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!
Kevin
I’m not at my best today, so apologies for being blunt: while I appreciate that you aimed to be humorous, gay is not an insult, misogynist =!= closet gay and using gay/closeted in this way is insulting – to gay people.
The Porcellians/Bullingdonians/Bonesmen/Piers Gavestonians of this world (and no I can’t be bothered to check their preferred adjectival forms) are a bunch of very harmful, very rich and often very powerful parasites on the whole (yeah, including Call-Me-Dave). Whether any of them happen to be gay is kind of beside the point; what’s despicable about them is the fact that they don’t give a shit about consent, not who they might or might not desire.
I would have liked to express myself in a lighter vein but I don’t word good today, sorry.
Networking. Getting to know people who know people who can put you in touch with people who can provide you with opportunities to succeed. Naturally they want to exclude women.
Clubs like Porcellian and Skull & Bones grease the skids for people who have already been given a head start in life. Rumor has it that if a Porcellian member hasn’t made their first million by the age of 40, the club simply gives it to them.
Of course one can become a Supreme Court justice without being tapped for a final club at an Ivy League school, but it’s a lot easier when there’s a ready-made network and access to whatever secret resources a club of unimaginably wealthy members might have built up in 225 years. It isn’t just a bunch of “daft old boys” sitting around in a treehouse. It’s an institution designed to tilt an already tilted playing field even further, and perpetuate the cycle of privilege for the select few.
Unfortunately, