Were men not allowed to join the group at work?
2: Obviously the men should have been allowed to join. Unsupervised women are a risk to society.
2: Yes, men should have been allowed. Just as women were allowed to go the golf outing. The company shouldn't have any organizations prohibiting membership by sex (or anything else).
The golf outing should have been swapped for something more acceptable to everyone if it was important for career development, of course.
The men were allowed to come to the events but didn't want to because they were girly in nature, like knitting. They were not prohibited by policy, only by their lack of desire to woman-oriented activities.
5. Oh. Then it's totally wrong that they ended the club.
Literally knitting? Or was that just an example of a girly thing?
Literally knitting?
Some purling might have been involved.
I don't see why we can't have a man-hating lesbian on the Supreme Court. We already have five people who hate freedom, or anyone other than the rich.
It seems like the golf event and the knitting event were pretty much symmetrical. Did that argument hold no weight?
How's someone supposed to get ahead?
Find a nice VP and get pregnant by him, dear. It's the best method.
Did the group meet during work hours? Surely they can''t stop you from inviting the other Ladies at work over for a knitting circle at a local coffee shop.
rob
['Don't worry, we're just going to be doing each other's nails and gossiping and planning to bring down the patriarchy.']
Do people really purl? I thought that was something that only happened in the pages of Penthouse Forum.
If such a group did get off the ground, phase two would see the emergence of a clear distinction between the whip-smart, professional, network-driven benefits of golf followed by beers versus the gossip-ridden bitchery pursued by the victimologists in the women's group.
Literally knitting. Held off hours, but in a company conference room and with their support.
How's someone supposed to get ahead?
Is that a rhetorical question? Is this a blog starring cock jokes and low-hanging fruit? Will an anti-affirmative action troll show up and fail to make cock jokes, what with being all insecure about the sad penis and everything? Could we get someone to come in and say, 'But those people are terrorists! They might bomb the executive washroom!'? Am I going to stop asking rhetorical questions anytime soon? Perhaps I should start again?
How's someone supposed to get ahead?
Short answer: They aren't.
max
['Give, not get!']
And the knitting was for a charity organization that made blankets for kids with AIDS.
And the knitting was for a charity organization that made blankets for kids with AIDS.
Please let this be true.
And the golfing trip was a fund raiser for the Ayn Rand Society for Stomping on Orphans.
The golfing trip was for men with small hard balls.
Small hard dimply WHITE balls.
Seriously? Golf? Yikes.
I thought golf outings were ancient history. The awful uber-corporate law firm where I used to work sponsored things like boat trips, tables at charity events, and family picnics. Maybe they were more enlightened than I realized. Completely backstabbing and bottom-line driven, of course, but not as gender-exclusive.
The men were allowed to come to the events but didn't want to because they were girly in nature, like knitting.
Gosh, what a shame they did not grow up reading Sam Johnson and the Blue-Ribbon Quilt.
Oh yeah. On the knitting circle. It is a little bit in-your-face, so you have to decide whether that's the best way to go. Maybe top management does need to be a little bit worried about what the women in the company are talking about.
If you want to go that route, you might also think about forming a moms' group, which would also be open to people who think they might be moms someday. It's a little harder for most companies to rule out talk about balancing work and home life - and it's a convenient forum for both networking and identifying bastards who are hard to work for. To the extent you get interested in actually balancing work life and family it can also be a way to build support for better policies.
Call it the "LGBT and Friends Alliance". The wrong kind of man will self-select out automatically (and if, for some reason, they don't, you can always up the ante and call it "Queer/Queer-Friendly"). The company wouldn't dare shut that group down.
23: On the knitting circle. It is a little bit in-your-face,
Especially calling it the Madame Defarge Society.
25: Me.
My organization is better on the "official" stuff, supporting a Women's Network for instance, but the informal climate is still pretty slanted. The whines of whining ass titty-baby corporate American white guys are among the most pathetic sounds ever heard in the universe, "We are all white men in the eyes of AMERIKA!"
It's like the new rule is that you can't ask for help leveling the playing field from institutions or the government AND you can't do it yourself through trying to better yourself with your peers and creating alternate networks to compensate for the lack of access you're getting.
Charitably, the objection could be one to using "sex" or "race" as a proxy for "lack of access." In my limited experience in the corporate world, the playing field was tilted in favor of back-biters, assholes, and back-slapping jerks of all shapes and colors. A group of "the kind of people who haven't traditionally done great at scaling the corporate ladder" might have gone over better, since it could have included the children of laborers, those who went to state schools, pointy-headed intellectual types, introverts, etc. Not just pregnant gays, who ALREADY have those parking spaces reserved for them at the grocery store.
you might also think about forming a moms' group
FAIL
If it's a proxy for a women's group, women != mothers (or future mothers). If it really is about balancing work and family, that affects everyone, not just moms and not even just parents.
This, fundamentally, is why 'colorblindness' is an ideal for the far future, not something that's workable now. If everything ticks along 'normally', with no one thinking about race or gender, then all the systems and networks that favor white men stay in place, and work just fine without anyone having to explicitly think about race or gender, but you can't set up parallel institutions that would level the playing field, because those would have to be race and gender conscious. Feh.
The constant use of FAIL is the worst thing about the Internet, and since the end of Jim Crow worse than all extant discrimination in America today.
I used to be puzzled by the whole whining-about-reverse-discrimination phenomenon, since it's hard to miss how the playing field is tilted in favor of white men, but I now think that these people judge everything entirely by a "good for me/bad for me" metric, and invoking fairness is purely a rhetorical gambit to win the argument. Fairness is purely something the world owes them, with no reciprocal duty implied.
Becks, did y'all try something along the lines of making it clear that men were perfectly welcome, then quietly telling the women to discuss menstruation instead of bringing down the patriarchy if any men happened to show up?
I thought that we had determined that this was the worst thing about the Internet. It's NOT FAIR for you to keep changing the rules!!
And 30 wins today's Pete Hoekstra award.
33: You Internet people keep upping the stakes. We're only three memes away from the Internet being worse than Hitler.
31: Oh, I think it's possible for a person of good will to honest like that any race/gender conscious action at all is the same thing as racism and sexism, and oppose it not precisely because it's unfair to white men but because they believe it's by definition going to be wrong or counterproductive in itself. This is wrong, and kind of silly, but not diagnostic of bad character.
Man, I can't type straight, can I?
37: Well, in connection with that little fucking smirk, it's diagnostic.
28: If it's a proxy for a women's group, women != mothers (or future mothers).
Of course, women != knitters, either. I do find something odd in attempting to balance the (mostly men's) golf outings/networking with a (mostly women's) knitting group. I wouldn't attend the latter, not particularly liking knitting. It strikes me that more neutral non-work activities all around -- for all employees -- are a better answer to the gendered nature of annual golf outings.
I don't think that works -- anything that's going to appeal to everyone equally isn't going to appeal to anyone. So golf is fine, and so is knitting, and so is whatever group you want to start up that does whatever you find appealing. The only other fair option isn't "Neutral activities that appeal to everyone", it's "No work involvement in any non-work activity of any kind."
The problem is that neutral activities end up generally being ballgames, sporty outings, drinking at bars, and other things that lead poor middle management to wonder why they have a problem finding qualified women. "I don't know, Fred, we asked all the networkers who went to our paintball-and-gambling-and-baseball seminar. [time passes] We just can't find any women to promote! It must be that back on the veldt, women were bad at finance."
Find a nice VP and get pregnant by him, dear. It's the best method.
shiv seems to disapprove of this plan. ("One-third teaching, one-third research, one-third... wait a second...")
Yeah, join the "trouble getting access club." Not like anyone you'd have trouble accessing would see that as the "next to layoff" pool.
