15 July 2008
WAGGGS Wants to Talk About Sex
Posted by admin under: policies .
I’m already squeamish about the fact that I’m a male co-leader of my daughter’s Girl Scout troop now that almost all of them are starting to go through puberty. I’ve been laying heavy hints about how I won’t need to attend as many campouts and how happy I’ll be to let the moms answer the calls for help for girls who are on their periods.
I really had no idea, though, that the international organization for Scouting for girls, The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, was so incredibly interested in talking to our Scouts about sex. From the Kaiser Family Foundation (the name I associate with the HMO a few miles from my house) comes an announcement that I didn’t find on the official WAGGGS site that says that there will be an HIV/AIDS toolkit given to Girl Guides and Girl Scouts so they can learn about HIV/AIDS by playing games. Apparently the kit was tested in Brazil and now is being rolled out to other WAGGGS member nations.
I must say I’m not a fan of this idea. It’s too new for my council to have any information and I don’t feel like making a trans-Atlantic phone call, but I’ve never thought of Scouts as a place to go learn about sex and sex-related diseases. WAGGGS has a whole section on HIV/AIDS programs around the world with some talking about them being part of a whole sex education program. The Girl Scouts of the USA had a whole research paper on pre-teen girls and sex. While I endorse the concept of exploring this topic and how it affects girls in the modern world, I just don’t think Girl Scouts is the place for it. Medical sources, counselors, and even school can be appropriate places to distribute this information, but Girl Scouts is a web of volunteers who are just trying to figure out how far in advance they have to reserve the campsite so they get a little shade or water. I don’t want to be part of the information chain for sex regarding 8 year olds. “Uh, here. The national organization thought you might need to read this and talk to your daughter about sex”. No thanks. Not a conversation I want to have.
A search for AIDS on the Boy Scout website only has two references: how to avoid contracting it when administering first aid and possibly something a boy would research on his own as part of the public health merit badge. The BSA’s interest in sex education is a mandatory training program to enforce rules to prevent sexual abuse and another training course designed to be viewed/discussed with boys and parents together so the boys know enough to avoid situations and to help them talk about events if they occur. Nothing graphic.
This idea of playing games with girls so they can learn about sex and HIV/AIDS just isn’t right. I’ll let families decide when their kids are ready to learn about what they believe to be the proper behavior regarding sex. WAGGGS can save some money and not bother to buy a toolkit for me (although I am in the market for a tool belt).
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- New Head of World Scouting for Girls
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- BSA: Online Rechartering
- And Now a Random History Lesson on the GSUSA
3 Comments so far...
Piper Says:
20 July 2008 at 8:55 am.
Makes sense for the white, middle-class Americans to not take advantage of this resource. But, what about the millions (and in reality, the majority) of girls WAGGGS serves in places like Africa and South America where AIDS is an every day reality? I support this program 100% as it shatters the image of Girl Scouts as Christian, white and well-off. Kudos to WAGGGS for opening their programming to girls from all walks of life, and tailoring programming to fit everyone’s needs. I wish GSUSA would be half that inclusive.
admin Says:
20 July 2008 at 8:08 pm.
If race and income affected pregnancy you might have a point, but being white or middle class is a completely ineffective form of birth control. Your impression of Girl Scouts as Christian, white, and well-off is somewhat bigoted. Girl Scouts is open to all. Girl Scout leaders are community members, most often the mothers of the girls in the troop. For you to assume that the girls are better served by having WAGGGS distribute the AIDS/HIV information kits impies that you think the leaders are ignorant or the leaders are not from their community. Either view is elitist. I’ll reiterate that I believe the information is best distributed by medical personnel and parents should decide when to talk to their daughters about these matters. The troop is a place to learn how to value yourself. Pregnancy and HIV/AIDS aren’t as applicable for girls who already have a good self-image because they’ve discovered that they don’t need sexual validation and the troop method gives them community affection so they don’t want a baby to fill that void. Sex isn’t part of Girl Scouts.
Cici Says:
20 July 2008 at 10:57 pm.
Wow, Piper, you have issues… Let’s see, how old are you? 20’s? You don’t have a daughter, do you? You don’t volunteer all of your spare time to enrich your children’s lives. If so, it would be important to you to support organizations that were positive, and help to build strong, confident, happy citizens with leadership and communication skills. I am there with my children every step of the way. Parents know that their children need to learn about the world on their own, but we want to spare them pain and have them learn from our mistakes. That makes me white and middle classed? Many black, hispanic and asian parents may disagree with you. How sad that they don’t care about their kids the way white people do.
