Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Getting the message

It has been an interesting few hours where yours truly has had his powers of diplomacy stretched to their limits.

First of all let's be clear on something, girls can be scouts of any sort so beavers, cubs, scouts, explorers, network, leaders, fellowship, the whole lot. The only exceptions are where groups are attached to single sex schools or young offenders institutions (and there are some believe it or not). So girls can be scouts in any main stream group. Thank you, the end, goodnight.

Last night I got a phone call from my successor at cubs telling me they had a new member who had simply turned up. This happens from time to time rather than getting a phone call and is no great problem. The problem is when they turn up because a neighbouring group turnned them away for being a girl. My successor, being a woman, was hopping mad over it, I, having warned the other group before, was pretty irritable myself. Thus a series of phone calls began to try and fix this without losing an otherwise very capable leader at the other group. I won't do the detail, it's dull. But the problem is in the process of being fixed.

It did make me wonder though, why do some people still not get it? Why does the fact that there are two sexes in the world who have equal rights to everything not seem to get through?

It's infuriating!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

But you'll always get some snide smart-arse saying "Boys aren't allowed in Brownies/Guides, so girls shouldn't be allowed in Scouts/Cubs" etc *sigh*