“Youth” = Boys

The Church released a statement today saying that it will continue to be a chartering organization for the BSA. This came as a little bit of a surprise given the huffy tone of the Church’s “we’re re-evaluating our relationship” statement of less than a month ago.

What’s interesting is what’s consistent across the two statements: the equation of “youth” in the Church with boys only. From the earlier statement:

As a global organization with members in 170 countries, the Church has long been evaluating the limitations that fully one-half of its youth face where Scouting is not available.

And from today’s statement:

With equal concern for the substantial number of youth who live outside the United States and Canada, the Church will continue to evaluate and refine program options that better meet its global needs.

A lot of people commented that last month’s statement read like a first draft, written in frustration, that somehow slipped through and saw the light of day. Today’s statement does sound more measured. It’s disappointing, then, that even after having calmed down and re-considered things, the writers still don’t imagine that the Church’s youth include girls.

16 comments

  1. It’s almost like the different tone of releases reflect the GA who gave final approval for the press release.

    Today is such a crazy day. Mixed news everywhere. Glad it didn’t end over LGBT, sad they don’t acknowledge YW existence, and the last part of continued evaluation signals a departing of ways eventually.

    So. Yay?

  2. It’s not just the leadership/PR department. I sat through a Sacrament talk last month where a very enthusiastic (and dedicated) member extolled Scouting as a wonderful youth program that the Church supports. I don’t want to downplay the worth of the BSA, but as a father of 4 girls, it bothers me to hear it referred to as a “youth program”, when it’s clearly a program for our young men!

  3. Disappointing.

    I once sat with my bishop in his office, shooting the breeze while we waited for my wife to arrive. He told me about the goals he had when he began his tenure as bishop. One of them was to create a top-class scouting program in the ward. Among the other handful of goals he described, he did not mention any goals for the young women’s program. He is a good guy, but I honestly don’t think he was even aware of the gender discrepancy in his goals.

  4. If you want to prove that the Church somehow shortchanges its Young Women programs, this is pretty poor evidence.

    The statement begins:

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints appreciates the positive contributions Scouting has made over the years to thousands of its young men and boys and to thousands of other youth.

    We are talking about the “Boy” Scouts here. The first sentence specifies “young men and boys.” Are you suggesting now that calling a group of young men “youth” is somehow sexist? They are youth, aren’t they? I am a man, but I also am a person. So if in an article about myself, I refer to me as a person, I apparently am exhibiting an unawareness that women are persons too? That is not logical.

    The statements are not an “equation” of boys with youth, as the article claims. It is an indication that boys are a subset of youth.

  5. … and in fact, that last sentence that you quote in your blog may indeed be intended to refer not only to young men but to young women:

    “With equal concern for the substantial number of youth who live outside the United States and Canada, the Church will continue to evaluate and refine program options that better meet its global needs.”

  6. Maybe I’m misreading it. I thought “fully one-half of its youth” implied that there is a group of “youth”, of which “fully one-half” were males and therefore potentially in the scouting program. The other half of “youth” would then implicitly be female.

  7. Nayajja, there is plenty of evidence documented elsewhere that the church shortchanges the girls and young women programs. I don’t think that is even the point the OP is arguing.

    The OP, Ziff, makes his point clear with the last line of the post:

    “It’s disappointing, then, that even after having calmed down and re-considered things, the writers still don’t imagine that the Church’s youth include girls.”

    As to your question about whether calling young men “youth” is sexist, I would agree with you that it would be an appropriate word to use in a different context. Yes, young men are youth. It is not sexist to call them that.

    However, you’re confusing two different things. “Young men” do count as “youth,” but “youth” does not mean “young men.” Your person example can illustrate this. Men are a type of person, yes, but “people” does not mean “men.” It doesn’t work that way.

    (If our government leaders started giving speeches about “people,” when they only meant “men,” it would cause an uproar. Unfortunately, we expect less from religion.)

    The first quote got to me the worst:

    “As a global organization with members in 170 countries, the Church has long been evaluating the limitations that fully one-half of its youth face where Scouting is not available.”

    The “one half” line stands out like a sore thumb, because “one half” is about exactly the percentage of the youth *within* the U.S. that weren’t offered scouting. Of course, there are also girls outside of the U.S. So, I’d say that scouting has not been available to about 3/4 of its youth, right? Of course, these numbers get confusing, because it seems like outside the U.S. girls might count as youth, though they don’t here. (?) Maybe Ziff could make sense of the numbers; he’s a numbers genius.

    The fact that you mentioned that the second “youth” might actually include girls kind of made me laugh. The reason it amused me is because you may have spent a nanosecond in a woman’s shoes. You did what we have to do every single time we read scriptures or sing hymns. We have to determine whether or not that particular quote was meant to include women as part of “men,” or if that particular quote was meant to literally mean “men,” as in, “men,” and not “men,” as in “men and oh-yeah,-I-guess-non-male-men, too.”

  8. This was such a blow for me too. You’d think I’d have gotten used to being ignored by now but this just brings back every time we yw watched the boys go off on grand adventures while we made rag rugs. The times our activities were LITERALLY making desert for the boys to eat when they finished their field hockey/camping skills/animal tracking activity. It brings back the time when I, as beehive president, asked the bishop for an equal budget with the deacons so we could do a service project for the shelter, and he literally laughed at me. Or when I was an adult in the yw presidency and we were told that the girls couldn’t have a fundraiser for camp because fundraisers were too much work… One week before the entire ward sold popcorn to send the boys on their SECOND camp of the summer. Or the time in our last ward when the girls had to raise their own money for their activities by babysitting, but the entire ward put on a giant bake sale/talent show/service auction for the boys. When I pointed out out, I got only confused blinking and a response that “scout activities are expensive!” Of course they are! That’s my point.

