Alright, so I know this is ripe for culture war hottakes & boycotts & grandstanding... but let's also ask this Q: Why would girls want to join Boy Scouts instead of Girl Scouts in first place?
It's not as simple as "gender confusion" or "liberal indoctrination." If you have 2 supposedly parallel organizations, why would kids feel need to move from one to other?
Each troop is different of course but when my daughter was in Girls Scouts, there simply wasn't enough... um, scouting... to satisfy her.
She's an adventurer. She'd happily have joined Boy Scouts if it meant more things like orienteering & survival skills & the like.
I see this dilemma on broader scale: When women enter traditionally male spaces, they aren't trying to break up male camaraderie so much as gain opportunity to learn the things that men have access to in those spaces.
We enter the such spaces DESPITE male dominance, not because of it. We'd just as soon learn in mixed gender or single gender environment but it's simply not available.
At least, this has been my experience in church. I'm not trying to disrupt male unity or break up power differentials, blah, blah, blah... I'm just interested in things that have traditionally been curated in male contexts.
I do think a woman's presence in such spaces changes the dynamic for the better, but it's as hard on them as it might be on men.
I know very few women who have sufficient time & energy to waste on making men's lives difficult for sake of making them difficult.
So if there's a little girl in your son's Scout troop or a woman in your church who wants to talk theology w/ pastors & leaders, listen to her before you decide she's in wrong space.
Watch her eyes light up when she tells you about what she's learned. Hear the passion in her voice when she talks about survival skills or hermeneutical approaches. Such a woman is no threat to men.
