Comment by JDGM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JDGM | Hacker News Reader

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I have a friend who is very active in guiding in the UK (a "Brown Owl", I think?!) and my first instinct upon reading this was to copy the link and paste it on her Facebook wall with a positive, encouraging comment about how cool it is.

I got as far as pasting the link and FB detecting what it was before I noticed the original title: "In move to pwn boys, Girl Scouts to introduce game developer badge". I didn't even clock that the first time, I just went straight from the IMO perfect title here "Girl Scouts to introduce game developer badge" to the body of the article.

I'm now in limbo before posting the link, having replaced the link title with the one here (I really like how FB lets you do that), and considering my positive comment a bit more carefully. It's a niggle, and I anticipate accusations of "reading too much into it", but that title gets under my skin and I think it's because it's misrepresentative - as though the only reason for doing this is to keep up with the lads and "show them what for!". Rubs me right up the wrong way.

[Edit: reading the other comments in here I almost want to delete this because it's a negative nitpick on the presentation of the article rather than, as others are doing, a right on "whoop whoop" about this very cool news, but I had to get it off my chest.]

Yeah, my reason for trimming the title on this submission basically precisely mirrors your reaction. I wanted to "whoop whoop" and share that with others, but really just grimaced at the original title.

They really wanted to use the gamer term "pwn" and thats the best they could come up with...

It does seem a little crass. But perhaps it's not such a bad thing to stimulate a little bit of competition between the genders when there's a mismatch in the level of participation in a given field.

Competition usually invites antagonistic response. That's not really what I want to see.

I think you may also want to see this in the context of the US, where the Boy Scouts are an extremely bigoted organisation.

Thank you, I did not know that and a quick google gives me plenty of links to start on.

It reminds me of when I was a "Cub", we had a couple of girl members and several female leaders. I didn't think anything of it at the time but I remember one lunch time one of the girl cubs (who went to my school) grabbed me (literally - she was two years older and bigger!) from playing football so I could tell a dinner lady who didn't believe that she was a cub. It was all in good fun but actually before that moment I'd never really got that one was for girls and one was for boys, I just thought you could choose freely. And, well, I suppose you can!

"Extremely bigoted" is a pretty unfair way to paint the Boy Scouts of America.

Agreed, it's just women, gays, and atheists who are discriminated against by the policies of the Boy Scouts of America.

So "bigoted" is probably more fair.

I don't know where you are, but my Troop has all of those. The national organization is pretty heavily Mormon, so that's an obstacle. But our Council just removed the rule against gay Scout.

And hey, the Girl Scouts are bigoted against boys, right? That's pretty disingenious; they are purpose-selective in accordance with massive issues with prepubescent youth. Pretty hard to mentor boys when they're constantly showing off to girls - try to change that!

Seems to work pretty well in countries that don't have different scout organizations for boys and girls.

I deny that; it seems implausible. But I have no more information than you.

You're right in that you have no more information about it than me. I spent some 8 years in such an organization so I probably know a lot more about it. It worked really well. Mixed troops are fairly common in the rest of the world.

Well, we have mixed Troops too, at the age of 14 and above, and its optional. But below that, a Boys-only club (and Girls-only as well of course) works pretty good for us.

I'm glad your experience was good. 8 years - so you must be an Eagle Scout? Or do you do that differently?

No, we don't have the concept of Eagle Scouts. We did have merit badges, but there wasn't much focus on getting them. We did spend a lot of time learning practical things that would help us on hikes.

What are you denying exactly? I am from Australia where they have mixed troops. Yes, it works pretty well.

I get the sarcasm, but I have to say it genuinely does piss me off if people consider hatred against gays or atheists to somehow be less offensive than racism or antisemitism.

The only real difference is the historical body count.

Don't you worry about devaluing the term "hatred" by throwing it around so lightly?

It's amusing that today, of all days, you are making this statement. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/us/boy-scouts-move-to-lift...

Still banning gay leaders, though.

Yeah, usually Ars Technica has pretty good taste when it comes to those things, but I share your sentiment on this one.

http://www.girlgamer.com/zine/article/2677/

Too late for my wall post, but so obvious now you post it!

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