According to a “strongly worded letter” sent from the president of the Girl Scouts of America to the president of the Boy Scouts of America, the Boy Scouts are stealing girls from the Girl Scouts — and feminists are losing their minds.
The letter, excerpts of which appeared in Buzzfeed on Thursday, excoriates the Boy Scouts for considering opening their membership to girls, and working on potential co-ed programs that would allow girls access to things like survival education and adventure travel — things that the Girl Scouts just don’t cover.
The two organizations had, apparently, been in talks to co-brand that extension, when Girl Scouts leadership got angry and decided to go public, accusing the Boy Scouts of just flat out stealing their membership instead of focusing on the “90 percent of boys” who aren’t in scouting programs. The vicious, angry letter called the co-ed programs a “a potentially dangerous and bad idea” and cited “studies” that claim girls learn better in an all-girl environment.
But part of the problem might not be that the Boy Scouts are “stealing” the Girl Scouts membership, but that the Girl Scouts have become something of a bizarre feminist training club, that just happens to be tasked with selling delicious cookies.
The Girl Scouts admit they’ve retooled their programming away from adventure education, and outdoor activities, and more towards encouraging girls to embrace science and math (though they’ve also formed a partnership with the decidedly un-woke Barbie doll). Religious groups have been forced to break ties with the Girl Scouts after finding out the organization employed Planned Parenthood to create some of its “diversity and tolerance” curricula, as well as handouts on basic sex education. The organization also, recently, said it would allow boys who identify as girls to join the Girl Scouts, even though GSA’s bylaws prohibit any male membership.
A report from last spring claims the Girl Scouts membership has declined 12% per year in recent years, and while GSA leadership sloughs of claims that its because the organization has incorporated more politics into its programming, the same report indicated GSA leadership fears a split inside the organization, as more conservative members pull away.
That has feminists panicking. In a near-hysterical essay for Slate, one feminist writer, Christina Cauterucci, begged parents not to pull their kids out of the Girl Scouts or “give in” to the Boy Scouts’ agenda of extending their mostly-nonpartisan curriculum to co-ed groups. The Boy Scouts are terrible, she moans, accusing BSA of everything from misogyny to embracing President Donald Trump.
In fact, she says, the Boy Scouts should just be more like the Girl Scouts because the Boy Scouts reinforces toxic masculinity. “If boys have a special, specific need today, it’s not for a group that reinforces traditionally masculine behaviors and activities,” Canterucci claims.
It seems almost as if they’re less concerned that girls might be gaining valuable life training from the Boy Scouts and more that they might be losing the ability to indoctrinate an entire generation of girls into radical feminism.