Speaking of Sotomayor, the Times has a not awful article up on her record, but it is headlined, "Uncertain Evidence for 'Activist' Label on Sotomayor", despite the article showing that there is *NO* evidence for the 'activist' label. OK, other than in the minds of fatuous self-defeating idiots:
Mr. Whelan also said there were other kinds of error besides activism, including its opposite, "judicial passivism," when judges improperly let something stand. But Roger Clegg, president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, said his definition of "activism" included judges' upholding favored statutes or policies even though they violate someone's rights.
... How's someone supposed to get ahead.
Is there some reason you can't learn to play golf?
45: The problem is that neutral activities end up generally being ballgames, sporty outings, drinking at bars, and other things that lead poor middle management to wonder why they have a problem finding qualified women.
I guess I was thinking of ... dinners? potlucks? movie night? picnics, brunches?
I'm losing track of whether we're talking about in-company gatherings, or ones that bring in other people in the field but not necessarily in the company. I assume the former. Frankly, I've never worked for a very large company; the kinds of things I mention were regular events at the non-profit I worked at for 3-4 years -- these events would draw anywhere from 20 to 50 people (out of 300).
44: anything that's going to appeal to everyone equally isn't going to appeal to anyone. So golf is fine, and so is knitting, and so is whatever group you want to start up that does whatever you find appealing.
Right, and that's fine, but then it's not a women's (or men's) networking group so much as golfers' or knitters' networking group. I'm groping toward saying, I guess, that I don't see the point in describing such a thing as a women's group.
But sure, *if* you're dealing with a corporate culture in which regular golf outings are sponsored on the company's dime, then sure, go ahead and ask for girly outings on the company's dime. It just seems to me to cement rather than overcome gender divides.
48 would be hilarious if Shearer were kidding.
A lot of men hate golf but go along because it's good for their careers.
Just saying.
How depressing to learn that golf is still an important part of networking in some corporate cultures. Somehow I was under the impression that "golfing to get ahead" was important in the 80s but had since faded away. What a lame sport.
I'm curious about the implicit assumption here that golf is somehow men-only (so, Shearer may have a point). I don't play, and it seems godawfully boring, but most of the people I know who do are women. Is that really as atypical as is being suggested here? It is a fairly small sample, I suppose, but I'd never had that impression about it.
49: It just seems to me to cement rather than overcome gender divides.
Excepting the wall has already been built. The complaining whining is about the notion of the ladies are being allowed their own ladder. Which is no fair because... because they already have an imaginary ladder!
max
['I cannot overcome the divide between us with your boot on my neck.']
And there's Shearer again with the 50% troll, 100% right (esp in light of 51).
['I cannot overcome the divide between us with your boot on my neck.']
Don't you see, max? That my boot is on your neck means there is no divide! That's the way we're connected—through bootheels!
But Roger Clegg, president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, said his definition of "activism" included judges' upholding favored statutes or policies even though they violate someone's rights.
Yeah. That makes, like, so much sense.
I would much rather have to learn knitting to get ahead than golf.
But really, my capacity to do things I don't like with people I don't like just for the sake of getting ahead is very limited. This explains a fair amount of how I wound up where I am.
53: I gathered that in Becks's company, the golf was mostly men-only, and perhaps that "golf outing" was code for "men's outing." Maybe the golf outing involved a lot of sexist (gendered) behavior, such that if a woman did decide to come along, she'd be subject to sidelong glances? Hard to say.
drinking at bars
[Mildly Beck's style] Getting drunk is a gender-neutral activity!
54: Excepting the wall has already been built. The complaining whining is about the notion of the ladies are being allowed their own ladder.
Right, hence my use of the term "cement." The ladies would like to correct the situation by being separate but equal. I'm saying that that makes me uncomfortable. I'm prepared to be shouted down -- I'm certainly being somewhat naive and idealistic -- but I'd rather see a fight to make the golf outings into something more gender-neutral than a fight to provide ladies' activities to balance them.
I'd rather see a fight to make the golf outings into something more gender-neutral than a fight to provide ladies' activities to balance them.
No, no. We should fight to make knitting more gender neutral. It is a relaxing activity that produces something useful, and it doesn't require anyone to clear a lot of space and then waste a lot of water to create a really ugly landscape. Also, fewer white shorts and hiring servants to carry heavy equipment for you.
Really, improving women's access to golf is exactly like allowing gays in the military. Why would you want that?
62, as funny as it is, slightly misreads what it quotes.
The ladies would like to correct the situation by being separate but equal.
Another wrinkle is that it sounds like they weren't even equal. If I'm understanding things correctly, the golf outing was in large part valuable to its participants because it allowed for informal access to the VPs. And I take it the VPs weren't coming to the knitting group. Presumably there were peer-to-peer networks being created in both situations, though.
neb: Don't you see, max? That my boot is on your neck means there is no divide! That's the way we're connected--through bootheels!
Yay verily, we are all united through endless incarnations1 on the wheel of destiny, destined to suffer together through long ages, until we locate the path of true enlightenment.
max
['Nonetheless, surely a bitch can get a turn at wearing her spikes!']
1 I typed carnations the first time. Which would be fairly awesome, actually.
42 misses the point.
Becks' knitters weren't a knitting group. They were a group of women (and men if they chose) who planned different activities (knitting just being an example) so that they could meet to:
promote networking among female employees, help women find mentors in the company, and provide a forum to help each other address issues we were facing in our career.
They had a quite specific, quite appropriate agenda.
Golf outings & such masquarade as social activities but are often (usually?) in fact significant opportunities to advance one's career. Non-participation can carry a penalty.
62: The ladies would like to correct the situation by being separate but equal.
What Ole Biscuit Barrel said - the situation is already separate but unequal. And in the OP, it appears they have no intent of disallowing separation. Except via the application of sticks to tiny white balls.
max
['That's what we need! Free sticks for all the ladies!']
I'm certainly being somewhat naive and idealistic
Ya think?
We don't discriminate. If the girls from the office want to come along with us to the titty bars, God bless 'em. That's what I always say.
While I understand the desire on the part of women to try to counter-attack the very real bias in favour of men, any group set up with 'promoting networking' as one of its aims ... arrgh.
any group set up with 'promoting networking' as one of its aims ... arrgh.
Yeah, networking of any sort is really just cronyism. The whole thing inevitably drives me nuts.
Sadly, no large organization survives by just telling its members how to do their job well. They also have to know how to make sure that others know that they are doing their job well, and after that it is a slippery slope to golf.
71: Or, as Robin Hanson puts it,
But a boss who has known you for years may not promote you unless you get a better degree, even if school teaches you nothing useful on your job. He might not hire you without that degree, even if he knows and trusts folks who have known you for years. Why do people who know us well care so much about shallow signals? Your boss doesn't just want high quality subordinates; he wants his boss to think he has high quality subordinates. Actually he wants his boss to be happy about it, which requires his boss' boss be happy about it, etc. We all want to affiliate with high status people, but since status is about common distant perceptions of quality, we often care more about what distant observers would think about our associates than about how we privately evaluate them.
58: That's a tough call. I'd have to go with golf just because I've been subject to knitting, and better the devil you don't know.
it is a slippery slope to golf.
I believe the phrase is "fast green".
it doesn't require anyone to clear a lot of space and then waste a lot of water to create a really ugly landscape
Actually I quite like Scotland.
I believe the phrase is "fast green".
Sounds like a get rich-quick scheme.
68: Ya think?
Indeed, I even said so!
66: Golf outings & such masquarade as social activities but are often (usually?) in fact significant opportunities to advance one's career. Non-participation can carry a penalty.
What's the penalty for not liking knitting?
