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Recently, the notoriously progressive Girl Scouts came out with a statement urging parents to refrain from making their daughters hug relatives over the holidays.
Why would the Girl Scouts come out with such a message? Here’s the specific reason behind it, straight from the horse’s mouth:
“Holidays and family get-togethers are a time for yummy food, sweet traditions, funny stories, and lots and lots of love. But they could, without you even realizing it, also be a time when your daughter gets the wrong idea about consent and physical affection… [T]elling your child that she owes someone a hug either just because she hasn’t seen this person in a while or because they gave her a gift can set the stage for her questioning whether she “owes” another person any type of physical affection when they’ve bought her dinner or done something else seemingly nice for her later in life.”
Naturally, this statement has garnered a lot of attention. This story has erupted across media outlets (like the Miami Herald, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and CNN) and social media platforms in the past 24 hours.
Some people on social media are jazzed:
I spent 40 years in business. I expected to shake hands with my male colleagues but was invariably pulled into a hug or the European cheek kiss. I hated both. Girls need to be comfortable shaking hands like their male counterparts. Kudos to the Girl Scouts.
— Terri Johnson (@wscstgrl) November 21, 2017
Girls NEVER "owe" a hug – especially just because someone gave them a gift or did something nice. #metoomovement https://t.co/OI7culqUt0 via @allthemoms_
— Taylor Seely (@taylahseely) November 22, 2017
Girls, REMEMBER THIS!!!https://t.co/WJwvQrg3GU
— Anne'sWorld (@AnnesWorld4) November 22, 2017
Of course, many other social media users are skeptical, like these Redditors:
“Forced hugs ARE weird. But equating familial hugs with sexual assault is really fucking weird too. This sounds like a well-meaning message that is presented in a very damaging way.”
Some people are frustrated:
Girl Scouts tells parents not to force daughters to hug relatives over the holidays https://t.co/E7zAvzPJnf #FoxNews I think G.S. is over stepping their bonds & possibly undermining the parents & families. G.S. can guide girls w/dating issues…..etc.
— Barbara L Hallisy (@B_Hallisy) November 22, 2017
Hugging an aunt for a xmas gift doesn't turn a child into a grown up slut after a date at olive garden #GirlScouts https://t.co/b30jykq5Tv
— PravDa The Hypersapien (@PravDaHype) November 21, 2017
The Girl Scouts need to stand down. It’s not their job to tell little girls who to hug or not hug. Step up parents and do your job!!
— Bonnie W. Iahn (@iahn_walkerB) November 22, 2017
The Girl Scouts are telling parents not to make their children hug relatives at Christmas b/c it makes girls feel like they “owe intimacy” later in life. What kind of psychbabble BS is this? Modern day psychology which is just idiocy.
— Jason Falter⚔️ (@JasonFalter) November 21, 2017
Let’s just discontinue the Boys and Girls Scouts altogether. https://t.co/ghp7ELnhrm
— JDA4USA (@jeffanderson42) November 22, 2017
Still, others are approaching the Girl Scouts’ request with humor, like this YouTube commenter:
“My wife and I have always respected our children’s space and body. We don’t touch the baby in case it takes our handling as sexually abusive, but feed it thru the crib with a nipple feeder so as not to manhandle it in our arms forcing our control over the child. We bathed it with the kitchen sprayer right in it’s rubber bottom crib as well so we never have to potential sexually harrass it by scrubbing it in places adults shouldn’t be touching babies. We decided this is the late 1990’s with our first child. Unfortunately they turned out to be a serial killer, but we can always say we never touched our innocent child or forced any unwarranted affection on them.”
So what do you think?
To me, it seems like the people running the Girl Scouts think little girls are incapable of discerning between situations where physical affection is sweet and contextually appropriate, and situations where physical affection is painful and intended as some kind of emotional currency.
It goes without saying that teaching little girls (and boys too, Girl Scouts…) about consent is a must. They should know that no one ever has the right to touch their body inappropriately. They should always feel comfortable telling a trusted grown-up if anyone ever does touch them inappropriately.
But teaching kids about consent and autonomy by telling them it’s okay to spurn the hugs of relatives (assuming said relatives have no malicious intent- obviously it’s not okay to force your kids to hug relatives who are sex offenders, or relatives who genuinely make you or your kids physically uncomfortable for specific reasons) at Thanksgiving or Christmas is just sad.
There’s just no good equivalency in the Girl Scouts’ argument. An unbelievably vast majority of the time, dealing with grandparents is not like dealing with skirt chasers. Little girls can easily understand the differences between situations involving physical contact with others if you just explain it to them instead of making all hugs weird.
