A spokesman for one of Harvard University’s most exclusive undergrad social clubs has come up with what may be the most ironic excuse possible for keeping the club an all-male enclave.
In the wake of a report blasting Harvard’s “final clubs,” as they’re known, for their “deeply misogynistic attitudes” and generally rapey atmosphere, the 225-year-old Porcellian Club released a statement saying that it would be a huge mistake for Harvard to force the club to admit women.
Because the men of the club might rape them.
In the statement, emailed to the Harvard Crimson, Charles M. Storey (class of 1982) claimed that the Porcellian Club club has a perfect record when it comes to rape, with “no allegation of sexual assault” ever leveled at the club. (He’s pretty sure.)
But maybe that’s just because there were no women in the club to rape.
Given our policies, we are mystified as to why the current administration feels that forcing our club to accept female members would reduce the incidence of sexual assault on campus, … Forcing single gender organizations to accept members of the opposite sex could potentially increase, not decrease the potential for sexual misconduct.
CHECKMATE, FEMINISTS!
@ Social Justice Atheist
Money? Family connections? Great grades but no respect for other people’s boundaries?
Nequam: Yep
#hameron
Echoing Axecalibur to say that Charles M. Storey is no undergrad: He’s from the class of 1982.
So far, my favorite exchange between commenters at The Harvard Crimson is this:
Don’t know much about Harvard. Although when I lived in Berkeley, California, I did have a blind date with a guy who had gone there. He seemed to pity me, presumably because I hadn’t gone to an Ivy League school. Also, although he had graduated maybe twenty years earlier, he could not shut up about Harvard. I told my friends that he seemed to have been scarred by the experience. . . .
#NotAllIvyLeaguers
@PolicyofMadness
Yes!
‘Cause we’re such red-blooded heterosexual men. If we’re not constrained by the fact that no women are present, we’re likely to do what comes naturally! Which is perfectly fine because we’re Masters of the Universe!
#RapistandTitanofIndustry
@Axecalibur
Eh, both myself and my sister have middle initials (in fact, we have full middle names that we rarely use) not to be pretentious, but because they are useful. We have culturally appropriate first names which anglos (or white people) have difficulty pronouncing. My mother’s logic was that, if we needed to, we use our very British middle names and reach acceptance that way.
A friend of mine went to Harvard Law. From what I recall, he disliked most of the people there and didn’t fit in all that well. And he’s a white upper middle class guy, he’s just not a douchebag about it. I can only imagine what it’s like for the less privileged people who manage to get in.
I don’t really care if they admit women or not, but if after two and a quarter centuries of existence that attitude and thinking it’s appropriate to say that is what eventually leads to the club being terminated (because really, why does it even exist if your prime reason for “no girls” is rape?)… yup, good job.
This line made my day, for some odd reason. (chuckles)
And yeah. What IS the ongoing raison d’être for these clubs, anyway? Clubs for clubs’ sake? Or do they use them for some deep and nefarious purpose such as, say, gentlemen discussing rape (which they may or may not have personally committed, chortle-chortle) amongst their gentlemanly selves, with no interfering ladies to poop the rapey-jokey party?
What DOES this Porcellian thing DO, anyway?
@WWTH
Some minority students at ivy leagues (I don’t recall which, but at least one mod has name dropped an ivy league) have set up a Tumblr to give the rest of us a window into their world. Not all of the quotes are from ivy league students, and some are even from professors, but you get the idea what it’s like to go to school with rich, entitled brats.
http://shitrichcollegekidssay.tumblr.com
@Victorious Parasol
True, but they should be expelled as others have said because they have clearly stated they are unable to control themselves. I don’t think that’s really true, though. I think they just wouldn’t want to. Or they just want an excuse to exclude women. (most likely answer)
@Rosie
Not all people who use their middle initials (or the whole name) are pretentious asses. But. If you use your middle initial, AND you’re a rich old white dude named Charles, AND you went to Harvard, AND you popped outta nowhere to defend the exclusivity of your special little gentleman’s club, AND you do so by invoking what is essentially an indirect threat of violence, I get to poke fun at your naming choice
But yeah, you right. He’d still be a despicable person, with or without the ‘M’.
You guys are all missing the obvious. No one can get raped at a college event because it’s private property.
And people tell me Harvard is some classy, cultured place!
Guess not.
No, see, men arent inherently rapists, its just that evil wimmen turn men into rapists by having feeemale bodies.
It never fails to astound me that they defend masculine culture by denigrating themselves to horny goats with no inhibitions. Says more about how they view things than they think.
Seriously though “we might become howling rapists, we’re like werewolves to the moons that are women”
I agree, the idea that men are walking gonads is old. I know several guys who have told me they felt weird that they don’t really want sex at all at that point in their life because there were other things more important to them.
Nobody should feel weird about that; being only transitorily interested or completely disinterested in sex is a normal slice of human existence. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything more.
As for these guys, yeah, they just want to keep their echo chamber echoing.
@ NickNameNick
“Classy” and “cultured” are both concepts that have been made up solely for the purpose of making oppression, theft, injustice, inequality, one set of people using power over others, etc. seem like admirable and virtuous things. Isn’t that precisely what Harvard stands for?
@Dust Bunny:
I was being sarcastic, though I probably should’ve been more obvious about that…
I’m not fond of either term for that reason, same goes for “civilized” – since it’s just used for nationalistic self-aggrandizement and to degrade everyone else of being their lesser. It’s a self-soothing excuse from those high up on the societal food-chain, to direct their own attention away from the pain they cause to everyone below as well as to convince those who don’t know better that their values are somehow superior.
While it may not always be the case, not to mention a gross generalization, it seems like – many times – the more money someone has is proportional to their lack of empathy or ethics. I believe there was a study that came to that conclusion as well…
It reminds me of how, in Game of Thrones, everyone brings up “honor” in order to rationalize absolutely treacherous or avaricious behavior. It’s why Tyrion’s awareness of that bullshit and striving to actually be ethical in an utterly unethical environment makes it interesting to watch for me.
Apart from the problematic nature of “at least no one was raped in our club”, the whole notion falls apart when one considers that presumably some members of the Porcellian have been rapists in the past, and the fact that none of them carried out their crimes on boys’ club property doesn’t change that. Segregation is dehumanising itself, especially when it is something “extra special and exclusive” that’s been reserved for the privileged class.
The Porcellan Club, a men only club that appears to exist for pig-roasts. I wonder if they’re like the Piers Gaveston Society? British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has been accused of some rather peculiar pig related hi-jinks, there. ‘Pig-Boy, to his chums.
Of course he was definitely a member of that other hide-bound receptacle of male privilege, the Bullingdon Club. Nasty arrogant bunch.
Yale has the Skull & Bones, even Sunnydale U., had, Delta Zeta Kappa. All of them, male bonding & networking opportunities, tied together by mutually embarrassing, humiliating and potentially blackmailable, rituals?
Oh come on. It’s just some rather daft (old) boys who don’t want to play with girls. I won’t go into what games they might play with each other…
They could have gone with ”We want there to be male only clubs and female only clubs”. They could have even gone with ”We think girls are gross and smelly”. No, they went with ”we might rape them”.
All that money spent on Harvard and they can’t come up with a better reason?
When you’re a spoiled brat armed with the knowledge that society is not going to do anything to you, you tend to not polish your pr skills.
Porcellian Club. The name reminds me of David Cameron for some reason…
Aren’t there similar sorts of arguments for women-only organizations and spaces on campuses ie. men’s presence creating an unsafe space etc? I mean this particular club seems like a hornet’s nest of nasty 18-20 year-old douchebros, but…