Further to my 77.last: In case it's not clear, my objection to women's networking groups that involve highly-gendered activities like knitting is that I'd be asked to perform gender, as they say, in something very like the way that men are asked to perform gender for the golf outing.
networking of any sort is really just cronyism
Actually, I disagree. (And I say that as someone who in general goes to tremendous lengths to avoid socializing with co-workers, even the ones I really, really like.)
Look, I work in a small organization in a minor corner of the nonprofit world. And even *I* make probably three decisions a month about who to subcontract with, who to hire, who to pay for some consulting time. Plus at least a dozen referrals (i.e., people who call me up and ask "Who's good that I can get to do ____?")
Now how am I going to know who I should pick for all those roles? I'm coming up on a couple of decades in the workforce now, but I haven't worked with THAT many people, much less directly supervised or partnered with them such that I would actually know the quality of their work. So it's crucial that I have some forum for interacting with and informally assessing more distant colleagues (and/or people within the same field, more broadly).
I guess what I'm saying is, there's nepotism and cronyism and anti-merit-ism aplenty in this world, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater in implying that there is something illegitimate or useless in creating venues for people to informally be introduced and evaluate and learn from each other. There ain't. It's darned useful.
but I'd rather see a fight to make the golf outings into something more gender-neutral than a fight to provide ladies' activities to balance them.
If my purpose is to advance my career, I'm not going to try to take my boss's boss's golf outing away from him. Maybe you should try for a yoga group. I realize it's hard to network while performing virabhadrasana, but you could have tea afterward. Green tea.
81: Ha, funnily, at my old non-profit job, we started a yoga group. It was held in one of the conference rooms after work -- where I was also stashing my bike during the day -- and the instructor came in. We had maybe 9 participants to begin with (just one man) -- but after a couple of weeks a few people dropped out, and the instructor noted that this was no longer worth her time, so those of us who remained switched to going to yoga sessions at the instructor's house, on our own time.
Worked out fine. Great, in fact.
I took the train today with a bunch of the people going to the US Open tournament. What a bunch of self-satisfied twits they were. I was happy to see them staggering home bedraggled from the rain-out.
Do you want to get ahead or do you want to change the world? EWGA.
Do you want to get ahead or do you want to change the world?
James asks a good question.
Golfing for Change! Count on the Canadians to get it wrong.
Is that really as atypical as is being suggested here?
The firm I worked for had golf scrambles, and everyone went, but the women tended to hang back if they didn't know how to play and the guys just went out there and had beer. Same thing with softball games.
I'm not suggesting that golf in and of itself is a sexist activity. Or going to the ball game, or drinking, or whatever. But a lot of these things aren't neutral culturally, which isn't a problem until they become the proxy or the opportunity for networking.
There's also sometimes gender-specific issues in the various professions, especially when the gender ratios are very unbalanced.
Other fun moments at the firm: when you make partner, you get to go on a big partner's retreat, they told us. And they have a separate retreat for the wives of partners! It's like Player Piano. The best wife in the world for the best man for the best job in the world.... (What happens when a woman makes partner? Silly person, married women don't make partner!)
87: I must say that my response to scenarios like that is to walk away from them altogether. That's neither better nor worse than persevering*; just a personal choice.
* I always want to spell this "perservere"
golf scrambles
Like golf, but played on broken rockface? I actually could get into that.
Golf, but with goofy rules so no one takes it too seriously. E.g., play in groups of four and take turns driving or putting, rules like being able to have one do-over, one throw, etc.
I had no idea how to play golf but no one particularly cared and by the end of the day the group had taught me how to hit the ball.
Golfing on a broken rockface would awesome.
I'm inclined to bristle at the knitting group, too, as the women's alternative to golf. I can knit a little, but it's not terribly exciting to me and I get uncomfortable with "women's" activities because I don't naturally incline toward girly activities. I don't like the idea of a women's group that pre-supposes a particular mold.
But I'll also say that networking is far from just a matter of cronyism. It's also just plain and simple a way of building relationships -- which is a big part of job satisfaction and retention. If I ever leave the firm/profession, that will be why.
Golfing in space would be challenging.
My grandmother was an avid golfer.
Dragonboating is a good mixed activity. There's plenty of standing around between heats, and opportunities to mix with folks at one's place of employ and at other places in the same field.
Haven't read the thread, but at risk of pwnage, wouldn't a better agenda for the work group be to help feminists, not specifically women, network, help each other get ahead, etc.?
you mean like "I should get that promotion not because I'm a man, but because I'm a feminist, laydeez"?
Actually, thinking about this more - do you think golf is really an important part of networking where you work?
Again, my experience may not be typical, but I don't think I know anybody who succeeded in my firm because they palled around with partners outside the office. What mattered was whether they hit it off with the (right) partners in work settings. Work was stressful and grueling, which made for a much more intense bonding experience.
There's still plenty of sexism out there, but in professional offices I don't think it usually has much to do with recreational choices. You should be talking to the women where you work to figure out who's a dick who won't give you a fair shot. But once you find him or her, you don't have to play golf with them (or knit with them, I'd wager).
Oops - last sentence should say - once you find somebody who's not a dick, you won't have to play golf with them (or knit with them) to get their help.
It's like Player Piano
The Vonnegut novel? Surely not?
||
How do you know I'm not swipple? Because I was NOT at "Rock the Garden" tonight. Instead I was performing at a queer cabaret extravaganza. And we totally killed. We nailed it. Nobody missed their cues or dropped their lines. It was fucking brillers, mate.
The best minds of my generation are still dancing their asses off over there.
||>
You should be talking to the women where you work to figure out who's a dick who won't give you a fair shot.
Just don't do it while knitting.
The only other fair option isn't "Neutral activities that appeal to everyone", it's "No work involvement in any non-work activity of any kind."
I vote for the latter. I also second the idea that networking is too close to cronyism for my tastes. Who I am at my place of work is absolutely nothing like who I am outside of my place of work -- I mean, when the revolution comes, we're not sparing our bosses, right? I had just assumed that that was well understood... (Shorter: "It's only because I'm as well paid as I am that I'm not participating in class war right now. And who knows for how long I'll have that paycheck.")
Also, I love golf, but I'd never play it with assholes who have the power to fire me.
The only other fair option isn't "Neutral activities that appeal to everyone", it's "No work involvement in any non-work activity of any kind."
I once worked for an outfit which kind of met both these criteria by organising outings to the beach. Once there, some lay on the sand, some dived into the pub, some took healthy walks, some played the slots, some played frisbee. Nobody did anything particularly collegial.
I think the focus on golf particularly, or knitting as a replacement, is missing Becks' point a little. The situation at her workplace was that there were work events, perceived by the women at work to be both valuable and more welcoming to men. And that was okay with the employer, because those events were normal. Setting up alternative work events (whether or not knitting sucks and is itself a tool of gender oppression) at which the specific women who set them up were more comfortable and that they found valuable, was shut down by the employer.
An accidental focus on men is okay, because that's the natural way of things. A deliberate focus on women is sexism. If those are the rules, fixing things is going to be a problem.
104: Does anyone actually disagree? Maybe 97 does, but that's about it.
Well, parsimon seems to believe that work-sponsored activities in which women would be expected to be disproportionately interested are sexist as reinforcing femininity. And while I can see where she's coming from, that ends up in a world where activities associated with masculinity are permitted, because you can't kill all the traditions at once, and studiedly gender-neutral activities are all right, but anything actively associated with women rather than men has to be stamped out.
And of course Shearer disagrees, along with everyone else questioning if golf outings really do favor men.
Threads like this make me glad I work for the government, where there are strict rules against spending money on bullshit like golf outings.
