Celebrating a sexist scam, Linked-Troop Wood Badge highlights SA’s cultural rot

In 2017, Scouting America (SA) pulled a sexist scam. After falsely claiming equity and inclusion, SA foisted a separate-but-equal regime on Scouting. It did this to appease misogynists.

The crown jewel of SA’s regime is the linked-troop sham. The linked-troop sham’s sole point is to maximize gendered segregation.

Enter Wood Badge, a great adult-training program. As I write this, SA’s national organization is running a Wood Badge course at SBR. (SBR is SA’s monument to bigotry.)

SA took a shit on this Wood Badge course, using it to showcase the linked-troop sham. That’s why it’s the Linked-Troop Wood Badge course.

It’s tragic that SA defiled Wood Badge. But it did. That shit has some nasty stank, so so let’s talk about it.

Background

When SA first accepted girls in its Cub Scout and Scouts BSA programs, many believed claims that SA was becoming inclusive and serving families better. That was gaslighting.¹ SA was actually doing shady shit on the sly.

The shady shit was how SA included manosphere-grifter logic in its decision-making. This logic manifested with how girls were “included” under a gendered, separate-but-equal regime. This was done so that SA could take care of the feelings of misogynists.

To enact this separate-but-equal regime, SA abandoned these:

• Program integrity²
• Opportunities for youth to learn to work together³
• Safe spaces for nonbinary youth⁴
• Serving families⁵
• Valuing fathers⁶
• Culture of compliance⁷
• Equal access to programs⁸, especially for girls⁹
• Honesty and integrity¹⁰
• Evidence-backed standards¹¹
• Scout-unit self-determination on single-gender vs. coed

The separate-but-equal regime’s crown jewel is the linked-troop sham. Under that sham, boy troops and girl troops may “link”, allowing them to share some administrative resources and do limited activities together.¹²

Due to SA’s gaslighting, this sham is widely misunderstood as SA’s interim state, buying time for it to offer a coed option.

The opposite is true. The linked-troop sham is a brief, interim step to full gendered segregation. In response to wide misunderstanding, SA representatives haughtily mansplained that coed will “never” happen¹³ and, dripping with disdain¹⁴, lectured that the “ultimate goal with the linked-troop [sham]” was that boys and girls are ripped apart, with their respective, mono-gender troops “identify[ing] as separate entities”¹⁵.

SA’s separate-but-equal regime, and the regime’s linked-troop sham, rest entirely on misinformation and toxic, racist, and sexist folklore.¹⁶ Despite this, SA’s representatives have made multiple public statements where they clownishly and falsely claim rationality.¹⁷

Separate-but-equal regime: SA’s hug of misogynists

Misogynists’ voices do not belong in SA, especially not while SA was planning how to accommodate girls!

Former Chief Scout Executive¹⁸ (CSE) Michael Surbaugh felt differently. He gave misogynists a powerful platform at the 2017 National Annual Meeting.

The National Annual Meeting (NAM) is SA’s most important annual meeting. NAM 2017 wasn’t wasn’t any old NAM. NAM 2017 is where inclusion of girls was the main topic!¹⁹

In his NAM 2017 keynote speech, Michael laid out plans to accommodate girls. His lead in was a big ole bear hug to misogynists, saying that their views are “something we have to wrestle with”. He shared how some misogynists felt “the worst thing we could possibly do is to allow young women to get the Eagle rank”, how other misogynists think the “integrity of that Eagle rank” depends on denying access to girls, and more misogynistic trash.²⁰

Here’s the video of Michael’s awful remarks (skip to 24:54):

By airing misogynists’ concerns at a crucial moment, Michael validated them and revealed their power. This speech was Michael’s admission of how sexism is woven into the national organization’s cultural fabric. (Sexism is a component of SA’s cultural rot, which I talk about elsewhere.)

