At least as far as parents are concerned, it turns out that the Girl Scouts are a gender-neutral organization. In theory, a parent who currently identifies as a “father” is just as welcome as a parent who currently identifies as a “mother.” In practice, the sign-up sheet for an “encampment” contains a “Mom Attending” column and no corresponding “Dad Attending” column.
Fathers are not permitted to share a group tent with Mothers and their daughters. But nor are they permitted by official Girl Scout rules to share a tent with their own daughter:
1) All Dads/male guardians should sleep in a separate tent but are welcome to attend. Just need separate sleeping quarters AND a separate/designated bathroom – or at least a sign that flips over when a man is inside.
2) This rule is gender neutral – in other words, 1×1 (whether male or female with a girl) is not allowed due to child abuse/safety concerns.
Camping is accomplished Thoreau-style, i.e., (a) next to a pond within earshot of an active railroad track and a superhighway, (b) with food catered by moms. This particular camp was about 45 minutes from downtown Boston and was set up with a small main lodge (real bathrooms!) plus a bunch of clusters of platform tents (heavy canvas, but no screens) and some covered picnic tables. There was also a boat dock and a ropes course.
The best thing about the experience is seeing how much fun the girls have together, the camaraderie, and the kindness shown by the older girls to the younger ones. Hollywood likes to show “mean girls” but I didn’t see any examples of that behavior.
Organized activities are heavy on the “organization.” Canoeing entailed a 20-minute safety lecture and life jacket inspection then 10 minutes of loading before paddling around for about 30 minutes. Games involve elaborate rules and can be won only with extensive teamwork. What I saw was one big team against a goal, not two teams playing against each other.
The parking area next to our tents looked as though someone had robbed a Range Rover/Land Rover dealership. Based on the collection of $70,000 SUVs, I surmised that we would be eating off bone china pulled from wicker baskets filled with Fortnum and Mason delicacies. I began to doubt this conjecture during the first activity: making GORP. The composition reflected the current American passions for nut-phobia and obesity: Honey-Nut Cheerios, M&Ms (not the lethal peanut-filled variety, of course), and yogurt-covered raisins. Dinner was hot dogs and kielbasa sausages, incompletely warmed up over a fire in aluminum pans. These were followed by S’mores, for which I referred to an established “Adults Eat First” rule but the girls suspected fraud and ignored me. Breakfast was served right next to a full kitchen in the “lodge” and consisted of supermarket donuts and muffins washed down with bottled water (most of the Range Rover trunk space had apparently been given over to one-gallon plastic bottles of supermarket water so that children were not poisoned by the Andover, Massachusetts public water supply). A couple of saintly mothers had made the 10-minute round-trip to a Dunkin’ Donuts for boxes of coffee. The less saintly had gone out for private Starbucks.
Suburbanites like to say that school- and kid-related activities are good ways to make friends and, indeed, many of the mothers seemed to have long-standing friendships. It was impossible not to overhear conversations among mothers. Topics included commuting, jobs, dating (at least one mom had sued her husband shortly after her last desired child was born, won the Massachusetts “primary parent” sweepstakes (obtaining house, kids, and enough child support for a lifetime of personal financial security), and was planning a long Cougarhood), and car-shopping. There was no discussion of politics, perhaps because in our suburb expressing support for anyone other than Hillary is not socially acceptable? Nobody mentioned a book or magazine article or an abstract idea.
As the light faded the girls began performing skits that they had designed. Sixth-graders presented a dating game in which a blindfolded woman was to choose a future husband based on their answers to questions from the audience. It transpired that both the woman and one suitor liked to take long walks on the beach. One suitor was “very rich” and this topic was explored in depth while another’s favorite animal was gummy worms, described as “a majestic candy.” The fourth-graders mocked safety lectures and procedures. Children stopped, dropped, and rolled but meanwhile set the entire forest on fire. Another child died from a tick bite. After the skits the girls launched “fairy boats” made from bark, moss, and whatever other decorations could be found in the forest. Each fairy boat was topped with a lit candle and set adrift on the pond as the builder made a wish. I expected this to be a quiet solemn ceremony but, like most of the rest of the experience, the girls chatted loudly amongst themselves.
