When my family went off to Disneyland this summer, we stopped in St. George both going and coming. That is, the city is a perfect in-between place from where I live in Utah and the Happiest Place on Earth. In prior years, we stopped in St. George long enough to eat lunch and gas up, blasting through the Arizona/Nevada desert until arriving in Anaheim around seven or eight o'clock at night. They were horrible, horrible experiences. I don't know what it is that makes me dislike them so much, but the fact was, when we were planning our summer vacation, we decided that, for my mental health, we should break the trip into two. When I checked into the hotel in St. George on the way toward California, they asked if I had any pets. "Just three boys," I said. The attendants laughed. On the way back, we checked into the same hotel we'd visited just over a week before. "Any pets?" they asked. "Just three boys," I said. These (different) attendants laughed. Raising three boys is an interesting experience. I suppose raising children in general is an interesting experience, but having three boys is the one I'm going through. We love our kids a lot--they've been with us for ten, seven, and four years--and, despite a lot of friction and learning-on-the-job, we feel like we're raising some pretty good children, over all. My youngest son, Demetrius (no, that's not his name, I'm simply reluctant to share their names online) is something else. He's fiercely independent except for when he's feeling lazy, like when he's pooped and doesn't want to be bothered to wipe his own butt. He can wipe it, he just doesn't want to. So we have to do it. One of the ways that he shows he's different from his brothers is that he's decided to love the colors pink and yellow, in that order. His favorite Paw Patrol pup is Skye, mostly because Skye is the coolest Paw Patrol pup and because she's both pink and yellow. As a result, Demetrius wants everything to be pink, preferably with Skye on it somewhere. Once, he burst into tears because we hadn't bought him a Hello Kitty lunchbox some weeks earlier. His pajamas are pink (and he's growing out of them, which makes him very sad), and there are multiple pairs of pink Skye socks in his drawer. He has a "Girl Pup Power" hat (which he doesn't wear, because he doesn't like hats, but he wanted this one), and a bunch of other pink products. That leads me to The Princess in Black. See, in our house, we aren't terribly concerned with arbitrary (and stupid) genderings of color. We don't care what color our son likes, and if he's happy with a "girl" color, then good for him. Part of the reason that we have so many problems with sexism can be traced to extraordinarily rigid gender roles and -expectations, of which a strict reliance on color to indicate gender is but one small and persistent part. Pink is a color. Some girls like it. Some boys do. We needn't make this more complicated than that. But there's always an impulse in my older boys to tease Demetrius for his preference. We've squashed it pretty well, but I thought that it would be good for my boys to see a story in which a princess, who wears pink, protects her kingdom as an all-black-wearing superheroine. I picked up Shannon Hale's The Princess in Black and gave it to my son for his birthday (almost all of my gifts to my sons are books). We've read it a couple of times since then, and I read it again to him tonight. The book is pretty long for a nighttime story--it's fifteen chapters!--but it's such a fun, lighthearted story that shows how being polite can solve problems and protecting other people can inspire others to look out for those who are struggling and scared that it's hard to put down. Demetrius loves to have books read to him, and since the books on the lower shelves get read so much, it was a nice change to read a longer-form story that emphasizes the idea that we're trying to inculcate in our kids: Namely, that societal expectations ("Princesses don't wear black") can be subverted to the benefit of everyone. Okay, that's probably a little beyond what Demetrius is getting out of his storytime. I do know that he likes the book, took it to his own bed to look it over and enjoy the pictures one more time (before getting distracted and running off to cause whatever chaos he's currently sowing), and even asked for the next story in the series. Which, knowing me, I'll probably buy for him. That's all part of raising three pets. I mean, sons. Let it be known, I am not a fan of the Boy Scouts of America.