After honoring misogynists, Michael dried their tears, appeasing them with the separate-but-equal regime (starts at 26:20 in above video).²¹

The regime is fueled by folklore and misinformation

The main idea driving the separate-but-equal regime is SA’s dunderheaded theory, that adolescent maturity is reducible to pubertal stage. In a “hold my beer” moment, SA extended its dunderheaded theory to slander an entire class of youth: SA’s official line is that since some girls hit puberty earlier than boys, adolescent girls as a class are venomous harridans who “disadvantage” the entire class of weak, fragile boys.²²

Here’s the problem: Maturity has many factors, not just pubertal stage.²³ Maturity is highly individualized. There is no evidentiary basis that boys and girls have catastrophic maturity differences at any age.

Regardless, SA “protects” boys with the separate-but-equal regime’s ban on coed dens and troops. With boys and girls ripped apart, venomous-harridans girls cannot “disadvantage” the weak, fragile boys.

While the dunderheaded theory was the start, SA went much further. In doing so, SA revealed that its separate-but-equal regime rests entirely on a corpus of misinformation and folklore.²⁴

SA’s corpus of misinformation and folklore includes weird theories about adolescent maturity²⁵, sexist folklore²⁶, alignment with racist adultification²⁷, questionable sources²⁸, an absurd theory on relationships²⁹, an absurd theory on which gender is advantaged³⁰, folklore about gendered learning differences³¹, open sexism and misogyny³², a likely lie about another Scouting organization’s experience with coed³³, and disparagement of families and volunteers³⁴.

Rationality was never SA’s priority. The fix was in from the start: Michael Surbaugh decided that misogynists’ feelings must be protected, above all else. Therefore, the point of SA’s corpus of misinformation and folklore was to concoct a fiction of rationality, to obscure the misogynist hugging.

SA used the playbook of manosphere grifters. To appease insecure males, these grifters misuse research³⁵ to reinforce clownish, masculine stereotypes by “distort[ing] biology and evolution” while advocating for “deny[ing] rights and respect to women, trans and nonbinary people”³⁶.

Many saw past SA’s absurdity. Some succeeded in liberating themselves from the regime!

The regime was easy to flout in Cub Scouts

Cub Scout leaders widely flouted SA’s separate-but-equal regime. Cub Scout packs that accepted girls largely ran coed dens.³⁷

Bowing to this mass noncompliance, SA finally admitted partial defeat on its separate-but-equal regime, canceling it for Cub Scouts through 4th grade³⁸ on June 1, 2023.

It was easy to openly provide coed experiences in Cub Scouts. The sheer amount of coed contributed to Cub Scouts’ partial liberation from the separate-but-equal regime. But it’s harder in Scouts BSA.

…but hard to ditch in Scouts BSA

While many coed Scouts BSA troops exist, they have a harder time, which suppresses their openness.

Coed troops fight through more challenges, such as a four-deep rule for adult leaders³⁹, fractured vision due to redundant Scoutmasters⁴⁰, redundant youth leadership⁴¹, and more.

Also, anachronistic, counterfactual notions on how adolescents relate to each other are common in Scouting.⁴² Some of these anachronisms overlap matters governed by SA’s youth-protection rules.

Youth-protection rules are held in high regard. This is good! The viability of Scouting hinges on effective youth protection. Yet coed troops, in moving past anachronisms, must navigate gray areas not clearly covered by youth-protection rules. Sometimes they must adopt practices that, while likely as effective as sanctioned practices, do not follow the letter of the law.

Scout leaders generally do not wish to be open about this, especially given how national representatives freely threaten to expel adults over trivial matters. This suppresses public acknowledgement of coed troops.

Altogether, artificial barriers to coed troops and a lack of transparency on their existence suppresses perceived desire for coed troops. This reduces pressure on SA to liberate Scouts BSA from its separate-but-equal regime.

Enter the perfidious National Scouts BSA Committee

Further suppressing liberation is the perfidy of the National Scouts BSA Committee (NSBC), the committee that oversees⁴³ the Scouts BSA program.

In a mansplaining storm, the NSBC’s chairman cracks sexist jokes.⁴⁴

NSBC members joined national bureaucrats in displaying arrogance and hostility to the base.⁴⁵

NSBC members joined national bureaucrats in using folklore and misinformation to slander girls as a class.⁴⁶

The NSBC’s disdain of the base is entrenched. Years after SA kicked off its sexist scam, the committee hadn’t lifted a finger to help the base⁴⁷:

At the time of this Reddit comment, SA kicked off its sexist scam 6.3 years prior, and the Scouts BSA program had been subjugated by the separate-but-equal regime for 4.8 years!

