Wednesday, April 07, 2010

While Tiger Plays at Masters Penis-Only Club, Martha Burke Gets Death Threats

People, or I should say some men, sure take their Penis Only clubs seriously. Martha Burke is getting death threats, again, for the crime of criticizing Augusta National's policy of discriminating against women.

Whenever a woman challenges the patriarchal status quo, she must be called out as a bitch:

After long-time members Logan and Barbara Van Sittert asked for the dining lounge of the Phoenix Country Club in Arizona to be opened to women in 2007, the club was vandalized with graffiti calling Van Sittert a “bitch” and a “whore.” She was 72 years old at the time.

Tiger Woods is taking full advantage of the sexist Masters Tournament, writes Lynn Hecht Schafran in a piece aptly titled, Tiger Re-Masters Sexist Sponsorships at Augusta:

As Tiger Woods returns to the golf spotlight at the Masters Tournament at the men-only Augusta National Golf Club this week, the irony of a man publicly humiliated for using women like Kleenex staging his comeback at a club where women can't even be second-class citizens is glaring. A great anonymous post to the Boston Golf Examiner read, "(How perfect that a) man who doesn't respect women has opted to restart his golf career at a golf course that does not respect women."

It could also be considered lamentable that Woods did not use this moment of supreme leverage -- the Masters would be nothing without him -- to end the discrimination. That's what Billie Jean King did when she won the U.S. Open in 1972 and her prize purse was $15,000 less her male counterpart's. King said she would not be back in '73 if the prize money was not equalized, the promoters knew they needed her, and in 1973 the purses for men and women were identical.

But Woods lives so totally in his own bubble that asking him to think of doing something for someone else is laughable. He had the chance to take a stance on Augusta when the National Council of Women's Organizations started pressing the question at the 2002 Masters. He passed. . . In 2002, when Martha Burk, president of the National Council of Women's Organizations, began urging Augusta to end its sex discrimination, she met with derision from the club, but for the following two years corporations withdrew their sponsorship and the Masters was broadcast without commercials.
. . . read more . . .

Background: Burk Opens Her Augusta National Protest

"Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes.' They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes.'"
~Clare Boothe Luce