(Instead, we spend money on bullshit like a seemingly never-ending state of facilities upgrades, constantly shuffling everyone around. Does the private sector do this as well?)
Yes, since you ask.
I think it's that managers vaguely remember from whenever-it-was the idea that constant change shows that you're a responsive organisation. Now that that is totally discredited, they're left constantly and meaninglessly shuffling stuff in a pathetic attempt to look decisive to their superiors.
Sad really. I wouldn't care except somebody stole my laptop case last time.
We're still trying to plan our group's 2007 holiday outing because no one could agree on an activity. Ice skating? F1 Boston? Paintball? Sox game the following spring? Billiards? Barbecue? Maybe I'll suggest knitting next.
Even if the firm doesn't spend money on outings, though, outings happen and remain an important form of networking. And, unfortunately, informal networking is just as likely as firm-sponsored to be gendered -- guys tend to hang with the guys, and when girls hang with the guys there are the issues of how or whether to perform gender such that the quality of the bonding is almost necessarily different.
Anyway, this is really the biggest challenge for me in the lawfirm environment. At my previous, state jobs, the gender balance was more or less equally split and it was easy finding women (and men) I could click with. At the firm... There aren't nearly enough women attorneys, I am lucky if I get to work with another woman 5% of the time, and there really aren't social networking opportunities for women. I probably would join the knitting group, if offered, even though I don't really like to knit, just for the chance to interact somehow with professional women....
109: The single-greatest silver-lining in the economic downturn was the cancellation of the annual firm summer meeting/outing.
Di: At this GLBT inclusion event I went to, there was somebody who worked for a Boston-based firm's New York office who was supposed to start setting them up. She said that she thought that it was harder to set these things up in a law firm than in a corporate setting. She also thought that Boston-based firms were a lot more hidebound than New York ones. No women wanted to join the women's group anymore.
Funnily enough, I was at a publishing workshop for junior academics this week, and one of the men there remarked at the clear (and dubious) gender-based sorting that had gone on.
There was a 2 hour lecture session which everyone attended. Because it was a humanities thing the split was about 25 women and about 8 men.
Over the next day and a half there were workshop sessions, with about 12 people in each, into which we were split by the woman organising the programme. Sitting down at the workshop I was to attend I noticed there were, funnily enough, 7 or 8 men in the room. The segregation was so obvious that one of the other guys made a joke about it -- and he didn't sound amused.
There was a Women's Group when I was first hired. It met twice and then disappeared. Supposedly a new one has been created or is in the process of being created -- but our new diversity director doesn't consider women a "minority" so... Law firms really are, I think, a particularly entrenched setting and it's small wonder to me that women leave the profession in droves.
I used to work for a company where we got a stack of money for the whole department to go do something "teambuilding" every six months.
For a year or so we got away with taking the whole department to a nice restaurant and having a teambuilding dinner - free food and wine! - until someone senior cottoned on and our manager told us sternly that we had to think of some actual teambuilding *activity* that we could all do together, and eating delicious food did not count.
Which I thought was very shortsighted, since it was the one thing we could all agree that we liked doing.
You should find a local cooking school and use that as your gateway to teambuilding food and wine. We did a cook-off event for the summer program one year, and it was a blast.
115. I wish senior people like that would get over their fucking Baden Powell complex.
People have a contract of employment. The employer contracts to provide you with wages, a safe working environment and the tools of your trade (unless you bring your own). You contract to turn up and do an honest day's work, which necessarily includes remaining on speaking terms with their cow-orkers. You have not contracted to spend a day doing shit you hate with people you don't care about to achieve sweet fuck all unless you're already swinging the lead about doing an honest day's work.
That was completely incoherent and changed person, tense and mood about sixteen times. That's cos I'm not at work and dont feel obliged to write proper.
Instead I was performing at a queer cabaret extravaganza
Cabaret is totally SWPL, minne.
119: I think queer cabaret is covered by number 88 on the Stuff White Poeple Like list.
117, 118: That was totally coherent. Totally defensible, too, but... Do you really not enjoy the idea of a sense of community in the workplace? I find showing up, doing an honest day's work, and going back home totally unfulfilling in the absence of some human connection. (Although, I also find socializing all day and accomplishing nothing productive disheartening, too, so maybe we are just reacting to different extremes... )
We have a yearly faculty retreat at a local summer camp, where you sleep in bunks or tents and talk terribly earnestly about "vocations" or whatever that year's theme is. Eating at the mess hall, singing dorky summer summer camp songs...it's kind of amazingly dorkalicious.
That's why I try not to have gay friends, or friends who are minorities. I wouldn't want to be swipple.
99: The Vonnegut novel? Surely not?
The Meadows. Blue Team's gonna win!
You're only SWPL as you feel
Only SWPL as you feel inside
122. No, really. I like the possibility of making friends in the workplace. I have made good friends there. I'm even married to one. But in my current job, there's nobody I would ever choose to socialise with out of work* - I don't have enough in common with them, although by and large I like them a lot, respect them professionally and work with them productively and creatively. So that being the case, being subjected to compulsory entertainment with them simply serves to put strain on the light touch relationships we all maintain in the office.
*Clear exceptions - leaving drinks, birthday baked goods, Christmas dinner etc - are fine, because they can be done at the same level.
127 more or less captures my feelings, too.
There's still plenty of sexism out there, but in professional offices I don't think it usually has much to do with recreational choices.
It does when they're company sponsored. It's not direct. No one's thinking, hey, let's put together a company night at the ballpark to keep out the women, probably. But when the social activities are somewhat gendered, who succeeds at socializing is likely to run along gender lines.
I mentioned Player Piano thinking of this great bit where Paul is pondering the corporate fate of the young guy who mistakenly yelled out during the solemn tree ceremony at the annual company camp, and notes that the yeller doesn't have the physique of an athlete, so he's unlikely to redeem himself and will probably end up wasting away in middle management somewhere, never getting ahead and never quite figuring out why.
Sports are particularly tough. It's often the case that the men have more of a team sports background, but even absent that, if the firm culture is one that expects women to look polished and professional, it's a tricky balance.
What's interesting about Becks' example is that it was perfectly obvious to the men that the knitting group had the potential to be unfair, simply because men tend to be less likely to be knitters. I doubt they'd find it a persuasive argument that anyone can learn to knit, and there's nothing stopping them, and it's much cheaper than golf lessons.
and it's much cheaper than golf lessons.
So, so true.
There was an article in the Globe a while ago about a law firm that had an event for women (I suppose men could have gone) that involved pampering with potential clients (hospitals and universities in this case) at a salon. It turned out that the salon owner was also a client of the firm's, so it was good business/networking all around.
What about community-service projects? I could see learning to communicate in a different way with my coworkers if we all spent a day rebuilding a trail or painting a house.
131 is a GREAT idea! I should try to find something in Chicago that I could pitch.
This is all fascinating because I am obsessed with balancing the professional/public & personal/private spheres--no great surprise, as I work at a not-for-profit cultural institution made of brick. Quasi-formal collective activity is. I believe, potentially a matrix for both individual & social sophistication.
Now that many (show of hands?) modern citizens have no strong bonds with our immediate neighbors, social networking strains the definition of social space. Loosely themed gatherings are the best way (I know of) for people in urban society to possess freedom of association where we actually live.
Doesn't matter whether it's a Flaming Franchises sporting event or a flea market, a Night Out with the Boss or a book club. People-watching, & seeing people we know out of the context in which we know them, is fun (& profits us all).
So the more random the activity, the better! As long as it's not the exact same thing every time. If exclusion (gendered or otherwise) is a concern, keep a running "top 3" & vary who picks the next one. /.02
(All of which assumes a Suggestion Box at least, so YMMV.)