Some of it is personal: My experience with the program was one of forced effort ("Go to this camp out! It'll be fun!" (Narrator: It was not fun.)) or spending time with kids who either a) didn't recognize I existed, or b) found me as a target for their bullying. In the worst case scenarios, I joined in with the bullies to pick on the kid who was homeschooled and, therefore, "the weird one". On one level, I got to vent some of my frustration that I suffered through onto someone else. On a retrospective level, I regret my behavior and I feel nothing but shame for how I treated a peer. Some of my disdain for the BSA is institutional: The hoopla about including transgender kids, gay leaders, and girls is asinine to me for the simple reason that I don't see why people are clamoring to get in to a program that I spent most of my youth hoping to get out of. Okay, so that's still a personal point. Institutionally, it has long irked me that the phrase "morally straight" would be read so narrowly as to make grounds for sexual orientation-based discrimination. One of the points there comes out of the fact that a closeted kid would be openly accepted, but an open kid would be treated with distrust and suspicion. And the idea that someone would have to lie about what he felt in terms of attraction and lifestyle simply to "fit in" with a bunch of stinky boys in the woods is absurd to me. Some of my dislike for the BSA is religious: in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, American members of the male persuasion are assigned a troop and pack and automatically enrolled in the Cub Scouts when they turn eight. They move through the program, which has been an integral part of the way the Church runs its youth structure. The thing is, BSA is not LDS, and though the BSA gives a lot of leeway and special exceptions to the LDS Church, it's long rubbed me the wrong way to have, for lack of a better word, an outsourced program that's supposed to be a part of my religious observance. Attendance to Scouts (already established as a less-than positive thing for me) was mandatory, not because it was Scouts, but because it was the Church. Nevertheless, hanging out with a bunch of stinky boys in the woods is not a particularly spiritual experience. Swearing, dirty jokes, fighting, bullying, and sex talk (guesses may be more accurate) are the topics du jour of any scouting activity, to say nothing of the fact that one is outside (gross), which some people find helps them commune with Nature and Nature's God, but I'm not one of those people, being the kind of reclusive person that I am. So I was pretty happy with the recent call by the BSA to let girls into the program, as it seems like a step the organization needs to take in order to remain buoyant once the Church fully extricates itself--a move that's very likely coming down the pipeline in the near future. Not only was the gendered exclusion been a bone I've picked with the BSA (yeah, I know; it's in their name that they're the Boy Scouts, but names can change), but in general, it makes sense to allow a system that has (not in my case) helped countless numbers of boys over the years to expand its sphere of positive influence. Again, I'm not on the same wavelength as others on this topic, so there may be some fundamental "manly" thing that Scouting is supposed to inculcate, but if so, I didn't get it, and I know I'm not alone on that front. If that's all hogwash, then there isn't really an argument to be had for further exclusion.* Then I asked a friend about what she thought of the change, and she surprised me when she said it disappointed her. She was upset, not because girls would be a part of the BSA, but because of what it'll do to the Girl Scouts. The two entities are separate, and though Girl Scouts aren't embraced in Utah (the Church sees it as a liberal, activist entity--mostly, if I remember correctly, because of the stance on abortion--and so the Girl Scouts don't get a lot of play), the Girl Scouts are a fantastic organization for girls like my friend who got a lot out of her involvement in her youth. That made me recalculate what I was celebrating here, because her perspective helped me to realize that, while a more Church-focused youth program for my young boys will be superior (in my mind) to the BSA, the consequence of the change in policy will likely destroy the Girl Scouts brand. How it'll shake out remains to be seen, but there are a couple of possibilities that strike me: One, the BSA absorbs the Girl Scouts' numbers to a large degree, leaving the latter a shell of its former self; two, the BSA is rather rejected, and the influx of girls doesn't really offset the loss of the LDS support, causing the BSA to downsize until it's a shell of its former self; three, an equilibrium is struck among the three youth entities of the LDS Church, the BSA, and the Girl Scouts. The point isn't that I'm necessarily rejoicing at the possible end of BSA--though I kind of am--because I recognize that the program, despite my reservations, has helped millions of boys throughout the century since its importation from England. While I view the whole thing as anachronistic, I have personal acquaintances whose lives have been permanently and positively changed by virtue of being a part of the Boy Scouts of America. Losing that--or even seeing it drastically change--must be difficult, and I can commiserate and sympathize with those who are feeling perplexed or confused by what's going on. I'm not one of them. Though, because of my sons**, I'm still mildly involved with the Cub Scouts, I'm out of Scouting. And I'm okay with saying that makes me glad. --- * I'm sure there's some handwringing because of the "problem" of overnight camping, but if that's the largest argument, then the answer is simple: Don't camp out with both genders. Separate camps, separate trips. No trips. Like, there are plenty of ways around it. In fact, all-girl packs are allowed within the new rules, too, so there are options. And if camping out is the only thing that you think Scouting does, then maybe you should join a troop. ** My son is a Cub Scout right now, and he hates it. Once he's there and things get moving along, he cheers up, but Scouting is far from an interesting thing to him. He'd rather sit at home and read a comic than put on the stiff blue shirt and bike to the church for an hour-long meeting. I can't say I blame him. |
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