Cubs and scouting

Scouting is the subject of a separate blog to which I will get around to putting a link on here to at some point but its ethos is a very big part of what I am about and has on number of occasions helped me pull though though some difficult moments.

I mentioned Friends Reunited as that was a pivotal part in remaking friendships and getting some real feedback from people who knew me about how we fitted together and the issues at the time but another was what today can be called Age Dysphoria when in ways there is a disconnect between how you feel your age related self to be on the inside with actual chronological age because my disabilities meant I was still a relatively young boy at sixteen.

One of things around that period was dressing more like the boy I felt I was and cub scout uniform did feature in it not least because everything around it resonated with me and I was still doing stuff like going on hikes, exploring and the like.

Being a feminine boy you might well wonder what I made of an organization at the time which had very much a strict Boy Scouts for boys and a Girl Guides for girls policy although today Boy Scouts is just Scouts and it allows in girls while Guides became GirlGuiding UK but is girls only.

This picture although for those around knows this is pre 1967 does show the uniforms as was and leaving out the adult leader on the left we have to her right a Scout, a Brownie and a Cub Scout which is the boy equivalent of a Brownie.

The latter two were the most relevant and the programs while nominally of the same value teaching life skills while having fun reflected a more feminine nature within the brownies where as cubs was a bit more boisterous and yes overly boyish.

People like me fit between the two although you have to acknowledge that both fitted the majority of children to which they were aimed at and that you can't expect things to be remade so you just have to compromise.

For me the better compromise was Cubs which did have some arts and crafts in, a short trousered uniform that was practical and didn't risk accidentally revealing more while playing games or during Grand Howl and much of the physical stuff that as hard as was with my disabilities was what I loved.

I'd of loved a Brownie tunic  to had worn and the more folksy backstory to it but cubs suited me better even if today cubs with a grey skort option might of worked better given the co-ed nature.

The fundamental thing was and remains I was a boy albeit a feminine one and had no feelings around and for being a girl.

That was what that rediscovery of the uniform value affirmed.