Why in the hell does Augusta Country Club have to admit women?

The BBQ Pit
1

What is the problem with a few men starting a club and only inviting men to join? This is a private organization that is funded by the members. Why do women have to be let in? For that matter, why the fuck do women want in?

Start your own damn golf club and don’t let men in, that’ll show 'em. The fact of the matter is, woman have clubs that men can’t join. But who the fuck cares? If you can’t get in a club because of your sex/race/nationality what have you, get over it. Go somewhere that you’re wanted.

It would be different if you are talking jobs here. But you’re not. You’re talking recreation. Get the fuck over it and gold somewhere else. Better yet, take up tennis.

2

That would be fine, if you could guarantee that no business was discussed between club members while at the club and that mere membership in the club in no way affected another member’s business decisions.

3

I have no problem, a private club for men sounds like a good idea to me.
There is some rulebook somewhere (or so I dream) that says you cannot exclude people on qualities they were born with cause it might hurt their feelings.
Enjoy your club, sounds like it is already going bad.
too bad every party needs a pooper!

4

Now entering the center ring… The Smooth-Talkin’ Ladies’ Man. Hope you wore the extra-absorbent panties today, girls.

5

Why do women want in? Because Augusta National is one of the finest and most beautiful golf courses in the world, and they would like to be able to enjoy its amenities without having to be invited by a male member.

Why does Augusta have to admit women? It doesn’t. But it may find that it can only retain the prestige it gets from hosting a Major golf tournament and being associated with the best PGA players and a collection of prominent sponsors by allowing women to become members.

A better question is what advantage does Augusta National gain by restricting its membership to men, other than preserving an archaic discriminatory tradition?

6

If you want women in a private club that only men can currently join, then you’d better open up every private club open only to women right now to men as well.

Either that or if women can have women-only clubs, men can have men-only clubs too.

They should be both allowed or neither allowed.

7

Psst: Because the “mens only” clubs are just fronts for where the make the animatronic women that take over our homes a-la Martha Stewart while the real women are killed. I read it in a true story!

Zette

8

why can’t private clubs just do as they will with their own money? As the spoiler pointed out, they will lose prestige by being so exclusive.
Maybe this is a trade (prestige for so many peni) they are willing to make.

9

It doesn’t have to admit anyone it doesn’t want to. However, it may become a financially unsound decision to continue along that route. Consumers vote with their wallets, after all, and bad publicity may not be worth it.

To FunLvnCriminal - if you’re so concerned about the rights of guys to golf without those yucky women around, start a course yourself! If you make money, you’re set.

10

Who the fuck would want to belong to a club that didn’t let women in? Some of us guys LIKE women.

11

Guys, we missed one. Whoever has the upstate region had better get moving before this becomes a problem.

12

Not FunLvnCriminal, apparently. Women don’t do a thing for him. :wink:

13

How about a link? Get it golf course- link?

FunLvnCriminal the old invisible hand of the marketplace will get ya’ every time.

14

Say, FLC, you need to explain your thesis a little further. What characteristic is about women that, in your view, makes them unsuitable for membership at Augusta? If there is no such characteristic, what, in your view, are the current members trying to get away from?

15

fun – I agree. They shouldn’t have admitted blacks, either. After all, being sexist and racist are just two sides of the same coin.

Oh, and while they’re at it, they shouldn’t have let Tiger Woods play. Otherwise, it’ll appear like they’re endorsing race-mixing.

Yankees shouldn’t be allowed to play there, either. That’s for winning the Civil War.

Or CBS announcers who call their bunkers “body bags” and suggest that they bikini waxed the greens.

In fact, they should restrict membership and admission to the tournament to anyone who looks just like them.

Private club, right?

(Note: the above rant should not be taken seriously. Just tell me why it’s fair for a club to restrict membership by sex, but not by race.)

16

pesch, it’s NOT fair. But they own it, they make the rules.

Frankly, how would you like it if I told you that I think it’s discriminatory that you don’t let me into your house? That’s not fair to you, is it? It’s your property. This is the same thing, more or less. These people have the right to exclude whomever they want as the owners of what is legally private property.

I don’t support that policy directly, but I support their right to decide whom they want in their club. I, personally, would admit whomever, but I have no desire to be elitist, either. They do, so as far as I’m concerned they can be as pretentious as they want to. They pay considerable sums for that right.

In any event, the point has been made that women have certain places that are off limits to men. Men should be entitled to have the same situation.

And in a similar vein, it really makes me upset that women can enter a men’s locker room after a game, but men are not permitted to enter womens’ locker rooms after their games. Can men not be trusted to be as professional as women? Apparently not.

