I was just considering getting my son into the scouts and this encourages me.
I seriously feel bad for your son if this is what causes you to force it upon him.
Better be careful talking in this thread will turn you trans.
Nobody is forcing anything he is going to do it if he wants to.
What a small-balls thing to say.
The horror of acceptance for others. Oh my god, please make it stop. /s
I think your local offerings can be a big factor. I grew up in scouts, loved my experience for the most part.
But talking with other people about their experiences can be a mixed bag. Each troop has its own priorities, the national Scouting organization gives troops a lot of flexibility on how they want to run their operation.
My troop, for example, was huge on outdoor activities. We had monthly camping trips, sometimes more than one a month. We did participate in organized “scouting events” as well with other troops, but that was sort of secondary.
Other troops are big on “scouting achievements” like merit badges, “scouting societies” like Order of the Arrow, medals and honors kinda thing, I felt like that would be a bit of a drag. But to each their own.
Definitely varies on area and by troop. Mine was camping or outdoors twice a month at minimum, and pushed to be very active in all the things possible to immerse scouts in scouting. It really felt like the ideal way for the program to be done.
The biggest downside was that drive to do more in proper scout led meant 80% of outings were messy figure out backpacking trip ideas.
Definitely helped shape my opinions on scouting as a trans woman who was barely able to stay in the program after coming out in time with the policy change.
Some troops are also very hostile to being accepting, and do their best to ward off any gay or possibly gay youth in the first place. So if that’s a concern it is still relevant.
I definitely learned some pretty good skills in it, so I would personally recommend, though biased.
Learned first aid, fire starting, safe wood chopping, some decent enough regional wilderness survival skills, and had a good amount of fun along the way. Also learned gun safety in a very important meeting we had that probably should have been either a once every year meeting.
Oh dear firearm training, even at the most basic of levels is so under appreciated.
It really is.
As someone that went through this program, I can’t stress enough that the takeaways here go far beyond marksmanship; the program makes sure of it. Because of merely attempting to get the Riflery merit badge I have a profound respect and safety awareness for guns, and all I used was a .22 bolt-action rimfire, which is about as basic as it gets. At the same time I’m aware that being halfway good at maintaining and using one are skills that must be cultivated and are not easy to do nor intutive. If I had to use a firearm now, I know that I’d have to use it at close range to be any good.
And unlike most americans (according to statistics) know that you should unload the firearm before cleaning, storage, or hiding in an oven. Its the main difference between the states and nations that require a firearms license. Even one day of training before letting people buy a firearm drastically changes outcomes.
Education is key in firearm safety.
Nobody scares me more at the range than adults who rent a gun who clearly have no experience. They’re often simultaneously confident and dangerous. Kids at the range are afraid of getting in trouble so listen to people telling them how to be safe, but adults are the fucking worst.
Here in Canada we have that very issue with police at the range (my range had to ban them in groups). The mix of overconfidence and need to show off while having less safety training then regular people is a deadly recipe.
vet the troop carefully, but yeah, it’s a good organization.
And listen to your kid if they say it’s not what it looks like. My troop looked totally fine if you asked the Scoutmaster. It turns out it was just his kid and his kid’s best friends who were all assholes. I got beaten up at least once, and eventually got kicked out because I pulled my knife on the Scoutmaster’s kid, because he had pulled his knife first, and literally backed me up against a cliff with it. Dude was a psycho and eventually joined the Army during the big 2009 push (what a shock).
Mom insisted I go every week, it’s not that bad, etc, and then literally had the stones to tell me “you should’ve said something” when I got thrown out.
yeah, i was in a troop with an awesome scoutmaster. who died. the next scoutmaster was okay but he moved. the one after that was an Uncle Touchy that i managed to avoid. my parents refused believe me when i told them there was something going on but they like burying their heads in the sand (they cultists).
Eagle Scout here. These asshat politicians need to keep their hands off scouting. It’s an awesome organization that gets kids off the screens and teaches them a bunch of cool, outdoorsy skills. Everybody should be encouraged to participate. Our society needs some fresh air.
Almost made Eagle Scout here. Would absolutely encourage people to join*. There is almost no other organization where you can learn cooking, first aid, environmental science, and many other cool and useful skills that I can think of. At least not for teens. There are definitely a good amount of things I learned that I have kept with me, even if I have never had to use them, especially a very important meeting we had on gun safety.
*obviously vet the troop. You absolutely don’t want to join a troop with homophobes if you or your child are not straight or are trans or whatever.
Re: vet the troop.
