J UEGOS EDUCATIVOS PARA EDUCACIÓN PRIMARIA G COMPRIS

Compared to the other countries, the Danish girls and boys had relatively little to say about gender differences. The tendency for boys to be tough, insensitive and direct, and for girls to be cautious, indirect, and more preoccupied with what others thought about them was mentioned, but generally such differences were understood as belonging to ‘the old days’. Today,

personality is more important than gender, they said. The boys, for instance, mentioned that Maria, unlike all the other girls they referred to during the interview, was a very good Scout. Both girls and boys talked critically about ‘male chauvinism’, and took gender equality as the self-evident norm. What they wondered about, however, was the kind of relationship there should be between such individuals of different genders, and here they had somewhat different models. While girls insisted that equality meant that women had risen to the level of men, some of the boys wanted to keep the hierarchy, for the sake of men’s self-esteem. Here are the responses they gave to the question about whether they saw any differences between girls and boys:

Camilla: The things that interest boys and the things that interest girls always have something in common, in some ways. You know, in the very old days, girls and boys were separated much more, and girls were lower than boys. But now girls have started to be in line with boys. Today girls can allow themselves to be friends with boys, you are more in line with them, and you think more like they do.

Maria: I think women and girls have come up higher than they were before.

Henrik: There are different kinds of girls and different kinds of boys. There are quiet boys and quiet girls, and there are the very active girls and the very active boys. But you

shouldn’t put an active girl together with an active boy, because the boy would feel provoked by her. Like: ‘I’m the one who is doing this’, not the girl.

Peter: I think it is fine that both are active, but I think the boy should be the one to take the initiatives, and the girl should be the one to follow up – give her consent, because not all your ideas are going to be brilliant. It depends on creativity, for instance.

Jacob: Boys often just jump to do things, I think it is good if there is a girl to think things through: whether it is responsible or not.

Jacob was a calm and quiet boy who seemed to agree more with the idea of men and women being in line. He said that it was true that younger boys may have problems with leading girls. He remembered himself at that age – he couldn’t take girls seriously at all, but if a big boy told him to do something he would do it quite happily His experience was that respect for women came with age. He and the younger boy Mads did not take the lead in the interview, however. Those who had most to say were Henrik and Peter, and they stuck to the idea of ‘women’s relative subordination’, as coined by the Norwegian psychologist Hanne Haavind: ‘Women can do whatever they want, as long they do it in a way that is relatively subordinated to the men’.185 _{According to Henrik, a young boy’s pride could be hurt by being given a female patrol} leader. In spite of an impressive rhetoric about individual differences and illegitimate male chauvinism, being a good number two was what Henrik and Peter thought a girl could - and should - be. This applied not least to Scouting. Henrik almost echoed the ideas from the end of the 19th _{century of boys as soldiers and girls as nurses:}

Question: Are girls or boys the best Scouts?

Henrik: When you look back at the Scout Movement, it comes from the military. And again, there is this prejudice that boys are best at physical exercises and everything they were the first to learn. Well, now Scouting has both genders, and gender equality, and there are other activities that everybody can do. But if we look back, I would say that boys are good Scouts. I would still say that the physical side is the boys’ area, while the psychological, social and helpfulness areas are the strong side of girls.

Even if put more bluntly, Peter and Henrik actually reflect the male adult leaders’ view of girls as the soothing element that could buffer the negative aspects of masculinity such as

sluggishness, laziness and acting without thinking. On such occasions, girls’ higher degree of self-discipline, cautiousness and more logical thinking were valuable, they said, much like we heard from the Slovak boys. We also recognise the juvenile masculinity and the responsible femininity from the Slovak interviews: while the male leaders are almost like boys themselves, the female leaders are those who keep things in control, the boys said. Henrik, who seemed to belong to the more sedate group of boys in the camp, told me that boys’ patrols often become quite macho: everything centres around being tough and strong. In his view, the good thing about mixed patrols is that girls put a damper on that. But, apart from women’s curbing and maternal role, none of the boys had any ideas about what it could mean to be a girl:

Question: What do you think is the best thing about being a girl?

Jacob: I don’t think there is anything! Well, maybe that you come home to a clean and tidy room [laughs].

Peter: I agree, and also that you can sew on your badges yourself (...) And then, at Scout camps I never take a bath, at least that is my great goal. And then it is not so great when you come home and can’t get it off, you are as black when you come out of the bath as when you went in [laughs]. So it must be a big advantage being a girl… that you can just take a shower, that you can make yourself do it. I can’t.