[sub]I just know I’m gonna live to regret this…[/sub]

17

Well, in their own eyes, they gain the same thing from restricting their membership as they do for charing so much less than the “going rate” for the television rights to the Masters, they feel they get to retain control over their club.

As pesch pointed out, the Augusta National Golf Club banned golf announcer Gary McCord because they did not like the way he described the condition of their course. In their contract with CBS, it states they retain the right to approve or disapprove just about everything from the announcers who get to trod the hallowed ground to how many commercials can be shown each hour and which companies can by advertising on “their” broadcast.

As an aside, after being sacked, McCord wrote a column which congratulated the “Men of the Masters” for tossing him out. Nor was he the first announcer to be asked not to return, Jack Whitaker called the crowd on the 18th green “a mob” in 1966. CBS was told that he would not be welcome back the next year.

They do it because, to them, the ideals of “tradition” are all important and they’ve already demonstrated that they’re willing to sacrifice a great deal of money in order to carry it on. They do it, because in the foreseeable future, there’s no realistic chance that they’re going to be forced to change their ways. Their television money is so far below any other televised tournament that its nearly inconceivable that should CBS be suddenly overtaken by a rare display of idealism, no other network would bid on the rights. They are legally entitled to exclude women, if they so decide. It’s not a good decision in my mind, but it is a legal one. I’m not sanguine about the chances of a boycott of some sort actually having any major effect on their practices.

Also bear in mind that the PGATour has no control over the Masters tournament. In fact, until recently, they carried on a regular tour tournament the same dates as the Masters for everyone who didn’t make the field at Augusta.

18

Probly, but I won’t make you pay too heavily. :slight_smile:

The deal with locker rooms is pretty simple: men’s sports have had a long tradition of allowing sportswriters into their locker rooms. Women’s sports have had a long tradition of not letting sportswriters into their locker rooms, but rather coming out to an interview room.

When sportswriting stopped being an all-male profession, the mens’ sports had a choice of how to not discriminate between male and female reporters: either they could admit sportswriters of both genders into their locker rooms, or they could close their locker rooms to sportswriters, and go out to an interview room when presentable, as women athletes had always done. They chose the former.

Womens’ sports simply continued to close their locker rooms to reporters of both genders. Their sports, their choice.

19

OK, now the complicated one. I understood this one pretty well fifteen or twenty years ago when some DC-area clubs were being pressed to admit women; now it’s all pretty vague. (Maybe someone had better holler for a lawyer now, to make sense of the muddle I’m about to make of things. :))

Some ‘private clubs’ are genuinely that: the only reasons you’d be there are if you’re a member, or a guest of a member. (Or if you’re employed by the club, but that’s different.) Other ‘private clubs’ are actually businesses, hosting a variety of public and semi-public functions, making their facilities available to those who want to pay to use them for meetings, banquets, and other events.

Once you open your doors for business, you can’t discriminate by race, sex, creed, national origin, and all that good stuff. IIRC, and I’m hoping I do (where are you, Sua, Jodi, minty, Zappo, etc., etc.? Heeelllllpp!! ;)), if the business functions range far beyond functions that principally serve club members, then the club can’t discriminate with respect to whom they offer those services. And if the line’s sufficiently blurred between the business and the club, then the club itself winds up being regarded as part of the business for nondiscrimination purposes.

Those last two sentences are the part that I’m not sure about the exact logic. But this much is true: some DC-area men’s clubs in the 1970s and 80s, facing the predicament of whether to admit women, grappled with the question of whether to ‘go private’, that is, to run themselves strictly as a private gentlemens’ club, in order to retain their right to remain all-male.

Since we don’t yet have a link, we don’t know what’s actually going on at Augusta. We don’t know what they do that involves nonmembers, other than conducting their famous annual golf tournament. If they don’t cater business luncheons, banquets, etc. involving large numbers of nonmembers, then it’s strictly a moral issue, but they’ve got the right, AFAIK, to do as they please. But if they in fact do these things, then their legal footing may be much shakier than if they catered to members and a relative handful of guests for private occasions.

[sub]C’mon, all you folks who have ‘Esq.’ after your name on your business cards. Jump right in, like I did without the advantage of your expertise and specialized training! :D)[/sub]

20

Augusta shouldn’t have to admit anyone that the members don’t want in, regardless of the reason.

It’s good that the racist, elitist, misogynist morons want to flock together away from everyone else. It’s easier to keep an eye on the bastards that way.

Y’know, some of us actually grow up and get past that “Girls are icky” phase.