Word: womening
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...reporter supposedly once asked the legendary criminal Willie Sutton why he robbed banks. "Because that’s where the money is," the gangster replied. A similar answer could be given to anyone who questions why women continue to frequent the clubs that exclude them: that’s where the parties are. Final clubs have unfettered access to social space that simply doesn’t exist outside their walls. Telling women (or men) who are sick of segregation to just go somwhere else doesn’t cut it because there really isn’t anywhere else...
...injustices abound. At the most basic level, all-male final clubs distribute resources in strange and unfair ways. Membership comes with perks—mansions, dinners, alumni networks—none of which go to women. It is dubious to give men privileged access to all of these important benefits, and because of the dynamics of social space at Harvard, this inequity spawns many others...
...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...
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...