The boys seemed very content with their own gender, except for their admitted sluggishness and laziness. They also agreed with the Slovak boys that acting without thinking might be a drawback, but this quickly became transformed into being one of their main assets as boys, such as ‘the problem’ of not wanting to take a bath at camp. They appreciated their ability to throw themselves into things without thinking too much about it. Boys, more than girls, live in the moment, they said. They could eat directly from the pot if they were allowed to, so no washing up was needed (and this was, in fact, exactly how it was done for breakfast and lunch during the camp). Their self-depiction comes very close to that of the male leaders: they presented themselves as creative, people who had crazy ideas, a ‘daredevil instinct’, which they said was also fostered by the leaders who threw them into all sorts of situations. This daredevil instinct connects to competence: it is when you put people in tough situations that you know who is tough:

Peter: When we started in the troop we were sent out on all kinds of hard activities, to separate the sheep from the goats – to find out who had the guts so we could raise the standard. And those who couldn’t take it, they quit then. It may be a mean way to do it, but it really raises the standards.

Henrik: It shows who really wants to be a Scout.

PL Henrik and TA Peter found standards and ranks very important. They were also the two who were attracted to Scouting because of the uniform and learning to handle weapons. For them it was a matter of course that big Scouts dominate more than little Scouts (in the right way, of course). In contrast to Jacob and Mads, neither of whom wanted to become a PL, they identified with the hierarchy:

Peter: A PL should, of course, not just give commands - that is a bad PL. But, on the other hand, since he was once a recruit himself, he should be allowed to be the way his superiors once were towards him. His recruits should be given the same treatment, if they are going to be like him. If a leader has been through it, and it is his turn to command, then it is their turn to go through it. There should be a balance, so they don’t do all the work either. Henrik: Of course the eldest should have most privileges, because they are the eldest. Jacob: I don’t think it should be like that.

While Jacob and Mads were not so preoccupied with leadership, being a member of the patrol leaders’ council was very important for Peter and Henrik. It gave them influence over the projects in the troop and it gave them a special status. The patrol leaders’ council was very active, and was said to have a high standard and be close-knit. Perhaps the strong and dominating relationship we saw in the interaction in the camp between the leaders and the big boys also comes from the fact that almost all the big boys (together with the leaders)

constituted this ‘in’ group, while a small group of girls and little boys were excluded? Camilla had become a PA after the camp and subsequently joined the leadership team, but as we will learn in the next section, she stayed in the wings.

It appears that, more than in any other of our case study troops, the Scouting arena for the Danish men and some of the boys represents a place where you are allowed to do a kind of masculinity that is otherwise stigmatised in the name of gender equality. This is in line with a frequently discussed theme in Denmark: that men have been trapped in a feminine world and that their natural masculinity has been oppressed.186 _{One could ask whether the strong Danish} discourse of gender equality also fosters special needs for the confirmation of masculinities for some boys and men? In this case, for a girl, being equal in such arenas becomes a contradictory task, not least when this strong norm of masculinity is, at the same time, wrapped in the politically correct norm of gender equality. And this is exactly the impression we get from what the girls told us in the interview.

The girls were very eager to present themselves as strong and tough girls. Camilla told me that the important thing in the troop is ‘to take it like the boys’. You should take care not to act too girlishly. Learn to swing an axe and say things bluntly. You should not openly show that you are afraid, but learn a more ‘cool’ way to express things:

Camilla: Be clever and don’t show it if you’re afraid of something. You shouldn’t like:

‘uhhuuu, no, I don’t dare to do this’. You should be able to say really calmly: ‘Well, this is not what I fancy the most’. Try not to look scared, think of something else. And you shouldn’t start to cry either.

Maria: You should learn to control yourself. If you know that you cry easily or are scared of something, I mean, of course it is OK to be scared, as long as you don’t go like ‘no, I don’t dare do this, eeech!’.

We understand, however, that not all girls are as strong as they are. Camilla and Maria seem to be constantly negotiating what it meant to be a girl, when the norm was that you should be a boy. They were very preoccupied with drawing a line between themselves and the weak and over-feminine girls. At camp they told me about other girls their age who were so ladylike that they had to use three layers of nail polish and would die if they broke a nail. Camilla willingly admitted that she used a bit of make-up, too (she was actually wearing a heavy blue eye- shadow, which contrasted with her otherwise practical outfit), and she had recently started to file her nails, but she was definitely not afraid of breaking a nail! There was also a girl in their troop who wasn’t really the type to be a Scout. She could not keep up the pace when they were on a patrol hike, she had brought too many things with her, and the boys ended up having to carry things for her. Little Beavers were also ridiculous – they did nothing but eat all the time. The YWCA girls’ troop staying in the campsite next to them was the worst of all: they wore stupid hats, and behaved hysterically when they played ‘the violent ball game’ with the troop:

Camilla: Each time we started to fight they started to cry. Maria: Yes, like this: uuuuuhhhhuuuu!