And here’s another thing the Girl Scouts don’t understand: kids are probably not going to refuse hugs to relatives because they feel like exercising their consent abilities. I’m sure most kids under ten couldn’t care less about consent. Kids are much more likely to refuse Grandma Mabel a hug because they like testing boundaries, or because Grandma Mabel smells like ammonia and denture cleaner. Parents forfeit an opportunity to foster kindness in their children if they allow their kids to arbitrarily refuse hugs from good-intentioned relatives. It’s okay to teach kids that it’s respectful, kind, and loving to share appropriate, physical affection like hugs with family members. It’s okay to teach kids that demonstrations of love don’t always have to serve the person showing the love; that is, demonstrations of love are meant to be, in a sense, selfless. The main reason we give gifts is not for self-gratification. The same can be true for hugs. It’s okay to teach kids that. They can endure ten seconds of denture cleaner smell in order to show Grandma Mabel that she’s loved.
Hopefully, American parents recognize that the Girl Scouts have turned the non-issue of family holiday hugs into a social justice problem of ridiculous proportions. In the meantime, hopefully not too many Grandma Mabels will cry into their eggnog this Christmas because their grandkids decided not to hug them.
AZ Jeff says: I hope I am off base, but the message I see hidden in this Girl Scout advisory is: don’t trust your family. It reminds me of the communist message to children to not trust their families, and rat them out if they appear to do things contrary to the good of the state. The first step is to suspect any form of intimacy. The second is to question any words or behaviors that are contrary to what they have been indoctrinated with. The third step may be to rat out your relatives for hate speech. Like I said at the start, I hope I am off base, but the further I go on this journey, the more skeptical I become.
Kendall Sanchez says: I know, right?
John says: Dear K Sanchez,
I am glad you joined the discussion. Some would jump in and others would abstain, but your participation is a plus.
First compliment: This article is well-written. The concluding 6-paragraph blast at the Girl Scouts’ moral idiots* is right and proper in purpose, and well-executed in grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
* You did not name the current “leaders” of the Girl Scouts. That decision is the author’s choice, but these moral idiots (yes, I mean it, these few exalted ones ARE moral idiots) deserve to be named and publicly scorned.
I feel certain that will happen in the next day or so, or perhaps has already happened.
On to lefty dogma as it applies in this case: Using Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals on the radicals themselves, we observe that these Girl Scout SJWs stumbled and tripped on principle #7, “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” We see that the SJWs are boring, and (I say) they need to go away pronto. Lefty hates to learn that he is embarrassing himself, although he spends his life doing nothing other than . . . embarrassing himself.
As a general operating principle, Social Justice Worriers need to be publicly highlighted and embarrassed, ASAP.
If the Girl Scouts SJWs dare to respond, we will administer Alinsky’s #3, 4, 5, and 13 to their tenets. But #7 is good and solid for the present purpose.
I am glad you joined the discussion.
MikeE says: No. Not as long as there is even one SJW left on Earth.
Leland says: I think what we see from the Girl Scouts is the peril of allowing a village to raise your child. I don’t need a universal solution to individual issues. I encouraged my daughters to hug family members precisely because that builds bonds of attachment. And sure Taylor Seely, hugs are neither owed or purchased by gifts, but it does go both ways; if you don’t respond in kindness to others kindness, then you will get less kindness from them in the future. Don’t bitch later when you aren’t treated with the same kindness shared by others. Perhaps Taylor meant to be nuanced, but back to the first point, this is the peril of broad stroke gestures from the village.
But there is also a sexist message going on here. Its not just daughters that may feel uncomfortable about such contact, nor are they the only ones abused by sexual predators. Yet the Girl’s Scouts come out with something like this and out comes sexists like Terri Johnson above. Hand shakes, hugs, and kisses are not gender or sex (whatever differentiator is supposed to be used these days) specific. I’m a guy, and I had male colleagues (often Mediterranean in culture) who would pull me in for a hug and peck on the cheek. Yeah, I hated it too, but I didn’t take it as a sign they wanted to take it further in a bedroom. I took it as their cultural norm, and I took the gesture as an act of kindness, even if it momentarily made me uncomfortable.
Certainly, if the colleague then grabs a breast (like John Favreau), grabs your ass (like HW Bush), or thrust their tongue in your mouth (like Al Franken) then you should be more than just uncomfortable, and you sure as hell don’t owe them anything (looking at you Arianna Huffington!).
GWB says: Certainly, if the colleague then grabs a breast (like John Favreau), grabs your ass (like HW Bush), or thrust their tongue in your mouth (like Al Franken) then you should be more than just uncomfortable
That’s when you execute the other things your parents taught you – self-respect and self-defense. You can escalate from disapproving body language (that look) to disapproving words (“get your damn hands off me!”) to physical demonstrations of disapproval (a humiliating kick in the crotch). And it doesn’t matter if it’s your weird Uncle Jimmy, your boss, or a creepy vice President.
If the Girl Scouts wanted to do some good, they would be working with that model instead of the “Zero Tolerance” approach.
J. Pascal says: As a parent you should be aware how your children react to other relatives. And you should I take it very seriously if they show an aversion to any particular person. But most of the time it’s simply that children are shy they haven’t seen a relative 4 months they probably don’t really recognize them sometimes if you only see Grandma at holidays or Grandpa at Christmas. And then of course there are the sorts of relatives who haven’t bothered to try to create any sort of relationship with your children and then are upset when the children don’t love them because of who they are, but that’s a separate issue entirely! But normally, it’s just exactly what the author of this article said, grandma or Grandpa deserve normal expressions of affection so that they know that they are loved. And it’s good to teach children to think about others before themselves.?