I had a very lucky experience in that my troop was about as secular as it gets, meeting at a local public school without any external financial support at all. There was no church involved; the parents funded everything and provided transportation and were our chaperones. The only mention of “reverence” was in the Scout Oath, and there were never any group prayers or other such things.
We also didn’t wear uniforms on outings, steering clear of any pro-military optics.
My point being: if you find yourself looking for a program that is more on the side of skill-building, outdoorsy stuff, and education, there are troops out there that may fit the bill.
The troop I was in was like that as well, minus the uniforms. Almost always had to have on either a uniform or troop shirt at outings so we could be identified in case something went wrong. Closest we had to church related stuff was how our troop was grateful enough to be able to hold meetings in a nearby church, a quick mention of it in Eagle Scout court of honor ceremony, and the occasional camp out “there’s service happening for anybody who wants to attend” type of thing.
As for funding, we definitely had the usual fall popcorn sales and then we usually did a bake sale early Spring for funding. Hated the bake sale because it was always at a small rest stop shop that was almost always cold. No external support outside of whoever popcorn sales were done through.
Eagle scout here as well. I second this. When I was in scouting it was still boy scouts and I was always a bit bothered by the exclusions. So happy to see that the organization is now inclusive and standing by their beliefs.
Now just to get religion out of scouting…
Another Eagle jumping in. It is so clear these clowns know nothing of what scouting is about.
They’ve basically violated every single last part of the oath. They’re 100% at-odds with the entire program as far as I can tell.
These clowns know that scouting promotes inclusiveness and they hate that.
I got a lot of badges when I was a scout. Didn’t have to use my penis for any of them.
Your troop didnt teach you how to lash a table together using just your penis? Maybe that was just for Order of the Arrow…
… wait, what? Next are you gonna tell me that the “cocksucking” badge I got from that one scoutmaster is fake?
Maybe.
Come over to this hotel room. Show me what you learned, and I’ll assess your skills. Then I can tell you if it was fake.
They said they didn’t have to use THEIR penis… (I’m so sorry)
You confuse it with the “self sucking” badge
As a scout in the 90s, I can remember entire summer camps spent discussing Marilyn manson and his missing rib
Same, except it was Ron Jeremy not Marilyn Manson.
That’s the first time I’ve heard that. I think he had too big a belly to bend like that.
That’s kinda how he became a porn star. Though I’ve never seen him without the belly, I’ve heard that he was skinnier in the '70s when he was doing porn. I really only know him from his role in Orgasmo
Not even the knot tying badge? I was duped!
/s
Hah, as a furry, that one has implications. :3
– Frost
Not even a furry, or even non-hetero, and it has implications
I bet we’re thinking of completely different implications, which is pretty hilarious!
(‘knot’ is furry terminology (possibly outside furry too, it might be what the scientists call it, but it probably doesn’t come up nearly as much in other contexts) for… does lemmy not have inline spoilers?)
knots explanation, furry lewd stuff talk
…the bulbous bit that wolves like me (and other canids) apparently have at the base of their dick, which swells up to lock them in place during sex. And you can probably guess what “tying” would be, heh. Usually I hear it called “knotting” though.
Yep. I was thinking of bondage
Sure, when you were a kid, yeah. They got a badge now for safe cylinder extraction.
Obviously you didn’t take the fast track program.
I’ll never forget how I earned my “not scared in the dark” badge. A penis wasn’t involved, but cooked spaghetti.
Doesn’t the SecDef have more important things to do right now? Like fight a war no one but his boss wanted?
His job is to use the culture war to distract from the class war.
You’d think so, but I’m sure they have some weird fantasy of transforming the Boy Scouts into the MAGA Youth, and guiding them from scouts, directly into the military’s meat grinder.
The most dangerous demographic group for any Dictatorship are Military Age Males. If you don’t take control of them, they can be turned into an army against you.
So it’s best to filter them early, identify those who will be on your side, and can be properly educated as fuel for the government, and those who look like they could be trouble down the line, can be used as cannon fodder.
Exactly, they’d always counted on them serving as that.
Ah, the SecDef doesn’t actually fight a war. He just supports starting one. And then like all richwhitemen in the USA have done, let a whole bunch of impressionable young people do the fighting and dying for him.
Ask how I know!
Hey! Whoa! That’s not true…
…everyone implicated in the Epstein files wanted this war.
Doesn’t the SecDef have more important things to do right now?
More important than thinking about children’s genitals?
He’s in the GOP. So no.