Camilla: One of them got an elbow in her head. Maria: (mocks) ‘Oh no! I’ve got concussion.’

Camilla: I had a knee and an elbow in my head a hundred thousand times and so what! In many ways, what Camilla and Maria tell us about learning to be tough and repressing your fear is probably something that describes what many boys must also go through to really become ‘one of the boys’. But there is an important difference. Although Camilla and Maria did their best to prove that they were different from such weak creatures as the YWCA girls, they could not escape their gender. The boys defined them as girls and bunched them together with these contemptible girls. Even though Camilla had a black belt in karate, she was seen as weak - simply because she embodied the wrong gender. Maria told me at camp how surprised some of the boys were to see her chop wood. They did not think she had the strength to do it, and stood in a ring around her and watched her. But she had been chopping wood for years! The boys also mentioned this episode to illustrate that Maria was an amazingly good Scout. What annoyed Maria most was that they were not aware that it was their own mental models that were the core of the problem:

Maria: I find it quite annoying that they don’t reflect on this. Because I am not the one who has changed, it is they who have not seen it before.

Camilla: It is they who have been blind.

Maria: It is okay if they say ‘I did not know you could do this’, if they like what I’m doing. But if they become so surprised, and actually find it a bit odd that I can do these things at all. That is what annoys me, and boys are often like that. It is almost like they don’t dare or don’t want to know you as a person, they judge you from what you look like.

The problem of being judged simply on your gender and what you look like, instead of who you are and what you can accomplish, is that, when you are a girl, it quickly comes down to judging your body and appearance. However strong they are, the girls are trapped in female bodies, which define them as sexual objects. The Danish Scouts were the only ones who spontaneously mentioned the body as a drawback of being a girl.

Maria: Boys have this image when they hear about a new girl, they fantasise that she is totally beautiful, and if she isn’t - she isn’t pretty at all. Very many boys have this idea of how you should look, like all those porn stars such as Pamela Anderson, you should look like them to be right (...) they just want this over-delicious body and blonde hair and big eyes and full lips

Camilla: Whom they will later call a tart.

Question: Was this also the case when you first joined this troop?

Maria: I don’t know… but I always think: ‘What do they think, what do they like, what do they think when they look at me? I don’t remember it clearly, I just felt that all the boys laughed at me, they looked at me and then they laughed among themselves, it was a bit odd, I don’t really know what they think of me.

Camilla: I remember, I kept my mouth shut the first month, totally silent, couldn’t say a word.

The boys also mentioned the body as a special problem - for girls. In their view, some of the advantages of being a boy were that you could be freer with your body: you could take of your shirt if you felt hot, you could urinate standing, and you could scratch your body wherever you wanted without people thinking it was wrong. And as we saw in the G-string episode at the troop meeting, the female body becomes visible in a way that a male body does not.

The girls tried to overcome problems such as these by sticking to their self-definition as strong girls, and also by sticking together. Camilla and Maria willingly included the younger, and more easily scared, Julie in their concept of ‘luckily we are three strong girls’. They revealed a heartbreaking combination of heartiness and vulnerability. Camilla said that the boys in the troop were not quite as ‘heartless’ as boys at school, but direct action could also be needed here:

Camilla: Here you know that they have a heart somewhere, they wouldn’t really hurt you seriously. They will draw a line somewhere... but, still, it is good that we are three good, strong girls, because they know that if they try [to do something unpleasant], it can easily end up with themselves getting boxed on their ears.

Camilla: It is important that the girls stick together. If we did not have each other as support we could easily have broken down one by one and, of course, left the Scout Movement. The dream, however, was to be accepted on an equal footing with the boys, and for Camilla and Maria, this dream actually appeared to come true after the game with the hysterical YWCA girls. Camilla and Maria had run hard and had fought with bloodshot eyes and their team won! After this demonstration of force and fighting spirit, the boys saw them in a different way:

Maria: After that game Camilla and I were not called little girls anymore! Actually, after that camp I think the boys looked at me in a different way (...) I really like it when the boys look