On preview: 131 FTMFW!
127: I totally agree. And there were people I liked to socialize with - we'd go for coffee breaks together, etc. I could never figure out why senior management didn't think that "All of us enjoying a meal together" was, in fact, a perfectly good teambuilding event - perhaps we should have tried the "Can we all go cook the meal?"
131 discriminates against the Randians at your company.
I fully endorse 131 as well! There are a lot of relatively non-gendered things that can be done -- if you focus on teambuilding and stay somewhat away from skills that are already in your pocket, so to speak -- you can also get to things like: a day of sailing lessons, or kayaking lessons. Cooking lessons, or a joint cooking project (the potluck idea, even), as long as the cooking isn't all, say, baking cakes.
Briefly to LB's 106 upthread: Well, parsimon seems to believe that work-sponsored activities in which women would be expected to be disproportionately interested are sexist as reinforcing femininity. And while I can see where she's coming from, that ends up in a world where activities associated with masculinity are permitted, because you can't kill all the traditions at once, and studiedly gender-neutral activities are all right, but anything actively associated with women rather than men has to be stamped out.
I acknowledged Becks' point in my 49.last: *if* you're dealing with a reality in which questioning male-dominated company sponsored networking events is really and truly off the table, then setting up separate-but-equal female events may be the only option. Of course it's unjust that the latter would be shut down.
I think it was Becks' "How's a person to get ahead?" that made me diagnose the problem differently than she has: it's not that female-dominated networking opportunities are suppressed, it's that there are male-dominated ones in the first place. A person should be able to get ahead, or to put it more positively, form associations, outside a blatantly gendered calculus.
I am absolutely certain that I'm repeating myself now.
it's not that female-dominated networking opportunities are suppressed, it's that there are male-dominated ones in the first place.
Just to make sure I'm following -- the problem is that the golf outing is male-dominated, not that golf is traditionally thought of as a masculine activity? I can see that. I actually don't mind golf -- I can enjoy an afternoon of it with my family. But I probably would hesitate about a company golf outing because I'd anticipate things like the guys not wanting a chick in their foursome, the stupid condescending bullshit about hitting from the ladies' tees, etc. (I'm by no means great or anything, and golf rarely, but I am always irritate by the stupidity of a ladies' tee 10 yards closer up on a 400 yard hole. (1) 50% of the time I can out-drive my non-lady dad (depending on which one of us totally duffed if) and my SIL would outdrive both of us and 50% of the men on the course 100% of the time (2) really? 10 years is going to make a big freaking difference? Call it the "intermediate" or "beginner" tee or something and I'll be happy.)
Further to 138, if 137 is saying that having "girly" outings isn't going to change the fact that the getting ahead will still occur mostly within the boy outings, I totally agree. The idea of networking (in the how to get ahead sense) is about gaining access to the people in power. If women aren't among the people in power, separate women's networking events are simply going to give you access to other disempowered people.
We have a yearly faculty retreat at a local summer camp, where you sleep in bunks or tents and talk terribly earnestly about "vocations" or whatever that year's theme is. Eating at the mess hall, singing dorky summer summer camp songs...
Ye gods. Our quarterly training did have some "diversity" training, but it wasn't too bad.
And then, hitting stuff with batons and shooting!
Part of what I'm cranky about is that the standards for 'blatantly gendered' aren't symmetrical -- while it's easy to think of activities that are maybe going to be more comfortable for men, but are arguably neutral (as Di is saying, and as a bunch of people have said above, plenty of women play golf, and plenty of women play golf better than plenty of men. It's still not surprising that a company golf outing is going to be for more comfortable and welcoming for men than for women.), almost anything that's going to be even slightly more comfortable for women is going to look blatant. Maybe cooking's okay, so long as no one's expecting men to make cake, which would clearly be hopelessly girly.
They can make cakes with motors and pyrotechnics, Ace of Cakes style, just to make it more manly!
Threads like this make me glad I work for the government, where there are strict rules against spending money on bullshit like golf outings.
I work for the government too, and yet the golf and the beers and the building relationships with the right people is still very valuable. I choose not to play along because (a) I don't want to, and (b) it still seems to be possible to get along by just doing your job well, even if that path has its own share of frustrations.
almost anything that's going to be even slightly more comfortable for women
Part of my qualm here is that, for me personally, the sorts of activities that would seem to fit under the "slightly more comfortable for women" would probably be just as uncomfortable for me... As activities go, in and of themselves, I'm probably more inclined toward typically masculine endeavors -- sports, drinks, spittin' and cussin'. But I'm often not comfortable, professionally, doing these things with the guys because the guys very often are painfully conscious that I am a woman and not supposed to be comfortable with such things. If I had a fucking dollar for every male lawyer who felt compelled to apologize for cursing in my presence... dude, I get it, I'm a girl. Can we move on now?
Cooking is probably good, though. In the world of amateurs, at least, that's pretty ungendered.
Maybe there should just be a spittin' and cussin' group.
plenty of women play golf better than plenty of men
I have never swung a golf club in my life, aside from the random putt-putt outing in my childhood. Also, I don't really enjoy standing around in the sun. If my career advancement depended on golf, it would be most unfortunate.
But there's still that ridiculous gender split on the matter of fartin'.
Just to make sure I'm following -- the problem is that the golf outing is male-dominated, not that golf is traditionally thought of as a masculine activity?
I hadn't specifically intended that reading. One assumes that the company golf outings involve performances of masculinity -- that's the problem with them -- and they're therefore male-dominated. I'm not sure I'm then agreeing with your formulation above; all I'd wanted with my "male-dominated," "female-dominated" phrasing was to get away from any essentialist-sounding understanding of the masculine and the feminine.
The spittin' and cussin' group will not abide fartin'.
Fine. The fartin' and hollerin' group will have their inaugural outing next Friday after work.
What 147 said. Golf can go fuck itself sideways with a putter.
To 141: what 144 said. I'm often not very interested in what are traditionally girly things either.
More specifically, quoting 141: Part of what I'm cranky about is that the standards for 'blatantly gendered' aren't symmetrical [...] almost anything that's going to be even slightly more comfortable for women is going to look blatant.
I just disagree, I guess. I know what the masculine activities are, and they're screamingly obvious and disinvite participation by women; I know what the feminine activities are, likewise.
I get your general point, that masculine activities are proffered as just plain human activities. ("He" still stands as generic pronoun.) Times are changing? And, if anything, we might try to point that out to corporate management, to these diversity directors I hear about.
I'd say that any interest I express in the major American team sports is ~10% authentic/endogenous, ~90% a consequence of a desire to fit in and talk about the things that other people seem to like to talk about. That is, baseball, football, golf, etc. can genuinely appeal to me, but really only to a limited extent and for brief periods of time. I get bored with it all pretty quickly, and the desire to memorize stats, read sports columnists, and most of all, participate in fucking fantasy leagues, is pretty much foreign to me. It's been this way since the early days of elementary school (maybe it started sometime after I realized I couldn't even hit the ball in tee ball properly) and I recall ca. 4th grade thinking I should do things like subscribe to Sports Illustrated for Kids and ask my mom to buy me shirts bearing the logos of basketball teams—not because I cared about the content of the magazine or the performance of the team, but pretty much expressly because I wanted to fit in with my peers.
So on the one hand, my reaction to this all is to say that it's, ahem, par for the course, and to welcome to my world any women who wouldn't approach a "male activity" with much zeal. I haven't felt particularly at ease around exemplars of my gender for a good chunk of my life, and I've learned to accept that the sort of performance I put on when I, say, run into my very dudelike neighbors in the hall (suddenly I find things like "Hey man what's up?" coming out of my mouth with atypically dudelike prosody) is just useful social grease that I sometimes have to apply. OTOH, naturally I can imagine that my physical appearance and years of practice make it easier for me to pull off this act successfully, to the extent that I do. Furthermore, as I am perhaps not the very model of a socially connected, well-adjusted man, maybe I should be more supportive of efforts to change the system than encouraging women to learn the male act.
