[Dumper FTW 435]

After graduating, I started mentoring my old FRC team. I have always enjoyed teaching, and mentoring was no different. Around a year after I started mentoring, a friend of mine sent out an email asking first graduates to come mentor a girl scouts team. The team is very new (I think), and very in need of mentors.

What made me angry was that she specifically asked for girl mentors and said "If you are a guy and REALLY want to mentor the Girl Scout FRC team specifically it would probably be okay for you to come too...". Now I'm not throwing her under the bus, since she was probably relaying this info from the team, or her interpretation of the team's policies, but this makes me very angry.

Why are boy mentors not wanted? Especially when the team is so in need of mentors. I understand that girl scouts is specifically focused on girls, but that doesn't mean that they can't get help from guys! I was in boy scouts for years, and we had plenty of female leaders despite the fact that the children in the troop were male.

Maybe they want girls because they want the kids to have strong female role models? But I hate that idea. Why do they assume that a kids role model has to be the same gender as them? I have both male and female role models that I aspire to be more like. It seems sexist to show a girl a strong female role model for the purpose of saying "even girls can be good at this!" instead of showing them any strong role model to say "this is the type of person you can become if you work hard!".

In summary, boys can learn from girls, so why can't girls learn from boys?