    These leaders didn’t mean to be sexist, or dismissive of girls. They were mostly good men following the pattern they had learned. But they were unwilling or unable to see the pain and frustration those patterns were causing in the hearts of the women and girls they loved. Girls are not stupid. They know that money is value. Where the money goes, where the time and energy go, there your real value lies. I felt it as a YW, and I feel it now. If young women are really equally valued by this church, we sure have a funny way of showing it.

  9. Ziff, thanks for posting this. As a woman in the church who serves in my ward’s YW presidency, it breaks my heart that these YW who mean so much to me, clearly don’t mean much to the General Authorities (who I’m told sign off on all Newsroom released statements). It’s like death by a thousand cuts; these two statements are two more cuts. The thing is, the YW know they are afterthoughts. I try my darnedest to hide it by making them feel special at church and in God’s eyes, but they notice this stuff. They feel they aren’t as important as the YM.

    It really hits them when they turn 8 and their brothers go to Cub Scouts weekly while they have Activity Days “no more than twice a month” (per handbook). Then they notice when their Cub Scout brothers get all sorts of recognition (Pac Meeting, Arrow of Light, badges, pins, etc), while there is absolutely no recognition program for what they do other than a certificate they get if/when they finish the Faith in God requirements. They absolutely notice this stuff. They know they don’t matter as much.

    The things that matter to us we devote our time, talents, money, and recognition to. The boys and YM almost always get more time (weekly vs 2x month), talents (based on # of leaders assigned to work with them), money (Cubs and YM budgets are almost always bigger than AD and YW budgets), and recognition (Cub Scout Pac Meeting & badges vs ??? nothing) than the girls and YW do.

    The thing is, girls these days aren’t used to this stuff everywhere they go. This kind of thing happens only at church. Could you imagine their schools having recognition programs for boys’ achievements but not for girls’? Could you imagine their schools having weekly extra curricular activities for boys but only twice monthly activities for girls? Could you imagine their schools putting out two (TWO!) press releases that were only referring to boys when talking about students? No way!!! It wouldn’t happen in a school these days (thanks, Title IX), and it shouldn’t happen at church.

    Since these obvious disparities pretty much only happen to them at church, it stands out. And I worry that they aren’t going to stay active if the one place where they feel devalued is church. These disparities make for very unfertile ground for these YW who are trying to plant the seeds of testimonies.

    The discrepancies are obvious. They know it. They see it. And it and it breaks my heart.

  10. Yes FC – i would never send my children, boys or girls to a school where
    1) the principal, the board of directors and vice principal were all men and women weren’t allowed in head leadership positions -by rule
    2) girls had less budget and had certain classes they weren’t allowed to take
    3) all the textbooks and curriculum was written by and chosen by men, by rule, women were not consulted.
    4) the history books focused lessons on the “teachings of ” only past male leaders of the school and state.
    5) boys had activities that met more often and had more opportunities to serve, be recognized by peers, teachers and staff and community through the school’s support
    6) the school taught that girls were fundamentally different than boys and should plan on staying home and raising their kids and thus didn’t need certain kinds of education and experiences because “adaptation of that ideal is only in emergencies.”
    7) girls didn’t agree to follow the school rules set by the principal, but instead, were asked to follow rules set by the other boys in their classes, and the BOYS then promised to follow the rules given by the principal. And the girls were told, “ignore this part if the boys aren’t being obedient”

    I would never allow my kids to go to such a dangerous, misogynistic, damaging place. And yet, I take them to a place like this every Sunday. And every week I get to ask myself “is God sexist and is this how He wants it? Or is it off? are we churching wrong, and that there are still changes to be made that will make it all right? Is the restoration still rolling forth slowly and painfully?”

    Or is my eternal reward going to be polygamist wife baby factory to supply children for planets somewhere forever? What if I am not righteous enough to want that?

  11. But even if they don’t leave- what if they stay and think that God wants it this way- that God doesn’t really think they deserve more, either?

    That does something to you.

  12. (From m-w.com) —

    Full Definition of YOUTH

    1

    a : the time of life when one is young; especially : the period between childhood and maturity

    b : the early period of existence, growth, or development

    2

    a : a young person; especially : a young male between adolescence and maturity

    b : young persons or creatures —usually plural in construction

    3

    : the quality or state of being youthful : youthfulness

    The word, “youth,” has a shade of meaning that means, specifically, “a young male between adolescence and maturity.” So, this post’s hubbub is over the PROPER usage of an English word.

  13. If you knew anything about dictionaries, you’d recognize the supreme irony of citing Merriam Webster in support of PROPER usage: it’s notoriously descriptivist, and in this case it’s accurately capturing the sexist usage in which the announcement unfortunately trucks. Cart, meet horse.

  14. Also, the fact that someone nominally known as “LDS Anarchist” has decided to show up and play usage cop is deliciously ironic (unless this person means “anarchist” in the degraded sense of “pot-stirrer,” as opposed to genuinely favoring noncoercive forms of government).

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