In conclusion, yeah, cooking classes for everyone.
Golf isn't a team sport.
Golf is the war of all against all.
And in my experience, "regular guys" are much better at closing their <i> tags. If I were more manly, I would have limited the italics to Sports Illustrated for Kids.
There are a couple of things going on here. One is that the Unfoggedtariat is not, in general, a schmooze-friendly bunch, which means that many of us wish that schmoozing were less important to professional success (with the usual "yes, we're social primates" caveats). The other is that because schmoozing is often important for professional success, it's a problem that the sorts of schmoozing that go on are often male-oriented. Just because we have so many girly men around here who don't like golf either doesn't refute that (not that anyone's suggesting otherwise). Nor does the fact that some women thrive in boys' club environments.
maybe I should be more supportive of efforts to change the system than encouraging women to learn the male act.
Yay, Otto! I speak against encouraging women to learn the female act, as well.
157 is a good summary. It's natural to consider one's personal experiences and feelings when thinking about these situations, but it is important to remember that they do not, by themselves, refute the existence of the more widely relevant problem. However, one sometimes gets tired of one's perspective being deemed less relevant due to its outlier status, and so my hope would be, a la parsimon somewhere above, to find a workplace where it felt like there was less of a battle of the sexes going on, or at least where there was a sizable group of dissenters.
One is that the Unfoggedtariat is not, in general, a schmooze-friendly bunch
Really? I was only commenting here because I thought it was a way to get ahead.
The women where I work organized a Super Bowl Party. I didn't go.
160: Your university's career development center must give out some very strange advice.
160: Heh. There are commenters, and there are commenters. Some do network via this place. Some perform gender roles in doing it, some don't. It's really complicated!
I've been thinking that if I start sucking up to Heebie more she might give me a raise at the next round of performance reviews.
The women where I work organized a Super Bowl Party. I didn't go.
A grad student household I knew held a Super Bowl party once that I went to, and at some point someone just flatly asked me why I was there, because no one thought I was into that kind of thing. I had no answer: I don't know why I'm here, just because I know all you guys, I guess, and a couple of people mentioned it to me; it's kind of dumb, isn't it?
Golf is the war of all against all.
If this were true, there would be a much bigger fatality count. Three-foot titanium clubs are no joke.
154: Yessand, or maybe yessbut, look; as I read this, you have never liked performing Guy but you've learned to do it automatically in some circumstances because the payoff is good enough (don't do this and you get a nasty shock). If you're female in a sexist environment, though, you're a facing unpredictable conditioning; sometimes you get a shock for not performing Guy, and sometimes for performing Guy. You don't actually get to avoid the question just because you're female, because sexist environments do not actually give women a bye other than leaving. Therefore, 157, and also 'patriarchy hurts men too'.
I expect race and religious discrimination have some of the same pairings; given that it sucks to have to pass, it sucks even worse to need to pass and not be able to.
someone just flatly asked me why I was there, because no one thought I was into that kind of thing.
This works really nicely as an illustration of 167 -- that's, at least sometimes, the implicit question to a woman trying to schmooze at a golf outing if she's not obviously an expert golfer.
That probably also illustrates why I would tend not to show up to either the Super Bowl Party or the golf outing, even if I thought I might enjoy it -- if someone actually flatly asked me that question, I would have a helluva time not bursting into tears. Even if they didn't, I'd likely spend most of my time convinced they were silently thinking it anyway. I really need a career more suited to my utter lack of social skills...
141
... almost anything that's going to be even slightly more comfortable for women is going to look blatant. ...
Bridge?
I thought you also had to be old to play bridge.
138
... the stupid condescending bullshit about hitting from the ladies' tees, etc. (I'm by no means great or anything, and golf rarely, but I am always irritate by the stupidity of a ladies' tee 10 yards closer up on a 400 yard hole. ...
So your complaint is the ladies tees aren't far enough forward to actually allow women and men to compete on equal terms?
167: Yes, I included the bit about my "physical appearance and years of practice" making this easier for me to pull off ("than it would be for a woman" was left off) to indicate that I understood that I still had advantages even if the standard guy act was a bit foreign to me. Your points about the unpredictable conditioning faced by women in these environments are good.
171
I thought you also had to be old to play bridge.
It isn't actually a requirement.
173: I should think much of the random conditioning and the pointlessness of the required performances comes from one cause, but I'm having trouble stating it. Something like, the declared rules of the game aren't ever the real rules of the game, partly because everyone with a temporary advantage is likely to start leaning on the rules. ('Masculine' and 'American' and 'middle-class' standards have sure all changed a bit in the last hundred years.)
Also, me, I'm not especially good at social games even when I have no other handicap to deal with, so why should I expect to be good when I'm in the outgroup?
174: My sisters know how to play bridge. One of them used to play with friends in high school. I played quite a bit of spades and hearts, so I could probably become semi-competent in a few evenings.
I'm amused by the suggestion that cooking classes are non-gendered. Maybe in pussy-whipped swipple-weenie land they are. Out here in Real America cooking is a female activity unless it's outdoor barbeque, in which case men do the grilling and women make the salad.
169: I really need a career more suited to my utter lack of social skills...
This is actually a genuine consideration for me. I've had a number of opportunities to switch into doing things that are much more lucrative than my current job (by up to 50%), but declined because they would involve excessive fakery on my part in order to get along, by which I mean stupid shit like pretending to give a damn about sports. I can't count the number of times someone has asked me something along the lines of "What'd you think of the game?" to which I have to ask "what game?" only to be told that the SuperBowl was yesterday or some equivalent thing for Basketball, Baseball, or whatever. Any career in which pretending not to have contempt for masculinity as performance is important is pretty much closed to me on the grounds that I'd eventually snap and go on a killing spree.
I'd eventually snap and go on a killing spree.
Greatest spectator sport of all. So what'd you think of the rampage, togolosh?
on the grounds that I'd eventually snap and go on a killing spree.
Thus confirming once and for all that you can perform masculinity.
I come to Unfogged to perform the language of love.
180: I'd beat them to death with my cock. It's not performance, baby, it's the real thing.
168: This works really nicely as an illustration of 167 -- that's, at least sometimes, the implicit question to a woman trying to schmooze at a golf outing if she's not obviously an expert golfer.
Oh, I should maybe clarify that the grad student household Super Bowl party was not all men at all. Probably 40-60 women. A lot of the women were into the sport. I was mostly hovering around the potluck table, around the edges, totally not interested in the sport. It was a dumb thing to have done, and happened only because several people enthusiastically invited me. In any case, the event itself wasn't particularly gendered.
141: almost anything that's going to be even slightly more comfortable for women is going to look blatant
Are things really this stark out there? I'm thinking back now about the events put on for us by the private biomedical foundation that funds our work. The first two years or so I was in the lab they sponsored a day at a baseball game. As we've discussed, you could fairly view this as being more appealing to men than to women. (Acknowledging that I am a guy, and hence may have been unaware that some women were made uncomfortable by, I don't feel like gender was a big deal here. The lab has been about roughly even male-female throughout my tenure, I *think* there was reasonable attendance from both genders, the foreign postdocs were all confused about what was going on, there were two real baseball fans in the lab, one male, one female.)
Subsequent events: 1. Renting out the Exploratorium (local science museum) for an evening, serving dinner and drinks. 2. Taking people out to Angel Island and letting them hike around, serving picnic lunch. 3. Renting out a tiki bar at a hotel, serving dinner and drinks.