Tips for next time:
- Under the proposed new Massachusetts transgender laws, I think that the easiest way for an interested father to participate yet avoid activating the deep Girl Scout bureaucracy is simply to raise his/her hand and say “I identify as a woman.”
- Bring a frying pan, eggs, and whole wheat bread and/or declare that you’re on one of those faddish fast-every-few-days diets.
- Don’t share a tent with any children. My tent became the scene of a Wayne’s World-style “mopping up hurl” at around 11 pm (I got to play Garth). Two nights later the virus had attached itself to me and I was the one throwing up at 3 am. (Minor plus: I discovered that it is impossible to worry about politics, shootings, or any other alarming news report when you are vomiting.) Mothers will multiple children in their tent reported getting as little as 1.5 hours of sleep due to girls talking, girls wanting bathroom breaks, etc.
I am waiting with bated breath to hear how that your experiment (next year?) with bypassing Girl Scout gender-neutral bureaucracy by—let’s face it—usurping yourself the right to become a instant woman ends up. Something tells me that you may be misunderestimating the resourcefulness and resolve of flocking natural-born women to protect their underage gender kin against such prospective declarative perverts like your persnickety self.
Phil, one of your best. Next book, “Upscale Life in Boston Burbs” — Social commentary on how the ultra-politically correct can rationalize a 17 mpg Range Rover as green.
What is your stance on female suffrage? Any practical interpretation of your talking points would lead towards male only suffrage.
Making donuts from canned biscuit dough in a cast iron pan with oil then shaken In bag of cinnamon sugar rivals store donuts for taste. The trick is to eat them as soon as the cool enough, and not a minute longer. It is so easy.
The child protection rules get very silly very quickly, but no chance of changing those. At least you did not mention needing fingerprint and background check before an overnight,which are the rule in my local organizations.
I think there are a lot more opportunities for less SUV and Starbucks type camping as the the girls get older.
“What is your stance on female suffrage? Any practical interpretation of your talking points would lead towards male only suffrage.”
You get right wing crank comments on the internet like this all the time. This one I will make the likely mistake of not just ignoring it.
The practical effect of woman’s suffrage has been to give a small boost to pro-status quo parties in elections. Note that in the US, the Democrats are the pro status quo party and have been throughout my life.
Some women did have the vote, where elections were held, well before the twentieth century. The franchise was based on a property qualification. Most men didn’t own property and so most men didn’t have the vote, and very few women held property. But those that did sometimes tried to vote and sometimes succeeded. When the property qualification started to be lifted, countries had to face whether to put in a formal qualification for sex or not. After some debate, the decision was made not to do this. The UK came very close to giving women the vote before giving propertlyless men the vote (as it happened both groups were enfranchised at the same time).
Peter: I think that there was a CORI check requirement before participating!
Female suffrage: In a transgender age, how could it make sense to limit voting to one gender? A person could simply walk into the polling place and say “I identify as Gender X” where X = the gender that is allowed to vote. It looks as though bringing a lot of voters who identify as “female” guarantees the election of the politician promising to expand government and taxpayer-funded handouts (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_gender_gap_in_the_United_States ).
I second the motion that your next book be about “Upscale Life in the Boston Burbs.” I’d pre-order a copy. I’m pained when you skewer traditional ’60s-style liberals, because I am one. But I still enjoy reading your take on things.
When my daughters were in the Girl Scouts (they have children themselves now), their troop had a Father-Daughter overnight camp out. The girls had a tent and the fathers had another tent. But the fathers’ tent wasn’t big enough for all of us, so I volunteered to sleep outside under a pine tree. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by a pine cone hitting my head from the tree above. When I looked up, I saw a squirrel look right back at me, and as I was watching, it lifted its paws and threw another cone at me! Apparently, the Girl Scouts had gotten a camping permit from state park officials . . . but not from the park’s squirrels!