Chatgpt is doing the job now so he can focus on culture wars
On the one hand, yes, but on the other, he doesn’t exactly have the skillset to run any department let alone the DoD(W)
BTW if you’re looking to order girl scout cookies consider ordering some from this list of Trans and non-binary scouts: https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/2026-trans-girl-scouts-to-order-cookies
This person makes a list every year
Idk man. I support trans kids but I don’t want to show favoritism. Why is there a list of transkids? Honest question I don’t understand. dont parents sell at work and in front of stores and stuff? Would this alienate them from their peers somehow?
Erin in the Morning is a reputable source, too. That blog has been sharing trans girl scout cookies for years.
Modern scouts sell both in person and online
I’m not sure how it would alienate them. Being different is already alienating.
For sure, thanks for the link.
It’s been ages since I had girls scout cookies. My nearest comparison for selling cookies are those old competitive fundraisers school used to do an you get rewards.
It was really competitive at my school
As an Eagle Scout, good. They realize that they teach generations of young people how to be good people and stand up when the time calls them to stand up? Do they think we’ll stay quiet if they give into fascists?
Looks like the DoD / DoW will be cutting its ties with Scouting America then, if what that weirdo said was true.
Maybe they’ll start a new organization, not only for Trump fans, but specifically for the Youth. Where have I heard that idea before?
You mean just the Youth that are partial to Trump? His Youth?
They would all be blond little girls. The Bondi Youths.
As ever with this regime, I am not sure if sarcasm won’t reflect reality.
Let the little children come to me. And do not forbid them, for such is the kingdom of heaven.
The church is just unrecognizable from how I was raised. But I do suspect it will be a religious push, not a scientific one, that sees us on the other side of all this. That’s just how humans do.
That’s it…the Scouts have just declared war on MAGA! Time to bomb the shit out of them! /s
They will all be together at one place at the Jamboree.
OurTroop is open to all!
deleted by creator
This is what I was saying last Friday when the memo dropped. The memo was a nothing burger. Functionally nothing changed about the program. Hegseth got nothing he wanted.
People online just can’t help themselves from losing their minds. Literally anything can make people lose their minds. A headline could be “Hegseth declare that all banana splits served to troops be gendered as male” and y’all would lose your minds like clockwork.
“Hegseth declare that all banana splits served to troops be gendered as male”
Yeah, I would absolutely take issue with the head of a government institution saying something like that. That is a bonkers thing to say as a public official and should invoke some kind of mental health check.
I’m aware Hegseth is just posturing for brownie points with this Scouts thing, but this kind of behavior should not be normalized. I still remember when Howard Dean lost his bid to be a presidential candidate because he got too excited during a speech.
Yeah, I would absolutely take issue with the head of a government institution saying something like that.
Yeah. He knows that. That’s exactly why he does it. How do y’all not know their playbook by now? There are only two plays.
- Do evil Nazi shit.
- Say stupid shit online to keep the press and liberal Internet circles distracted from the evil Nazi shit.
That’s the whole playbook.
- Do evil Nazi shit.
- Say evil Nazi shit online to… distract people from the evil Nazi shit?
That’s not a playbook. That’s an evil Nazi doing evil Nazi shit and then never letting us forget that he’s an evil Nazi.
But while you should focus on the no. 1 stuff, you are far too easily distracted by the no. 2 stuff.
The Scouts news this weekend is a perfect example. Functionally nothing changed in the program, but they are able to make you go insane like a puppet.
It’s a signal for what they want to do to the program, and the government has a lot of ways to pressure Scouts to make it happen. It’s a distraction until it becomes reality, like all the other evil Nazi shit they do. This is how they signal their future plans, just like forcing us out of sports and forcing us into the wrong bathroom and taking away our identification paperwork and putting us in men’s prisons and then taking away our hormones when we’re in prison. They push push push until they get what they want.
They’re evil Nazis and they want to exterminate all trans people. This is just another thing they want to do, and if we let them, they will.
But I’m just a stupid fucking puppet, what the fuck do I know?
They didn’t change much, but there were changes made and not insignificant ones, and theyre using some really weasely words to mask that.
They have done away with the Citizenship in Society merit badge, which was a relatively new badge, but was also a required badge to earn eagle. This was a badge that basically focused on the importance of DEI.
They’ve also agreed to add a “military service” merit badge. Not a whole lot of details yet about what exactly that will entail or if it will be a required badge or not.
It also sounds like they’ll be making youths register accordingly to their biological gender as opposed to the one they actually identify as, and will need to use facilities like bathrooms and share tents and such with other scouts that corresponds to that.
