Scouts going mixed sex and the rise of toxic masculinity

[wobblychristmastree]

When scouts decided to go mixed sex for all sections a lot of boys who would have had a healthy boy only space and strong male role models then suddenly didn’t. And these boys are now young men and some of them a producing the manosphere podcasts and spreading their toxic masculinity crap. The timing is right.

AIBU to think boys still need healthy boy only spaces, and strong male role models? and scouts have let them down..

I'm gonna stick my neck right out on the line here, based on my own observations of this very issue as a school governor who sits on exclusion panels.

They aren't boys who went to scouts.

Was Tate a scout or something? Whats prompted this link?

And how does separating children by sex stop misogynistic behaviour? I'd think treating the like separate species reinforces it.

The internet is afr more responsible for the rise in young men being absolute wankers than scouts.

Where are all the strong male role models queueing up to do voluntary work then?

Yes I know there are some. But where are the rest? Why is it women’s fault?

I was a scout back in the 90s as a girl, it's not a new thing

How many former Scouts are now making manosphere podcasts? Which examples are you thinking of OP?

I can't tell you how jealous I was of the Cubs and Scouts when I was growing up and only had the choice of Brownies and Guides.

I was never a girly girl, I liked science, electronics and the pursuits that back in the 79s and 80s were traditionally male.

I left guiding because I just didnt enjoy needlework, cake making etc. I wanted to do the more.exciting activities the boys in my Dad's scout troop did.

I went camping with the guides, we wove mats to sit on. I went camping with the scouts (as part of my Dad's family) and they did things like the raft race.

Girls weren't accepted in to scouts until after I was too old, but if they had been I would have been the first to join. But they were accepted in to Air Cadets when I was 16, so instead I joined them. Us girls did exactly the same as the boys, we shot rifles, we took part in night manoeuvres, we flew gliders and planes.

While some Scout Troops were doing well, over all boys were turning away from Scouts.

I agree that healthy single sex spaces for boys are probably a good idea, but boys have to want to go to them and Men have to want to lead them, and that is what changed. Toxic masculinity was on the rise long before Scouts went mixed sex and it was that rise of toxic masculinity that drove Scouts into going mixed sex, not the other way round.

Girls were allowed in in the early 1990s (Venture Scouts long before that), but troops were allowed to be single sex still and the vast majority clung to that until they were forced to go mixed in 2007 after membership had gone into relatively steep decline.

Scouting was set up to give the ne'er do well boys some discipline and something to do. In my experience, scouting today is very middle class and by the time you reach Scouts (10-14) it's the very gentle and/or ND boys that still attend.

Modernization did not lead to an increase. Scouts dropped to 2/3rds of its peak membership in 2006 when 10% were girls. Compulsory opening of all troops to girls in 2007 lead to a surge in membership with girls making up over a quarter of membership ten years later. Almost the entire increase in membership since all troops were required to allow girls in can be attributed to them.

I 100% agree with you. It's not like boys are allowed to join Brownies in return, although I know some more gentle boys who would have liked that. My boys had to wait ages to get in at Beavers/Cubs/Scouts because of the long waiting list. My daughter got into Brownies straight away! As for football, I wholly support girls' football, it's a fantastic thing, but it's a different game. The mixed teams meant that a lot of the boys were too afraid of hurting the girls to play properly.

I think OP's point isn't that Scouts with girls turns boys to toxic masculinity, but that the lack of a healthy boys only space means there aren't good role models and spaces for boys to develop their masculinity in a safe space. As focusing on how to become good men would be inappropriate in a mixed sex space.

I don’t think scouts being mixed sex is the issue for boys.

Most likely to be their football groups and online gaming circles tbh. I mean see the grown men when it’s football time and how even women footballers get treated and spoken about by male football fans.

However I do agree that there should be a boys only group however if the numbers simple don’t support it then it won’t function.

Another relatively recent societal change is that less children live with both of tbeir parents. A father should be a boys best male role model really.

(Edited to add... but the swing of that is mess childten living with abusive parents or with unhealthy relationships)

The biggest factor is lack of decent male role model full stop.

A Dad that just walk away
A shit dad even if he’s there
A trail of shit step dads
A shit grandad
A shit uncle

If there as no good men around the boy they learn only the bad.

Sane for girls as well if all the women around her are pretty shit.

I think you might be overestimating the percentage of the male population who were ever joining Scouts. Novel argument though.

From a cursory Google we're currently talking about approximately 7 million boys in the UK of which less than half a million are Scouts.

How is scouting responsible for the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of say 6.5million boys every generation who would never have been members anyway?

I would be blaming the fact that we collectively lost our minds and allowed children to use the internet and social media unsupervised for a lot of the current problems.

Thats not what the OP wrote though.
The OP specifically says some of those boys who attended mixed sex Scout troops are now making manosphere podcasts.

Just wondering which ones. I dont listen to these things so wouldnt know...

I agree that boys need strong male role models.
Scouts is a weird thing to focus on though. The people in Louis Theroux's manosphere doc may not have gone to scouts as children whether it was mixed or not, so that wouldn't really make a difference. But I think he unravelled that they all had crap fathers.

I don't think Scouts are the issue.

Lack of good male role models or indeed many men in a boy's early years are the larger issue I think.

If you supported the Tories when Boris Johnson was leader and Prime Minister or you intend supporting the ex school bully Nigel Farage, you are in a way part of the problem. If you are happy to have social media companies have little action to stop unacceptable content, you are not helping either.

Pretty sure he unravelled fathers were non-existent in their lives. There's your manosphere explanation. It's not groundbreaking.

No she didn’t. She said that boys who would have had a healthy single sex space therefore didn’t and went on to make podcasts. Those boys may or may not have gone to mixed sex Scouts, her point is that they couldn’t go to boys only Scouts.

The problem is you can have ‘good male role models’ in schools, scouts, sports clubs etc but it won’t outweigh the hours they spend online being bombarded by toxic algorithms and sorry, porn (they’re at that age), that are showing them a very warped and paranoid view of the world and human relationships.

The gap in the market is a powerful counter narrative and community. Where can they go to get straight healthy answers about sex? How can they avoid organised crime gangs? How can they access aspirational hopeful content about careers and life? Where is the space that will allow them to explore, make mistakes and learn?

I was in the scouts as a kid in the 90s and it was bloody hardcore for girls. Physically you had to keep up, you were hazed and you got made the butt of jokes etc even by the male leaders. Is that the sort of strong male role models you had in mind?

I remember when I was a teenager and in my early 20s that there was plenty of toxic masculinity around. It mostly came from boys/men's groups such as rugby, football and all boys schools.

Can you link to a source for that please?

As anecdotally, of the 22 troops in our District in 2007, only 1 was single sex.