Broad discontent with the regime would have been readily apparent to anyone who’s alive and breathing. But when a committee doesn’t care about the base, it doesn’t listen to them.

The NSBC is awash in perfidy.

The only clear evidence of the NSBC cosplaying usefulness starts in May 2024, when SA put this committee in charge of something big.

This “something big” may be more gaslighting.

Laughably stupid coed-troop pilot proves SA still loves misogynists

At the May 2024 NAM, SA finally admitted its sexist scam is wearing thin. It announced a lengthy coed-troop pilot, to be run by the National Scouts BSA Committee.⁴⁸

This was an empty gesture. If SA wanted to do right, it instead would:

1. Immediately liberate all from the separate-but-equal regime, deleting the regime in its entirety.
2. Apologize for the regime.
3. Discipline all national professionals and volunteers who betrayed Scouting to support misogynists.

Instead of doing right, SA continues to hug misogynists by delaying a decision on liberation. Coincidentally, delay is is the main point of SA’s pilots.

SA’s pilots are trash

In the real world, pilots are smart. They uncover findings, via a live test of a proposed change, that would be difficult to know in advance.

I have yet to uncover any recent SA-pilot finding that 1. wouldn’t have been discernable, in advance, by an informed person or 2. could have been an easy course correction later. For example, while late-2010s pilots were run for girl troops and girl dens, every last part of BSA’s Family Scouting Questions and Answers, which laid out the separate-but-equal regime, would have been predictable by an experienced adult leader who had seen Michael Surbaugh’s 2017 NAM misogynist-appeasement speech, which preceded the pilots.

Some pilot programs have no findings! For example, the yearlong pilot of coed Cub Scouts dens⁴⁹ had no findings⁵⁰.

SA’s pilots are trash. Mere bureaucratic-stalling exercises, they simply delay change.

SA’s laughably stupid coed-troop pilot is trash

When SA admitted its sexist scam is wearing thin, it announced a long delay before any possible liberation: The NSBC-run coed-troop pilot will run through July 2025.⁵¹

This is just another trash pilot. It has no proper end. There’s nothing to learn!

Coed has been normal in USA society for well over a century.⁵² All of SA’s international peers programs are coed.⁵³ SA already has over 56 years of coed experience, mainly in its high-school programs.⁵⁴ Unofficial pilots of coed troops have been ongoing⁵⁵ since girls were first admitted to Scouts BSA in February 2019⁵⁶. Everything SA need to know to navigate coed, it’s already at its fingertips!

Without a proper end, what goal is the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot seeking?

Coed-troop pilot goal 1: prolong misogynist appeasement

With the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot, SA pretends that girls are a weird, novel entity who need 14 more months of careful study. Because, you know, SA’s 56 years of experience with coed wasn’t enough.

That is absurd! It’s line 3 from hymn 231, “How Great Manosphere Grifters Art”.

This validates that the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot is doing the customary SA-pilot thing, kicking the can down the road. At a minimum, it extends SA’s misogynist-appeasement period by 14 more months.

This buys time for the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot’s more insidious goal.

Coed-troop pilot goal 2: hug misogynists by hobbling reform

That Surbaugh felt it important to appease misogynists demonstrates they had a lock on SA’s national organization in 2017. I have zero evidence that SA has pushed them away. In fact, for reasons I cannot get into (I cannot say more without violating confidentiality of my sources), SA’s misogynists may now be more powerful than in 2017.

If SA was to liberate Scouting from the separate-but-equal regime, that would be a slap in the face to SA’s misogynist friends. Liberating Scouting from the regime invalidates misogynists’ feelings!

To minimize hurting feelings of its misogynist friends, SA must obstruct reform. The best way to obstruct reform? Put an anti-reformer in charge of assessing the reform.

That’s the why I theorize SA put a perfidious entity, the NSBC, in charge of the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot.