It’s not massive changes, but it’s certainly enough that you should be pissed about them. And hegseth has indicated he wants to reevaluate in a few months and likely will be pushing for even more changes.
I’m an eagle scout, I’m fucking pissed about this, it goes against all of the good values I learned from scouts for them to give into this pressure, and I’m sure that when kegsbreath comes back around in 6 months or so they’ll cave even more.
I’m sending my eagle medal back in protest.
Hi, venturing silver here (sending that shit back, too). Do you have a handy link to all of these changes that I can send to my old scout buddies?
Also thank you for showing real scout spirit and taking this seriously.
I’ve been talking to a lot of other eagles and other former scouts, and so far none of them have been happy about this. I have a couple other people also planning to return their medals, and a few who can’t find their medals or who are (understandably) reluctant to do so but are at least planning to write some letters and make some noise over this.
I don’t have a specific link to share, I’ve been following this whole situation for a few weeks now since it was all first announced. There’s a lot of articles being written about it now, your best bet is probably just to see what your favorite trusted news sources are saying.
They did away with one merit badge and added one elective. “DEI” is baked throughout the scout program and basically all the topics covered in that one merit badge are covered in lots of other parts the program. Including the whole point of the scout law.
You are losing your mind over nothing. Get a grip.
“DEI” is baked throughout the scout program
And do you really think that they’re not going to try to come after that too? They’re already leaving the door open for them to come back and put more pressure on scouting in a few months, and Drinky Pete has pretty clearly said that he hopes the organization will go back to being the boy scouts.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
Also really convenient of you to just ignore the concerns about trans youths. I’m sure you’re not pushing an agenda here /s
Yes, I do think they are dropping this issue. I think Hegseth realized that he wasn’t going to get the traction on this he wanted so he agreed a nothing burger and declared victory for himself.
I’m not ignoring the concerns of the Trans youth, it’s just that the “demands” won’t actually change them. The BSA has already issued a statement that trans youth are still welcome in scouting. No one is going to be checking anyone’s birth certificates. Literally nothing changed.
Get a grip.
Maybe you’re right, and I’ll have sent my medal away for nothing, in which case I’m down a prized but essentially useless trinket.
Or maybe I’m right, in which case I’m either ridding myself of a symbol of an organization I’ll no longer wish to be associated with soon, or maybe, just maybe I’m doing something that helps to prevent that from happening.
If you’re right, I’ll feel a little silly and otherwise continue my life as normal, content that I at least stood up for something I believe in.
But what will you do if I’m right? How would you feel knowing that you brushed this off as a non-issue if girls and trans youth, and maybe eventually other “undesirables” are eventually kicked out of scouts, when their commitment to dei wavers, and maybe they’re even twisted into a militaristic, nationalist organization like some modern Hitler Youth?
I’m not the person your reply is to, but you’re spot on about where this is headed. From the DOD’s initial statement about Scouting America, it’s obvious that they want it to go back to excluding girls from the organization. As a current den leader, I was already dissatisfied with the way the organization is being run, and this is probably the final straw for me to just step away from them completely. Leadership is acting like cowards while also asking for donations. It’s incredibly disappointing.
I’m honestly a little conflicted about how people like you who are still actively involved in scouting should react to this.
On the one hand, yeah, screw the organization, they don’t deserve support for this kind of stuff.
On the other hand, it’s about the kids, and I do overall believe that the core values of scouting and the kind of structure it can provide are great things for a lot of kids to experience. There are other ways to provide that sort of program, but scouting is already there, and it makes more sense to me to try to preserve and improve that than to try to start something else from scratch.
And good adult leaders can do a lot to insulate their units from the bullshit from higher-up. I know my troop wasn’t at all afraid to bend or even outright break the rules when it made sense to do so (I actually remember first learning the term “plausible deniability” from one of my leaders,) and being active at the district or council level can help put pressure from the inside (back in the 90s my local council actually tried to force the issue and allow gay scouts to join, they got shot down by national but imagine if more councils would have stepped up to do that.) Good leaders with their heads on straight leaving scouting will just result in the organization collapsing into exactly what we don’t want it to be.
I’m not currently active in scouting, I don’t have kids and my schedule doesn’t really work with it these days to be active as a leader, so all I can do is try to make some noise from the outside leaning on my experience as an eagle scout and former leader. I have nothing to lose but also very little leverage. People like you have more leverage, but also not much to lose- absolute worst case scenario they find an excuse to kick you out, but if you don’t succeed at making change from the inside you were probably going to leave anyway.
Except there’s the whole “military leader threatens a private organization” thing.
