By David Futrelle
In a move that surprised no one who has been paying attention, the Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy yesterday in an attempt to protect itself financially from hundreds of sexual abuse lawsuits — and the specter of more lawsuits to come.
You might think the occasion might lead to somber reflections among Men’s Rights Activists about this all-American organization that purported to prepare young boys for responsible adulthood but that instead looked the other way for decades while sexual predators abused literally thousands of the boys the organization swore to protect.
But no. As they did when the Boy Scouts first hinted they would be filing for bankruptcy, back in 2018, the handful of Men’s Rights Redditors who were even interested in discussing the topic blamed the organization’s troubles on its relatively recent decision to allow girls into the organization. And the evil femininsts and so-called SJWs who pushed the group towards more inclusivity.
“This was the lefts goal all along,” complained someone called HoosierFordDad in one of the Men’s Rights subreddit’s discussions of the bankruptcy.
In another thread on the subject, MayonaiseHOBO offered a similar argument.
They took it over and killed it. Time to start selling cookies like little zombies
1) whine about inclusion 2) get included 3) start excluding people over semantics ( 4) bankrupt organization open since 1910 in less than 5 years. 5) find new organization to whine at.
Another commenter asked “[i]s 2020 the year of #GetWokeGoBroke?”
Meanwhile, a commeter called elebrin thought he had an answer to the Boy Scout’s current problems: more secrecy.
The boys had something good, they wanted to kill it so boys wouldn’t have something good anymore, and so they killed it.
The only way men are going to have anything of our own is to host it and cultivate it in secret and defend it ardently.
Yes, I’m sure that’ll prevent all future cases of abuse.
I found only one Men’s Rights Redditor willing to push back against the #GetWokeGoBroke narrative — and show some actual sympathy for the abused former scouts.
“Damn, you’d think an organization being held accountable would be a good thing,” wrote fendenkrell.
If they didn’t want to become bankrupt, they shouldn’t have allowed, or ignored and/or covered up for the sexual predators among them.
Ya think?
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Gee, one would think that men’s rights activists, a group that claims to want “justice for men and boys,” would care about male victims of sexual abuse. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course they don’t care. Unless the perpetrator is a woman, that is.
I was in the Cub Scouts for a couple years as a kid, at my father’s urging. I quit about a year and a half in because I didn’t like my troop mates, wasn’t interested in the ritual aspect, and because I was sick of the nationalism. Even as a not particularly politically aware 8 year old, I started an argument with the troop leader, the father of one of my schoolmates, about why he thought America was so great. I quit shortly after that. I was fortunate enough not to be abused, but looking back I can definitely see how the structure of the organization can foster abuse and protect abusers.
Once more, for the hard of thinking:
WOMEN. DON’T. MAKE. MEN. ABUSE. BOYS!!!
(It’s also worth noting that the boy-abuse has probably been going on for as long as the institution itself, and certainly for longer than women or out queerfolk have had anything to do with it, but shhhhh, MRAs don’t want you to know that.)
So I wonder what they think of the Catholic Church scandal with child-abusing priests? Is that women’s fault, too?
@Katherine the Adequate
Of course it is. I mean, it makes no goddam sense, but of course it is.
Honestly I’m just surprised that none of them have blamed women for being too picky and sexually unavailable, which caused the scout leaders to be sexually frustrated. And everyone knows that men can’t control their sexual urges, right? /Pukes
@Catalpa
Don’t give them any ideas…
@Catalpa:
Even worse: we were picky and sexually unavailable on purpose because we knew that would cause men to abuse boys.
Oh, and back in the day where it was harder to refuse because marital rape was all legal and other rape was largely ignored? We had our ways even then. You should have seen the lengths to which women were willing to go to get the priestly celibacy requirement established.
/sarcasm for the extra-stupid lurkers.
I feel really sad about the BSA going bankrupt because Scouting was so important to my boyfriend. Unfortunately, not all Boy Scouts had the same happy experience he did.
That said, it turns out that the Girl Scouts now accept boys.
And as always, the Men’s Rights Redditors are ludicrous people whose arguments are lies.
It has been such a problem for so long that my Boy Scouts’ handbook has an entire section explaining how to recognize, resist and report sexual abuse by authorities.
