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Girls Don’t Need Self-Esteem, They Need Husbands

Lauren

I do declare!

The national Girls Scouts of America have invited “pro-abortion, pro-lesbian” speakers to their national convention. The Concerned Women for America are, well, concerned.

Some years ago, the Girls Scouts began purging materials of positive references to homemakers. Instead of being family-centered, the group now promotes “girl empowerment,” with programs that focus heavily on a narcissistic devotion to self, but then steered into collective action for liberal causes, such as environmentalism.

The last thing we want in America is little girls… RECYCLING!

The CWA is most concerned about the speakers that have been invited to the convention, one Dr. Johnnetta Cole, a woman with absolutely amazing credentials, mentorship, and leadership skills including fifty honorary degrees, and one Kavita Ramdas, president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women, “which, among other things, promotes abortion and feminism.”

Ramdas has been pegged dangerous for her advocacy of women’s reproductive rights and sexual health. Dr. Cole has become a target because of a talk titled The Power of Diversity, in which she (I’m not kidding) “used the word ‘power or powerful’ 10 times.”

As far as I know, the Girls Scouts were never primarily about homemaking skills, but who needs self-esteem when you can score yourself a nice husband? Who worships the patriarchy? Cootchie-coo.

15 thoughts on Girls Don’t Need Self-Esteem, They Need Husbands

  1. Unless things have changed significantly in the last 10 years, the Girl Scouts aren’t mainly about homemaking skills. I was a scout from kindergarten to high school graduation and that was never something we focused on (and I come from a very conservative rural area in Appalachia). We learned wilderness survival skills, toured local radio stations, did career day sorts of stuff, and things of that manner. Actually, my interest in science (I now teach physics/astronomy at a local university) was encouraged more in the scouts and at home than it was in my public school.

    It’s all about girl empowerment and self esteem and it always has been; that’s part of what makes it a great organization for little girls. The Concerned Women of America don’t know what they’re talking about here.

  2. I have never understood why environmentalism is considered a partisan thing. You’d think that looking after God’s green earth would be important to everyone.

    I am also struck by the notion that female empowerment is somehow in opposition to family. Some family.

  3. I hated girl scouts precisely because it had too much connection to homemaking. Fucking embroidery badge bullshit. 🙂 I suspect, though, that is a function of my age, and the troop leaders we had who encouraged us to do things they could help us with. As suburban moms in the 70s, they were not rugged outdoorswomen. We did a lot of “crafts.” And our “hikes” were all on concrete sidewalks.

  4. The Girl Scouts were originally meant to get girls out of the house and self-empowered. The housemaking stuff was always tacked on.

  5. Environmentalist goals and female empowerment take power out of the hands of the moneyed patriarchy, after all. There are those who see environmentalism as a direct, purposeful assault on their own greed.

  6. I have a good friend who has been working at Girl Scout Camps for years; lately, she’s been working in leadership positions. She’s given me the impression that the latest generation of women running the whole deal are very, very into empowerment, and less about badges or domestic skills. She also says that most camps are inclusive places, where rainbows aren’t hidden (among staff, at least; not flaunted in front of young campers, I’m sure) and women really learn to be open to diversity, and lead the girls by example–sort of a “girls can do anything” kind of attitude. I think that some of the camps for older campers are even better at this; I understand that some of them take girls on extended wilderness trips to learn survival skills.
    I’d always felt kind of creeped out by the GSA, due to my own experiences with scouting (emphasis on domestic things), but my friend has really convinced me that the GSA are really changing–and changing girls’ lives.

  7. I just finished my second summer working at a Girl Scout camp, and I have to say that everything Manogirl says about Girl Scouts today is totally on target.

  8. I have a hard time keeping straight why a conservative approach to care of the biosphere is considered “liberal”, and why an anything-goes, what-could-go-wrong attitude like Bush’s is considered “conservative”.

    I am myself socially very liberal (hey, it’s cool), fiscally rather conservative (balance that budget, please) and environmentally staunchly conservative (no planet, no profits).

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  10. The Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts in Sweden were merged in 1960 – luckily, I think. I’ve read some (Swedish) Girl Scout instruction manuals from before that and oh, the horror… neatness and interpersonal skills seemed to be the point of it all (sigh). While the Scouts as I know/knew them made me learn stuff like

    – Clothes and shoes should be functional before being decorative, at least if you want to be able to do stuff
    – to handle carrying heavy loads, using tools, being dirty, cold or sweaty
    – to build stuff from scratch (including insanities like carousels and waterslides) using almost only wood and string, and the occasional nail
    – Good leadership skills
    – the view that all persons are worthy of respect and being listened to regardless of age, sex, handicap or social status
    – it is quite normal for girls and boys of any age to sleep in the same tent, room or house

    And most of that without me realizing I learnt it (until later). It really was empowerment of both girls and boys without ever, I suspect, having empowerment as a primary goal. But you really need good leaders.

  11. I spent most of my young years as a girl scout.

    My mother took over as troop leader when I was 2 and my sister was 6, so I basically grew up in the girl scouts.

    I don’t remember it being overly homemakerly, in reference to the time period (it was the early 60’s).

    Of course, 2 of our troops 3 leaders were business owners, so sewing and cooking weren’t a top priority. I guess it depends on your troop leader. We were very outdoorsy, and we were business oriented. I remember we got to run a resturant for an day (all profits going to the troop).

  14. My wife was a Girl Scout leader for many years in the ’90s and her girls were absolutely into the empowerment thing. They did camp-outs where they had to do everything: collect firewood, build fires, put up tents, learn environmentalism, cook…the full works. Her girls learned about money management and project planning selling cookies and doing various projects to fund a week-long trip to Washington D.C. As I recall, “home-making” just wasn’t on the list of things to do or learn.

    Scouting in general (boys or girls) is about teaching kids how to pull themselves up to accomplish whatever they want and be better adults. At least my wife’s troop wasn’t taught any of this role-playing crap these fundies are advocating.

    I’m proud to say I was a Girl Scout for many years (or at least a co-leader/assistant)!

  15. I was a Girl Scout in the 80s. Our main troop leader was a housewife, but she was awesome, and we went on a lot of career-related field trips, and I got to meet my congressional representative (who was a woman), and we spent a lot of time learning about local history, which was really fascinating. (We did a lot of crafts, though, and the smell of a glue gun still reminds me of her. I don’t really have a problem with that even in retrospect; I much prefer crafts to camping.) And we learned economics via selling cookies, of course.

    Someone is always after the Girl Scouts. It wasn’t that long ago that conservative groups in Texas wouldn’t buy cookies because Girl Scouts supported Planned Parenthood.

    My youngest brother, who is a Boy Scout, went to the International Scout Jamboree in Scotland last year, and learned that a lot of European scout troops have gone co-ed. I wonder how that would affect scouting here.

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