Take This Club and Shove It

On Monday it was announced that, for the first time ever, two women were invited to join the exclusive all male golf club known as Augusta National.

Located in the state of Georgia, Augusta National is a private golf club that was opened for rich white dudes in 1933. In 1990 they decided to break up the 'vanilla sausage fest' by allowing black male members into the club. Despite pressure from woman's advocacy groups in the early 2000s, Augusta National maintained it's all male status until....two days ago.  "Hooraay! Hooray!" said someone who is not me. Pardon my lack of enthusiasm, but I find this long overdue membership extension neither exciting nor inspiring. Congratulations Augusta National, 2 out of your 300 members have vaginas. That's a whopping .67 % of your total membership. How progressive!

The thing that irritates me the most about Augusta National is not its historical policy of exclusion, but rather its dichotomous position in the public/private debate.  To me a private club, like Augusta, should be allowed to include or exclude whomever it wants as long as no laws are broken.  I value the idea of privacy as a right. The problem for me is that Augusta National is a so called "private" club that hosts a very public (and very popular) golf tournament called The Masters. The Masters tournament is sponsored by publicly traded companies which make money by selling products to the entire population in a public marketplace. By hosting The Masters, Augusta National made a choice to step into the public arena, and as such, should have forfeited its right to exclusion on the basis of privacy a long time ago.


So, congratulations to Condi Rice and Darla Moore on your token acceptance to the all boys club. I wish you the best as you play golf and hang with the fellas.  Let me know when they get the tampon machine installed in the ladies room. Oh wait.....there is no ladies room!

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