In one way, this is the battle of the sexes we’ve all been waiting for: the Girl Scouts coming for the Boy Scouts. Look closer, though, and you’ll see it’s a mind-bending, gender-bending, topsy-turvy culture war skirmish no one could have anticipated a generation ago.
Boys need boy time and girls need girl time. We used to know that. But now, it’s discriminatory to keep them separated. The Boy Scouts of America took the lead on the liberal push to abolish gender distinctions, announcing in 2018 that it would welcome girls into its older youth program, Scouts BSA. Michael Surbaugh, chief executive of the Boy Scouts, hailed the program as a “new era for our organization.”
Guess who was displeased? The Girl Scouts. The organization argued that Scouts BSA is an “infringement” on it and asked a federal court to prevent the Boy Scouts from using the terms “scouts” and “scouting” in its recruitment of girls.
“As a result of Boy Scouts’ infringement, parents have mistakenly enrolled their daughters in Boy Scouts thinking it was Girl Scouts,” the lawsuit states, adding that the Boy Scouts have begun to target girls and their parents deliberately in an effort to poach them from the Girl Scouts. “The parties’ programs, which have many similarities, are now directly competitive,” the Girl Scouts said.
The Boy Scouts said that the Girl Scouts were anti-girl: “[This lawsuit] is dismissive of the decisions of more than 120,000 girls and young women who have joined Cub Scouts or Scouts BSA,” the Boy Scouts said in a statement.
The lawsuit itself has degraded into a fight over who started using the term “scout” first and who really owns the term’s trademark. But the bigger question is this: Are gender-specific organizations and activities still acceptable? The Boy Scouts does not seem to think so, either because it’s driven by the same woke agenda pushing much of the culture left or because it simply wants to score as many memberships as it can, or both.
But the Girl Scouts is pushing back, arguing that women deserve their own traditions and spaces because they have their own specific desires and needs. It is right, which even the data have confirmed: A study commissioned by the group confirms that female members tend to have a much stronger sense of self, positive values, and healthy tendencies when compared to nonmember girls and/or boys. Isn’t that what female empowerment is all about?
—By Kaylee McGhee White