My brother was a cub scout. I remember he was really excited to join but after a few weeks he wanted to quit because one of the scout leaders kept trying to get the boys in the group to sit in his lap and it made him uncomfortable.
My parents complained but were just told the scout leader in question was a “really nice guy” and how dare they suggest he would do anything like that.
Fuck off MRAs. Feminists weren’t doing that.
They’re mad because feminists and #MeToo made it more acceptable to speak up about abuse. That aspect of scouting should be killed, but they’re all acting like it’s a sacred rite that shouldn’t be tampered with.
I’m a little disturbed by the guy wanting to cultivate boys-only spaces in secret. That’s exactly how sexual predators flourish.
I’ve had cub scouts come to the door selling popcorn. That’s not much different from cookies.
Having been an Air Cadet of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, I’m surprised that despite being an organization (alongside Royal Canadian Army Cadets and Royal Canadian Sea Cadets; that I had two friends in my life also attend) : I’m surprised that despite these youth programs being funded and supported by the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Canadian Military, as well as being intended to “Stimulate interest and education in the Military”, among other things: the Cadet program was, from my experience, devoid of any nationalist jingoism that one may usually expect of such an organization and took abuse, harassment and sexual assault seriously to the point of establishing the Cadet Harassment and Abuse Prevention (CHAP). Closet thing you can say was that Army Cadets, Sea Cadets and Air Cadets tended to have the whole “inter-service rivalry” thing going on: which made the fact that my friends and I (being an Army Cadet, Sea Cadet and Air Cadet Respectively) confused our Cadet units the one time our units managed to meet up for inter-squadron exercises once and we were talking shop all buddy-buddy like it was no big deal. Admittedly we were friends outside of Cadets but it was amusing to see confusion all the other members of our squadron had with each other and being buddy-buddy.
Hearing about the glaring problems and outright nightmares about the American Boy Scouts organization, I found it shocking that seeing that sort of stuff being allowed to systemically proliferate when in comparison that kind of stuff wouldn’t have been allowed to fly in Cadets.
Granted their were some occasional issues I have had and Cadets wasn’t a bed of roses for me at times: navigating social cliques in a pseudo-military environment, dealing with the nepotism of military brats, having a jerk regular military Captain who cared more about nepotism and the aforementioned military brats over the rest of the squad members and squadron (and frankly he did more to damage my old Squadron than anyone else) and dealing with the od weirdo or creep during bushex’s or cadet summer camps: mostly either that one kid that was uncomfortably into knives and brought a bunch of non-regulation knives and a machete (which thankfully he was constantly running afoul of the chain of command and thankfully was replaced with an actually good, decent and inspiring Captian who gave a darn and leveled the playing field equally) and this one kid at Summer Camp during band camp that degraded the female cadets and threatened the male cadets with coat hangers if they called him out for his BS (he was tossed out of camp 2 weeks later, and this was a 6 week band camp).
But all that being said: I still remember most of my time growing up in Air Cadets as bring overall positive and if given the chance I’d do it again. Despite the hurdles; it took a lot of the values I held at the time and honed them, gave me a lot of great transferable skills, experiences and friendships, and gave me a fascination and love of military history and only affirmed my desire to try and write military fiction with a progressive paradigm…. and helped me in my journey of trying to be a better person.
Given the nightmares I’ve heard about Boy Scouts of America: I’m surprisingly amazed in retrospect that in my time during Cadets had zero jingoism forced on us and that their was little to no system harassment, abuse and anything worse, at least in my experience…. although occasionally bullying from fellow cadets happened at times, kind like in high school; because teens usually suck like that: but they were dealt with very seriously when reported.
On this side of the Pond, does anyone else remember the annual ‘Bob-a-Job Week’ annual fundraiser the Scouts used to do here? That would be seen as a safeguarding nightmare these days.
Cultural background for those unfamiliar with the former ‘LSD’ (pounds, shillings, pence) format of UK currency:
A ‘bob’ was a shilling, worth 12d (old pence) and there were 20 shillings to the pound. There’s a lot more to it that I won’t go into here.
Brits resisted decimalization of the currency for a long time ‘because it was too complicated.’
BTW this is what the Boy Scouts had to say over why they wouldn’t allow openly gay men
“We believe that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts.”
