Let's go back in time and tell neolithic women they're not allowed to fish or hike. Let's make neolithic women sit around and paint their toenails all day. Let's send all of our female ancestors to the spa. Let's see how long the human race survives like that.

to join the girls to paint his toenails and sting beads and then grow up to be a productive hetero man who is not punished by women for having been a girlish boy?

Call me when that happens.

Well, considering it's a BOYS-ONLY camp, this is a non-story. If they assaulted her it maybe something. The only fishing going on here is you fishing for a story. Nope, just an old boot.

Perish the thought. I mean aren't boys are in crisis because all the women want to turn them into defective girls? So which is it?

Richard Dauphinee, the municipal warden, said he received only one complaint about the sex-segregated camp programs. Any public program that receives only one complaint is doing pretty well. Sex segregation of summer camps is very common, regardless of the age of the children. They are also very popular with kids and parents. There does not appear to be much of a controversy here.

According to Mr Dauphinee: "Each year we try and do something new and we survey the children and see what they would like," he said. "The girls wanted to make jewellery and have pedicures and manicures. That was their type of thing. The boys wanted to go fishing and play this par-three golf thing."

It seems the complaint here is that this public program was tailored to serve the largest possible percentage of the public. The girl is obviously disappointed and she has a right to be. But life is full of disappointments, particularly if you're out-voted.

I guess it comes down to this: Do you believe public programs should be tailored to serve the public or do you believe public programs should be tailored to mold the public in ways you find politically pleasing?

Your answer to that question will likely determine what you think of this story.

I'm with the mother - what year is this? What is astonishing here is that when deciding what the girls' camp would offer they came up only with "spa day". How could any thinking adult in 2007 think no one would complain about this?

There may be reasons to separate the boys' camp from the girls' (not that I can think of any off-hand), but why would girls not be offered hiking and fishing as well as pedicures? Plenty of boys would choose crafts - at my 14 year old son's camp one of the first activities to fill up was Photography. Very few children, male or female, are so one-dimensional as to only prefer such a narrow selection of activities. It's just a bad camp.

Boys-only camp? Okay

Girls-only camp? Okay

Single-sex camp of either gender that bars entry to the opposite sex when a comparable program does not exist? Not okay

Girls' camp for nine year-olds devoted to beauty and appearance? Highly suspect

Depriving the next generation of metrosexual boys manicures? A tragedy.

Right up to the point where we demand that women lug a rifle in the field like all the other grunts. Then somehow the gender blending will be a 'bad' thing.

I went to all-girls' camps when I was a kid. But they were overnight camps. I also went to day camps, which were not segregated by gender. This was a municipal, not a private, program, funded by taxpayer dollars. Why didn't the city just offer two programs and let the kids/parents decide which one they wanted? If only boys sign up for fishing and only girls sign up for crafts, no harm done, but the choice would be offered, at, I might add, no additional cost to the city.

Why do these issues always come up in the context of girls who are supposedly being deprived of the opportunity to do "boyish" things, rather than the other way around? Why, when Tracy finally points out that there might be boys out there who are being pressed into gender-segregated activities, does she choose an image of that rare boy who actually enjoys "stringing beads", as if that were some kind of universally recognized feminine activity? Why did she not say, for example, that there might be a boy out there who'd like to play with dolls or, imagine, have a spa day? Now, THAT'S a kid I feel sorry for. That kid will never have a parent challege the gender-divide for him, and never have a Tracy who will write an article for him.

The truth of the matter, I think, is that our society has BENT OVER BACKWARDS and done triple somersaults to make sure that girls can do whatever they please. As the story itself seems to indicate, the camps were segregated because the vast majority of the kids (and presumably their parents) wanted it exacly that way. I'm quite sure that with little effort, these parents can find a dozen camps where little Sally can fish and sling mud to her heart's content. But where's the camp where Johnny can play with Barbies?

This is not a question of crafts vs. the outdoors.

One choice was very heavily gendered, that was the Glamour Girls choice.

The other choice was not gendered.

My suggestion is the city should do away with the girl's camp. PERIOD. END OF STORY.

Let them all attend the rough and tumble camp.

Is that okay with you Tracy? That we do away with the one camp that was very gendered?

I wanted to go camping and hiking and get survival badges and all we ever seemed to do was sit around and talk and make god’s eyes and those dumb key chains that you make out of plastic ribbon. I was so jealous of the Boy Scouts – it seemed like they always had the coolest projects. The thing is about half the girls in my troop wanted to be outside too – but it was the troop mom’s we were fighting against. Those ladies just didn’t want to be out in the woods baiting hooks and they were the ones making the rules.

The best camps I ever went to were co-ed with both men and women acting as councilors and organizers. I’m not really sure what the benefit is of splitting up young children across gender lines is – it’s never worked for me. The best day of my young life was when they opened up the Boys Club to girls too – I think I was the 7th girl to get admitted to the Boys and Girls Club and I never heard any of the boys say they’d rather have the place to themselves again.