So I've already granted that the baseball game may have been "more male". Those other three events, meanwhile, seem plenty gender neutral *and* don't "look blatant." Is my sense off here?
I'm not denying that there are cases where there could be real problems of gender/work-related socialization. I'm just surprised that it's all as hopeless as LB's statement makes it sound. (The end of this comment may not be quite right as I am now on the phone with parents.)
I started a grad school softball league with a guy in my program. We got a lot of people interested--men, women, competitive players, first-timers--but we eventually had to stop advertising on our department listserv because my friend kept getting hateful emails from some guy explaining that "competition is heteronormative" and therefore inappropriate for school-related activity.
I have a little thing I do now whenever I encounter people like this. Quietly, in my own mind, I sigh, "Eh, dude, I wouldn't worry about it." Jesus Christ.
177: Any career in which pretending not to have contempt for masculinity as performance is important is pretty much closed to me on the grounds that I'd eventually snap and go on a killing spree.
Yeah. Substituting "femininity" for masculinity.
Togolosh obviously has thirty goddamned dicks, or something.
185: Oh, neutral socialization type activities are possible, and the ones you describe sound pretty good. What I meant to say is that non-neutral activities that are slanted toward the feminine, in the same way that an outing to a sports bar is slanted to the masculine, are going to appear blatantly inappropriate for men to the point that no one would suggest them as neutral.
185: All of this can vary a lot by office culture, and if your lab already has close to gender parity, chances are the events are also less like a frathaus.
188: Ah, understood.
And now that I've exceeded my earnest blog comment quota for the month, it's time to go for a run.
188: What I meant to say is that non-neutral activities that are slanted toward the feminine, in the same way that an outing to a sports bar is slanted to the masculine, are going to appear blatantly inappropriate for men to the point that no one would suggest them as neutral.
Yeah, it really sucks that cooking is considered feminine. See 177.1.
Yeah, it really sucks that cooking is considered feminine. See 177.1
I don't agree with togolosh that cooking classes are going to present as that feminine.
"competition is heteronormative"
Somebody's never been to a gay dance club.
Any career in which pretending not to have contempt for masculinity as performance is important is pretty much closed to me on the grounds that I'd eventually snap and go on a killing spree.
Yeha, I kind of get this. I have no issues with some of the ways in which things code 'masculine' and am quite happy to talk about sport or whatever. At least in part because, as a spectator, I genuinely like football (soccer) and other sports. So, purely at the personal level, it doesn't feel like a performance.
But there are certain aspects of it that I just can't be doing with, and which I'll actively avoid or be made genuinely angry by. So there's a certain kind of towel-snapping male competitiveness that I can't be arsed with, and the playing out of various kabuki dominance games, too.*
Those games can play themselves out in so many ways, beginning with things as basic as pricks who give out hand-crushing handshakes and working on up. A company I used to work at used to play regular five-a-side football, and while some just had fun there were always a couple of adult men who should have known better using this whole thing as a way of reinforcing their own self-perceived status as 'big men'. I think an awful lot of men genuinely don't care about the constant positioning to be 'big men', but those who do basically spoil it for the rest of us.
I always feel like saying, "Look, instead of this elaborate ritual in which you try to establish how dominant you are while avoiding actual violence, why don't we actually just fight?".
* I have worked with women who were heavily invested in these kinds of dominance/status related types of competition, but I don't think anyone would dispute that it generally codes masculine.
Just because we have so many girly men around here who don't like golf
Mark Twain was a girly man?
I'd say that any interest I express in the major American team sports is ~10% authentic/endogenous, ~90% a consequence of a desire to fit in and talk about the things that other people seem to like to talk about.
Me too. I sort of follow cricket, because it's incredibly complex and structured and makes baseball look like a statistics-poor wasteland. Which appeals to the nerd in me. But soccer and the rest - you can keep them. Yet I always make sure I know enough about the weekend's results to sound intelligent on Monday morning.
I think an awful lot of men genuinely don't care about the constant positioning to be 'big men', but those who do basically spoil it for the rest of us.
God, that's so true.
I am still quietly amazed by the idea that golf, of all things, is held up as the model of a testosterone-soaked, hairy-chested, alpha-male, woman-free sport. It's a sport you play while wearing a Pringle sweater FFS. It may be more manly than knitting, but not by much.
I could understand it if this was a law firm that had periodic games of seven-a-side rugby or clay shooting or something, as ttaM says.
ajay, perhaps it's different in the US, but in the UK it used to be completely standard for golf clubs to have full membership for men, and "ladies membership" - cheaper, but with restricted use of the greens and the clubhouse - for women.
Things are different again in Scotland, where I think every city and a lot of towns have public greens where you can play at a very low cost, but in England/Wales playing golf costs several hundred a year in club membership, before you start buying the clubs, etc.
The more expensive an activity is to take part in, the less likely it is that women will have the same access to it as men do; and golf clubs used to actively discourage women having the same access as men by ensuring that women weren't allowed on the courses at evenings or weekends.
re: 198
Yeah, there was a couple of public access courses not that far from where I grew up, and loads of the kids used to just dig a little hole on the football park and whack a ball up and down it. It has less class connotations than down south. It's still not completely without them, though, there are very posh/exclusive clubs.
Looking at a map I'm struck by just how many golf courses there were locally. Easily half a dozen or more within a 2 mile radius or so. One of the local authority courses is free for the unemployed.
197: I am still quietly amazed by the idea that golf, of all things, is held up as the model of a testosterone-soaked, hairy-chested, alpha-male, woman-free sport.
On the veldt, plaid was the ultimate signal of masculine dominance.
I always feel like saying, "Look, instead of this elaborate ritual in which you try to establish how dominant you are while avoiding actual violence, why don't we actually just fight?".
Ayup. But then, you'd wind up fighting all the time; bad for the knees.
188: 185: Oh, neutral socialization type activities are possible, and the ones you describe sound pretty good. What I meant to say is that non-neutral activities that are slanted toward the feminine, in the same way that an outing to a sports bar is slanted to the masculine, are going to appear blatantly inappropriate for men to the point that no one would suggest them as neutral.
I shoulda just designated you my comment lawyer for the weekend since you have said everything I would have said. (Here and at EOTW.)
Anyways, back to Otto, as near as *I* can tell, golf and suchlike are neutral, non-sexist outings, according to old white guys. Any other activity amounts to girly discrimination. Yet 'everyone' (white persons of the male persuasion) would like to maintain current traditions.
This really offends my sense of masculinity; I would think the model to emulate would be 'One Ranger, one riot'. A woman just trying to get ahead in a male-dominated office is surely a better exemplar of that model than some old white dude whining about knitting. That is aside from the fact that it annoys me immensely when 'those dudes over there' shit on my friends.
max
['The performance of Becks' comapny in this regard has been wildly unimpressive.']
There is at least one firm in London where it is de facto impossible to make partner unless you're in 21 SAS. Now that's exclusionary...
And thanks to Jes for making the club-access point, which I hadn't thought of.
202: It's one of those things that growing up in Scotland, and then working/living in England, does make you aware of. I agree with whoever it was said golf was a good walk spoiled, but my brother bought / was bought two or three clubs while he was still at high school, and used to use the local authority course with a couple of friends. It required a bit of financial investment, but it was on a level he could afford without parental assistance. In England, I had co-workers for whom joining the right golf club was clearly a status symbol/networking investment - it was expensive, there were waiting lists. (Though I presume they did actually enjoy golf, at least I hope so... it would have been rather sad otherwise.)
As ttaM says, in Scotland there's no particular class status attached to playing golf - and a lot of very old civic golf courses.
