouting was made co-educational in the 1960s. I remember having my mind blown at finding out that this wasn't the case everywhere in the modern world. It just seemed like the most ridiculous thing to me, to separate scouting by gender. Saying that girls and boys couldn't be scouts together was equally absurd to me as saying that girls and boys couldn't go to school together. Equality in this was just the most natural thing in the world. It's ridiculous that scouting isn't co-educational everywhere. The fact that Sweden didn't realize this until the 1960s is absurd, and the fact that there are people still resisting it today half a century later is downright shameful.
  • Freak_NL 8y ago
    Same here in the Netherlands. It's always weird to read about the US BSA and the Girl Scouts being actual separate organisations. Here it was (and perhaps is) perfectly acceptable to have separate girl and boy patrols within the same age bracket in a single group, but most activities are shared (including the all-important summer camp).
  • ramblerman 8y ago
    > Equality in this was just the most natural thing in the world. Op wasn't suggesting girls can't be scouts. You can still have unisex scouts. He was merely asking if we have gone so far that a club which allows boys to play with boys and girls just with girls (in one activity) was such a terrible thing. The fact that you dropped the equality hammer to counter him, kind of makes his point that it has.
    • OskarS 8y ago
      I think there are a number of circumstances where separating by gender is perfectly fine. Sports is an obvious one: because of gender differences in physiques, girls and boys compete at different levels, so the separation makes perfect sense. I'm just saying that it makes absolutely zero sense to do it for scouting. Scouting is about teaching kids to be self-reliant, to be confident in nature, to work well with others, and to help with their physical and mental development. There's absolutely no reason to split this up by gender except antiquated and sexist beliefs about women. It makes just about as much sense as having different scouting organizations for people with blue eyes and brown eyes.
• prawn 8y ago
  "Will we see a total ban on single gender clubs in the future? And is that what we want?" Aren't they opening up their membership in this case to dominate the "scout" brand and capture a broader market? "Are we all becoming so politically correct that we effectively stop teaching our children the values of masculinity and femininity?" What are those values? Do they need to be taught? My son and daughter each demonstrate pretty typical gender traits, but not because of anything we've taught them. Each naturally gravitates to what they like most. We teach them general values and general skills. If there's something commonly considered gender-specific, usually they'll initiate/ask because they're interested.
• 4ndr3vv 8y ago
  "...we effectively stop teaching our children the values of masculinity and femininity" What "Values" are these? That Boys are tough and shouldn't cry and girls are good at sitting quietly doing crafts?
  • krapp 8y ago
    And more to the point, if masculinity and femininity are "values", presumably positive, why is it wrong for girls to be taught masculine values or boys to be taught feminine values?
  • humanrebar 8y ago
    The same things we celebrate when there is gender diversity in a given context.
  • hanselot 8y ago
    If there is such a thing as toxic masculinity, then I propose to you that there must be an inverse to it which is not toxic and thereby should be reinforced in youth. You can't have toxic masculinity, but suggest that toxic femininity does not also exist. And by that logic, the inverse of toxic femininity should also exist, meaning that yes, we should be teaching those that have different genders, different values. The relevance of a lesson in physical restraint when dealing with the average female, as the average male, should be self-evident, considering the fact that there exists a stigma about hitting women, yet when a guy gets hit it very often does not even register. This does not mean they can't be taught the values of both, it just suggests that if you want there to be the evil men that do nothing but perpetuate misandry, the inverse must exist also, and I can tell you right now, their not called feminists.
• ivanhoe 8y ago
  In my country scouts were just scouts, no separation, and in my view it was really a super-positive thing. I've made some good female friends there, had some of the first crushes and romances and all in all that gender mixed environment was much less toxic experience for me than for instance later when I was in a high-school which was technically oriented and had almost no girls at all. All male environment brings the aggression levels up a lot, just as all female environments tend to have much more power games, clans and "politics". When you mix genders people usually behave better (or at least they pretend to be less of a-holes) in my experience.
• justanegg 8y ago
  We're opening up opportunities for MeTooScouts
• Kiro 8y ago
  Sorry, but this is the most backwards antique standpoint I've ever seen on Hacker News and I'm surprised it's the highest upvoted. I'm glad I live in a country where opinions like yours are complete taboo as they should be.
• rv-de 8y ago
  > Are we all becoming so politically correct that we effectively stop teaching our children the values of masculinity and femininity? There is no value in masculinity and femininity ... those are labels for a complex interaction of personality traits which a given person shows or doesn't. There is no reason to teach those concepts. They are simply present in a human being. Most people are combinations of masculine and feminine traits - it is a spectrum and not a binary concept.
• ryanmercer 8y ago
  I agree. One of my best friends was female, I mean we rode bikes and stuff every single day after school and spent most summer days joined at the hip, but going to a scout event was an entirely different thing. And here's an issue I see. All of the scout camps I went to as a kid, yeah they didn't have two sets of showers or toilets... So what, what are you going to do? March all the girls in and have them use the bathroom, shower etc. March them out, march the boys in and repeat? Oh, and you're going to have to go through them with a fine tooth comb between groups becuase we live in a smartphone world and I'll bet you all the money in my wallet boys are going to try and hide their phones to get video of girls and I imagine to a lesser extent it will happen in reverse too. Hell, people still occasionally freak out about men being largely alone with young boys in group showers/open bathrooms... uh... you think there isn't going to be some disaster where Shady McGrady gets up in the middle of the night, slips off to the shower and sets up some sort of recording to get video young girls and the mothers/female staff? Because, I hate to burst bubbles but, scout camps aren't going to have funds to build brand new facilities to have gender-segregated facilities... I mean, most of those facilities weren't in the best condition when I was in scouts because they're operating on pretty thin budgets often paying camp staff barely better than minimum wage. It's ok to have same-gender friends, it's ok to have same-gender activities. I hate that by taking this stance it's a guarantee that I'll get called a chauvinist, or sexist, or a pig. We have this same issue in Freemasonry, 'mainstream' Masonry is a MEN'S fraternity and with regularity, there's the occasional men and women that want it opened up to women. No. I'm surrounded by women all day at work, I come home to my retired mother that lives with me, I want some guy time. Kids need this too.
• danso 8y ago
  Do boys and girls sports teams teach the "values of masculinity and femininity"? Boys and girls may compete at different physical levels but I wasn't under the impression that girls trained and competed with a specific feminine mindset (especially as many of the girls teams coaches were men). I don't think there has to be a ban on gendered clubs, but historically, girls and women have seemed to get shortchanged in the activities society deemed appropriate for them, so I can understand that some want to err on the side of challenging and bucking traditional gender boundaries and norms.
• VLM 8y ago
  No, only the values of masculinity.
• JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  I don't think the BSA is opposing that. Its all about how the Girl Scouts have imploded, closing most of their camps and drastically reducing their program. For years our local Boy Scout camp has shared their facility with the local girls, so they would have some place to continue their activities. Now the BSA is making it official - girls are welcome. And as others have said, sports are still gender-based. Even health clubs do this. Its not gone or banned, that's a straw man