MikeyParks says: I’m not liking this new world the SJWs are building for us. I think we were better off before.
John says: Think?
I am certain of it.
Lynn says: Does the same go for boys? Is a pre-teen boy encouraged to diss Aunt Mabel when she wants to smear her soggy red lipstick all over his cheek?
I grew up pretty far away from all the relatives, so even greeting my grandparents felt a little foreign, although I fell in love with them again after a few days’ visit. The aunts and uncles were strangers to me, and yet I was very aware that I was not a stranger to them. That they had been looking foward to seeing me, and that it meant something to them to be able to see me and hold me. So it was awkward, but looking back, I can’t begrudge it in any way.
I think the sad part here is that we are training young people to begrudge those moments, instead of understanding it properly as giving someone the one holiday gift that may matter the most: a real moment of connection between us.
GWB says: Training children to avoid awkwardness, instead of overcoming it, is not a good way to raise up “future leaders of the world”.
TBlakely says: I’m not really sure why anyone is surprised, it’s kind of a ‘dog bites man’ story. Progs are totalitarians, to them the state is your mother, your father and your family…. the most important entity in your life…. something you should worship in place of any ‘god’. To them the proper rearing of children is far, far too important to be left to the biological parents. Parents might teach them them something not approved by the state, something that might make them distrust the state. Of course progs are going to take every opportunity to weaken the bond and responsibility between parents and their children. Hell, it’s been going on for almost a century.
theomoore says: I enjoy hugs though not the half hearted kind. If they do not want to that is just fine by me. I do not much care for the hugs from my older friends my own age. Happily married and do not like demonstrative hugs from ladies a few years younger than me. Secluded hugs with Roaming hands not appreciated.
Blackgriffin says: When I was a kid, oh so long ago, I always got dragged along to my aunt’s in-laws for a Christmas visit. All the kids were expected to hug the grandpa and we ALL hated it. We would actually shove each other forward to escape our turn in his clutches. Something about him creeped me out and his slobbery kisses disgusted me. Really, disgusted all of us girls, but the adults just kept forcing us to let him touch us. Well, turns out he was molesting the grandkids who saw him on a regular basis. I didn’t find out until years later. So, our kid instincts were far better than the adults, unless, of course, they knew all along and didn’t want to deal with it, which is something adults tend to do, to the detriment of the children. Long story short (too late), I agree with the Girl Scouts on this, based on my own childhood experience. None of us should have been forced to let that nasty old man paw at us and slobber all over our faces. Ug. I’m getting queasy just writing this.
Not everyone has a perverted degenerate family. I’m thinking that being perverted and deviant contributes to being a Progressive Liberal and an SJW in the first place.
GWB says: As someone else mentioned, there’s a huge difference between “don’t teach your kids they have to hug relatives because they might grow up to be a hooker” and “listen to your kids when they’re creeped out by Uncle Jimmy.” The Girl Scouts are taking the first approach – which doesn’t help solve in any way the second problem.
Elvis says: Or, the young woman could exercise another choice and join boy scouts where we talk about things like, gee I don’t know, camping, knots, rock climbing and collecting food for the needy.
tps says: God help us.
Do you need any more evidence that Leftism is a parasitic mental disorder that destroys everything it touches? It never creates its own organizations. Instead it infiltrates existing ones and like locusts hulls them out.
No problem, though. I just notified our local GS chapter, and I am not paying for the girl scout cookies we ordered. They can kick that news upstairs and do what they want with it.
Maybe when the NFL finally dumps Roger Goddell after he completely destroys the NFL, he can slide over and run the Girl Scouts. If they are still around.
nuthinmuffin says: don’t hug your girlfriends either, they may have secret designs on you as well
Maia says: I didn’t read anything so nefarious in their message as the author and commentators have read. But perhaps that’s because I have a different perspective. My grandfather molested me four the time I was very young – three is probably my earliest memory of it happening – and I didn’t know it was wrong just that I didn’t like it. I never told my parents until I hit puberty and knew difinitively in my gut that what he was doing wasn’t right but the abuse stopped then, too. I was obviously uncomfortable around him but I was always forced to hug and kiss him. It wasn’t until I went to counseling, at 25, that I was told I didn’t have to even go to family functions he was at, let alone hug or kiss him. I’m 35 now and I still feel the expectation is there – I owe him a hug bc he’s family. I think the article was more about this scenario – if your child is uncomfortable hugging or kissing an adult, perhaps it’s with very good reason that you don’t know. My parents didn’t know what was happening to me bc I didn’t think I could or should tell them.
GWB says: Based on the quotes, they’re not even aiming at that. They seem to think this will stop women from believing that they should sleep with a guy because he bought them dinner. Sadly, this won’t even stop that stupidity. It will just break society down even more.
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