Staying with friends in Arizona, I noticed playing golf is a status symbol another way: in a desert, you can afford to belong to a club that can keep golfing greens green.
203: Most places I've been, golf is a fairly cheap hobby with plenty of blue collar and child players. There are places where you can play nine holes for less than 30 bucks. The equipment can be purchased cheaply, especially if you buy used. It's certainly much cheaper than fishing or hunting.
203.last: I think the modern fetishization of golf is rooted in both Freudian and control issues (including control of the natural environment). Not completely gendered, but the perfect sport for dominators of society and nature. Fuck other responsibilities, fuck the environment, fuck you; I'm going golfing.
205: Electric golf carts are almost certainly the most widely available zero-emission vehicles.
Of course, in Scotland, where there isn't any shortage of rain, keeping the things green is easy, and not an environmental problem.
207: Yes, 205 is fairly obviously written from the perspective of someone living in a rather drier (and angrier) area...
207: The modern fetishistic deathsport golf culture is very different than Scotland, which merely serves as a quaint noble creation myth that is used to ennoble the whole nihilistic enterprise.
The modern fetishistic deathsport golf culture
Mad Max II: Beyond The Royal And Ancient
Post-apocalyptic Fife. That'd be a scary environment.
210: The actual deaths take place thousands of miles away from the actual golf courses. No blood for birdies!
(There is a nice little game called golf, that originated in Scotland and per MH is played and enjoyed by many participants, middle and working class around the world. It is only tangentially related to the Industrialized UMC Golf.)
198
ajay, perhaps it's different in the US, but in the UK it used to be completely standard for golf clubs to have full membership for men, and "ladies membership" - cheaper, but with restricted use of the greens and the clubhouse - for women.
These memberships were common in the US as well. They were aimed at housewives who could use the course while the men were at work.
197
I am still quietly amazed by the idea that golf, of all things, is held up as the model of a testosterone-soaked, hairy-chested, alpha-male, woman-free sport.
I don't think golf is an alpha-male thing in the hairy-chested, on-the-veldt sense. However, it's pretty much definitely an alpha-male thing in the corporate boardroom sense.
Post-apocalyptic Fife. That'd be a scary environment.
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, pal.
The Country Club in Brookline (the first of its kind) has a lot of people who aren't into golf, but they also have tennis and a pool. I don't know whether the cricket club which has a variety of types of tennis courts and pools is slightly less snooty. I can imagine that there are members who don't much like golf.
In fact, I know someone who maintained her membership in that club whose family had always belonged even though she was much more active in the city clubs and the beach club on the North shore.
I interviewed with an organization tasked with locating and tracking nuclear materials. One of the things I was shown was a radiation map of $area, which showed big bright spots on all the golf courses, due to the fact that they are heavily fertilized with potassium containing fertilizers, and potassium has a mildly radioactive isotope, so the greens glow brightly with gamma rays. Also cool was a radiation survey map of $facility with the granite architectural elements showing up nice and bright due to the low levels of uranium in the stone.
I suspect that golf's popularity as a businessman's sport has something to do with it being the kind of sport one can do well as one ages.
220: There's also plenty of time to talk/network/schmooze while playing it. And while scores are kept, one person winning doesn't mean the others playing have been physically harmed or dominated by the winner.
220, 221: Good points, but both presume a level of not sucking that I was never able to achieve.
Good points, though I'm not sure that losing at businessman golf doesn't mean you have been pwned by the winner; certainly not in Japan.
Surely sucking at golf would allow even more networking time? Yes, it takes you eighteen hours to get round, but all that's face time!
223: I can say from personal experience that those who know what they are doing tend to get pissed at the guy who takes 7 shots to get on the green, averages a half-dozen putts per hole and spends about an hour per 9 holes looking for his ball in the rough. On the plus side, I think that people golfing with me were safer than, say, someone at the next hole over.
221: Ooh, that's good. Golf isn't played against the other person as much as it is played alongside the other person.
First person to draft an article on golf and being-with-others for the Harvard Business Review gets a shiny nickel!
Yes, it takes you eighteen hours to get round, but all that's face time!
I'd suspect it works the other way round. Being actually bad at it, as against passable, is a class signal of sorts. I don't know if it's worse than not going at all, but it can't help.
Laugh it off. "As a young man, I simply had my servants play golf for me."
I'd bet that I could become an 8-handicap golfer with greater ease that I could fool anybody who grew-up with servants into thinking that I had.
Golf seems to satisfy a competitive spending and equipment fetish for lots of men. I caddied for a couple of summers growing up, my mom's employer belonged to a private course and got me in. A minority of men clearly loved playing. The others spent a lot of time "joking" "hilariously" with each other, and taught me something I had never ever suspected, that money and age do not buy happiness or good sense. After working there, Caddyshack seemed more like tragedy than comedy.
Also, a golf club is a shitty weapon, too slow to deploy. I bet the other kid still limps.
I always feel like saying, "Look, instead of this elaborate ritual in which you try to establish how dominant you are while avoiding actual violence, why don't we actually just fight?".
I always feel like this too, which is an even bigger gap between my girly presentation and anger at dudes who assume that I'll be submissive to the aura of a big man.
223: It's actually really anti-social to get into a golf game with players who are very much better or worse than you are.
(In fact, one of the "arguments" for not letting women use the golf course at times most convenient for the men, is that obviously the men will be so much better at it than the women, that it would be a source of social embarrassment and inconvenience to both all-male groups of golfers and all-female groups of golfers, waiting for the ladies to play through.)
229: Yep.
I could more easily re-learn how to knit.
anger at dudes who assume that I'll be submissive to the aura of a big man.
Maybe if you started carrying around a barbell they'd be less likely to mess with you.
I don't understand why they'd need to see that before they'd use their manners and stop trying to act all dominant.
YOU JANE! JANE! NOT TRY TO BE TARZAN!
My petty, bitchy Manhattan grandmother once got into a full-fledged physical fight with her sister-in-law back at the clubhouse after a couples' round of golf. I love that story to death. They were fighting about accusations of cheating about whose turn it was to putt.
a golf club is a shitty weapon
213 suggests otherwise.
213 suggests otherwise.
Does not. "killed with golf club" gives 45 hits, and many victims are animals rather than manly men. The other search includes "killed at golf club."
Your golf club is near-useless in close quarters, I say. Did Marlo ever use the one he carried around in season 4 for instance?
Your golf club is near-useless in close quarters
You're supposed to carry a knife in the other hand so they stay at proper clubbing distance.
"killed with golf club" gives 45 hits
Putting quotes around improper English will certainly narrow th results, yes. "killed with a golf club" gives 174 hits. And "killed * with a golf club" returns 10.4 million hits.
241: That's because we hate * almost as much as we hate mice, apo.
Miceterisks are the worst of all.
They leave tiny little punctuation-droppings in the flour.
I'd much prefer being coerced into something that is almost exercise than knitting or something, even if any networking make me groan
I realize that this thread is pretty much dead, but here's something that had been puzzling me for weeks. What did it mean, in the Senate Judiciary Committee's questionnaire, when they asked whether Sotomayor belonged to any groups that practiced invidious discrimination? She replied that the Belizean Grove practiced discrimination, perhaps, but not invidious discrimination as understood in the judicial code of conduct. (I think later the suggestion was raised that the club didn't actually exclude anyone for being a man.) 'Invidious' can either mean provoking envy or more generally, bad or ill-founded.
I assumed the relevant sense was the second, and wondered how we could tell. But I now realize it was the first and more definite sense of invidious. Groups that discriminate by only admitting members of a historically oppressed group aren't invidious, because they don't inspire envy among the excluded.