The National Scouts BSA Committee has never distanced itself from perfidy. The NSBC has never apologized for its transgressions. It has never repudiated its errors. It has never disavowed its sexism. It has never committed to do what’s best for the base. It has never been transparent.⁵⁷ Its members still promote the linked-troop sham to this day! We can only expect the NSBC’s perfidy to continue.

Continued NSBC perfidy means more warped data, more lies about girls, more cherry-picking research, more weird theories about pusillanimous boys being “disadvantaged” by venomous-harridan girls, more ignoring the base.

Given this, we should expect the NSBC to twist the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot’s findings in ways that build on its corpus of misinformation and folklore. We should expect the NSBC to yet again advance manosphere nonsense, just to help SA hug its misogynist friends.

Summed up, the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot is likely a ruse. SA is probably, once again, setting the stage for more gaslighting.

The laughably stupid coed-troop pilot will likely lead to…

…a phony liberation…

I think the most likely outcome is SA will once again gaslight everyone.

It will have a splashy announcement of Scouting’s liberation from the separate-but-equal regime. When national bureaucrats should be apologizing to us, they will instead pat themselves on the back, acting as if our liberation from their blunder is an incredible achievement.

Likely armed with warped findings from the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot, SA will do shady shit on the sly, retaining key anachronistic gendered rules or standards.

In other words, SA will likely obstruct clean liberation from its sexist scam. Instead, it will likely cling to substantial parts of the scam.

…or retention of the sexist scam…

Full retention of the sexist scam is a possibility. Remember, SA’s misogynists probably still have a lock on the organization. They don’t want to be slapped.

This hinges on how far the NSBC goes with its distortion of the laughably stupid coed-troop pilot.

…or a full liberation?

I wish this would happen, but it’s unlikely.

A full liberation would mean full deletion of SA’s sexist scam. All arbitrary, gendered standards would evaporate.

That’s it! It’s simple. It’s clean. It’s fast. But it slaps misogynists in the face. That is why I lean against SA doing this.

In the end, SA needs leadership to overcome its sexism. That requires leadership from an organization beset by a decades-long leadership vacuum. Don’t get your hopes up.

Back to the Linked-Troop Wood Badge

Those of you at the Linked-Troop Wood Badge, I am sorry.

I am sorry SA is forcing you to sing an opera written by manosphere grifters.

I am sorry SA forces you to cosplay a fiction, that girls are venomous harridans and boys are weak and fragile.

I am sorry your Wood Badge session was warped by misinformation and folklore.

I am sorry SA warped your course to validate its misogynist friends.

I am sorry.

Wood Badge is a good program. Look past SA’s sexism, and apply Wood Badge’s valuable lessons to your life and to Scouting.

Silver lining?

SA’s national CEO, Roger Krone, is attending this Wood Badge as a participant!

This would be a great opportunity for him to send a shot across the bow and announce immediate liberation!

Will Roger be be brave? Will Roger demonstrate leadership? Or will we get more of SA’s sexist scam?

I would love to be wrong

I would love to be wrong!

If anyone can point to me evidence that the National Scouts BSA Committee has openly rejected its perfidy, or that SA has openly committed to cleanly liberate the movement from its sexist scam, drop a comment!

1. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban, November 2022. See the “Gaslighting of volunteers and parents” section. In its lead up to including girls, SA falsely conveyed a sense of inclusion and equality, only to follow with a separate-but-equal regime. This is gaslighting is the core of SA’s sexist scam. ↩︎
2. Ibid. See the “Mocks program integrity” section. ↩︎
3. Ibid. See the “Poor source” section. ↩︎
4. Ibid. See the “Harms transgender youth” section. ↩︎
5. Ibid. See the “Alienates Scouts and families” section. ↩︎
6. Ibid. See the “Devalues fathers” section. ↩︎
7. Ibid. See the “Creates noncompliance culture” section. ↩︎
8. Ibid. See the “Denies high adventure to youth” section. ↩︎
9. Ibid. See the “Worsens girls’ experience” section. ↩︎
10. Ibid. See the “Gaslighting of volunteers and parents” section. ↩︎
11. Ibid. See the “Faulty bases for coed ban” section. ↩︎
12. FAQs for Linked Troops, Boy Scouts of America, September 17, 2022. ↩︎
13. Scouts BSA Web Conference March 2021. At 29:30, the National Scouts BSA Committee chair cuts off another presenter to mansplain that “nobody” supports coed, then cracks a sexist joke, and then conveys likely false information about Venturing and other countries’ Scouting programs, then concludes that coed troops are “not happening” and that you can “take [my haughty mansplaining] to the bank”. ↩︎
14. See 2022 Scouts BSA Linked Troops Best Practices Webinar 92022, starting at 58:00. No matter the question, the hostile and exasperated answers conveyed that linked troops are expected to separate into independent, single-gender troops. ↩︎
15. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban, November 2022. See the “Gaslighting of volunteers and parents” section. ↩︎
16. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban, November 2022. See the “Faulty bases of the coed ban” section. ↩︎
17. Ibid. Also, as a prominent example, see “The Scouts BSA task force for diversity, equity and inclusion, one year later” (Mike De Socio, Morally Straight, October 12, 2022) where a National Scouts BSA Committee member, who absurdly claimined to lead a DEI task force (!), shamefully spreads gendered disinformation–neurosexism–on SA’s behalf. In a follow up article “The BSA is using neuroscience to justify gender-separated troops. But ‘science doesn’t support it‘” (Mike De Socio, Morally Straight, November 23, 2022), the reporter debunks the SA representative’s false claims. ↩︎
18. In SA, “Chief Scout Executive” (CSE) is a fancy title for the national CEO. Fancy titles like these are used across SA to distinguish positions reserved for commissioned professionals, who are in an obsolete employment system that excels at running off great talent. That is why SA’s internally sourced CEOs are over-promoted bureaucrats, not leaders, who excel at screwing up. ↩︎
19. Bryan Wendell, “BSA invites girls into Scouting programs“, Scouting Magazine, January-February 2018 ↩︎
20. A three-minute excerpt of Michael Surbaugh’s 2017 NAM speech, focused on these comments, is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/bravescouters/posts/2491012247750838/. Also see BSA’s full video of Michael Surbaugh’s speech: 2017 Business Meeting Mike Surbaugh. Michael’s airing of misogynists’ concerns start at 24:54. ↩︎
21. Ibid. Also see BSA’s full video of Michael Surbaugh’s speech: 2017 Business Meeting Mike Surbaugh. Michael’s airing of misogynists’ concerns start at 26:20. ↩︎
22.  Scouts BSA Web Conference March 2021. The specific comments regarding “disadvantaged” start at 29:42. ↩︎
23. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban, November 2022. See the “Folklore about maturity…” section. ↩︎
24. Ibid. See the “Faulty bases of the coed ban” section. ↩︎
25. Ibid. See the “Folklore about maturity…” section. ↩︎
26. Ibid. See the “…that is sexist” section. ↩︎
27. Ibid. See the “…that is racist” section. ↩︎
28. Ibid. See the “Poor source” section. ↩︎
29. Ibid. See the “Poor application of questionable theory” section. ↩︎
30. Ibid. See the “Reversal of who is ‘disadvantaged’” section. ↩︎
31. Ibid. See the “Folklore about learning” section. ↩︎
32. Ibid. See the “Sexism” section. ↩︎
33. Ibid. See the “Improbable analysis” section. ↩︎
34. Ibid. See the “Disparagement of families and volunteers” section. ↩︎
35. Jennifer Sandlin, “Manosphere grifters misuse evolutionary psychology to promote anti-feminist views“, Boing Boing, November 25, 2023 ↩︎
36. Steve MuCollough, “Online misogyny: the ‘manosphere’“, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, September 12, 2023 ↩︎
37. This was plainly obvious in social-media Cub Scout leader forums and in my in-person observations. ↩︎
