Word: maleness
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...male final clubs carve out a corner of the social world that revolves around the preferences of men, and men alone. Men plan the parties. Men decide who gets in and who does not. Women are left to suffer the consequences...
...issue on the record, which in and of itself speaks volumes). As a result, from the day they arrive, female freshmen are faced with the fact that their place in a certain part of Harvard’s social hierarchy will depend on how they are evaluated by their male classmates. "You can literally be excluded from the social scene based on how men perceive you your freshman year," says one female senior. As an unavoidable consequence, "If you’re a pretty girl, you get so much further than someone who is not attractive...
This imbalance of control creates a perverse need for women to curry favor with the men who make the lists. "As a girl, you feel all this social anxiety," another female senior says. "You constantly need to manage your relationships with your male friends in clubs to make sure you don’t get left by the wayside." This dependence consistently and systematically puts women into situations they should never have to experience. A female student explains that the need to remain on final club lists "has sustained certain friendships with guys who are constantly hosting me, who otherwise...
Even the most sought-after girls, who never struggle to gain admission to exclusive parties, get, as Schuyler aptly put it, "second-class citizenship" in the final club nation. A world of male hosts and female guests creates a fundamental asymmetry in gender relations. Women can’t return the hospitality that is constantly bestowed upon them. Since they don’t have social space of their own to give or withhold, they’re simply expected to, as one female student put it, "smile and look pretty...
...anachronistic system perpetuates an old-fashioned and destructive conception of gender at Harvard. Men are the providers—they pay for the clubs, assume the liability for the parties, plan and make decisions. Women, meanwhile, are passive recipients of this largesse, always subject to the whims of their male classmates...