Remember that was written by people who knew their organization was full of pedos and let them run amok. Because a man who rapes children is a desirable role model?
Addendum to my post above:
I entered the Boy Scouts at age 11, in 2008, and received the rank of Eagle scout in 2015.
As a kid in the UK in the ’60s and ’70s, I didn’t join the scouts: I was a class-conscious little shit, and the scouts in my area were too middle-class for a prole like me. But I remember that it was common knowledge at that time that some scoutmasters were paedophiles. The strange thing is that it was treated as a joke: these were just weird guys to be resisted, rather than predators to be prosecuted. So I don’t understand why (a) it was a punchline rather than being regarded as a serious problem, and (b) how scouting internationally has escaped the fate of the BSA.
In the second Naked Gun movie, Frank Drebin has a line where he blurts out “I haven’t had this much sex since I was a Boy Scout leader!”. So, the problem was still a punchline as late as 1991.
Something something toxic masculinity something something.
No, but seriously. It was a punchline because Real Men Cannot Get Hurt, TM, and scouts are clearly Real Men.
Mr. Parasol was an Eagle Scout at 16, and while there were many things he enjoyed about Scouting, he is vocally disapproving of how the BSA has handled its sexual abuse problems. (“Among other things,” he says.)
@Buttercup
Plus, I’d rather have cookies than popcorn anyway.
@An Autistic Giraffe
Sadly, it seems a lot of Americans would think so. At least, millions voted for Trump, who is alleged to have abused teenage girls, and defend people like Jeffrey Epstein who are confirmed child predators.
@Moggie
I’d guess it’s because as a culture we don’t take sexual abuse very seriously. We ignore and/or mock victims, which makes many afraid to step forward, meaning there are probably even more victims who haven’t spoken up about their abuse. 99.4% of rapists don’t go to jail. In a society like this, it’s easy for rape to be a punchline. It already commonly is.
I’m wondering when some high profile conservative commentator is going to say this only happened because the BSA started letting in girls and trans* people. They all got very angry when the scouts started letting in girls, and although I don’t recall their exact reaction to trans* scouts, they probably were even more upset.
Wasn’t the last straw in the Boys Scouts’ shaky financial situation that the Church of Latter Days Saints cut off their relationship with the BSA? You have to work really hard around the facts to make this the fault of women and feminists!
@ Susan:
Nah, it’s easy– ask any trumpling
The Mormon church cut off the scouts precisely because the latter started letting in womz and queers. Especially queers; LGBT+ people are the Mormons’ current bête noire.
@Tactical Progressive:
I think the only person I know who was an Air Cadet came out as a trans woman twenty-odd years ago and became a theatre tech. She was also my brother’s Cub Scout leader while she was still living as a man–according to him she went on about Doctor Who all the time. This was well before the show came back and became popular in North America, so basically none of the kids knew what she was on about except my brother and his friend Gavin. Soooo… probably not a typical Scouting experience for anyone involved, but everyone seems to have turned out ok.
BSA didn’t go broke because they allowed girls to join. Allowing girls to join was a desperate attempt to stave off going broke.
Not that I expect these hateful clowns to acknowledge that, even if they were able to understand it.
I also joined the scouts when I was 12 and I liked it for a time. The scavenger hunts and challenges were fun and, and our troops were mixed so yes, back in 1998 the scouts already included girls, at least here in Peru.
The problem for me was it also had this militarized culture that was hard to get over if you were a boy. Last straw for me was a camping trip that was the shittiest experience ever and felt more like a bootcamp than anything else.
The scout leaders fancied themselves fucking soldiers and made our lives miserable: making us get up at 5:00 AM in the morning to exercise in the mountain cold, making us cook our damn food (because they forced us to eat the reserves we brought with us), confiscating our flashlights because, whilst trudging through the fields, some kid pointed a flashlight ahead and the light hit the leader in the eyes; THEN scolding the lot of us because we trampled an agricultural field BECAUSE we couldn’t see shit that night after we got our flashlights confiscated.
By lunchtime of the second day I wanted to get the fuck back to civilization and never have anything to do with the organization. Sad thing is, before all that bullshit our previous trips had actually been fun. But the military bootcamp bullshit completely drove me off.