38. Due to SA’s poor program design, the jump from Cub Scouts to Scouts BSA is jarring, corresponding to about a 25% year-over-year membership loss. The national organization, preferring inertia over integrity, is unmotivated to fix program-design problems. Instead, SA clings to a fantasy that the 5th grade Cub Scout year is a good transition to Scouts BSA. Ergo, since Scouts BSA falls under the separate-but-equal regime, SA declined to liberate 5th grade Cub Scouts from regime. ↩︎
39. Because SA treats the girl troop and boy troop as separate troops, each troop must separately meet the two-deep rule for adult leadership. Therefore, troops unofficially running as coed operations must have four-deep leadership. ↩︎
40. The boy troop and girl troop each must supply its own Scoutmaster. This is by design. SA poisoned the well to induce conflicts and burdens that interfere with a harmonious, single operation. ↩︎
41. Theoretically, each troop is to have its own Patrol Leaders Council. This leads to ridiculous arrangements, such as coed troops having both a male and a female Senior Patrol Leader. This is by design. SA poisoned the well to induce conflicts and burdens that interfere with a harmonious, single operation. ↩︎
42. This is a qualitative statement, based on my experience in the program. But it comes out in objective ways from time to time. The amateur folk psychology of Scoutmaster Pete in On My Honor (Jay Mechling, 2001) is an example. Pete’s amateur psychology seems to get some things right, but he has some major misses. So is the bizarre theory, advanced by the national organization, that males and females are bifuracted by their use of categorically different ways to build relationships, reviewed more in The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban (Aren Cambre, November 2022) in the “Poor application of questionable theory” section. ↩︎
43. The testimony of several insiders affirm that national program committees are mostly do-nothing puppets of the bureaucracy. They are extraordinarily secretive to hide how little they do and how misaligned they are with the base they serve. While some committees have a few capable members, those people’s effectiveness is attenuated by how SA neuters committees by stacking them with passive loyalists. ↩︎
44. https://www.facebook.com/groups/bravescouters/posts/2426021844249879. In this video excerpt, the chair of the National Scouts BSA Committee, in the middle of a mansplaining lecture about the separate-but-equal regime and its linked-troop sham. is a sexist joke. The “truth behind this joke” is that wives should be subservient to husbands. ↩︎
45. Scouts BSA Web Conference March 2021. At 29:30, the National Scouts BSA Committee chair interrupts another presenter to mansplain that “nobody” supports coed, then cracks a sexist joke (same as in above footnote), and then conveys likely false information about Venturing and other countries’ Scouting programs, then concludes that coed troops are “not happening” and that you can “take [my mansplaining] to the bank”. ↩︎
46. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., The case for equity and inclusion: Ending BSA’s specious coed ban, November 2022. See the “Faulty bases of the coed ban” section for example after example of how members of the National Scouts BSA Committee slandered girls as a class. ↩︎
47. https://www.reddit.com/r/BSA/comments/16cjo9y/comment/jzkikne/, comment authored on September 7, 2023. ↩︎
48. Combined Troop Pilot, Boy Scouts of America, May 10, 2024. ↩︎
49. Again, only through 4th grade. 5th graders are forced back into the separate-but-equal regime. ↩︎
50. The June 1, 2023 cancellation of the separate-but-equal regime for grades K-4 was accompanied by no new rules, new standards, or program changes. This is strong evidence that the yearlong pilot had no useful findings. ↩︎
51. Aaron Derr, “What you need to know about the Scouts BSA combined troop pilot program“, Aaron on Scouting, Scouting Magazine, July 15, 2024. ↩︎
52. Thomas Woody, “A history of women’s education in the United States“, The Science Press, 1929. In this, the author writes that “Public high schools are mainly
    coeducational.” In “The paradox of G. Stanley Hall: Foe of coeducation and educator of women“, Lesley A. Diehl finds that Woody’s paper substantiates that 98% of high schools were coed by 1900 (p. 870). ↩︎
53. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., BSA’s WOSM peer programs, March 7, 2024. All the listed programs, at all levels, are fully coed or have coed options. ↩︎
54. “History [of Venturing]“, Boy Scouts of America. SA first allowed females into its high-school programs in 1969. ↩︎
55. The author is aware of troops that were coed from the start. ↩︎
56. Implementation Details for First-Time Members Entering Scouts BSA, Boy Scouts of America. ↩︎
57. Aren Cambre, D.Eng., “BSA national committee transparency scores“. See the “National Scouts BSA Committee” section. ↩︎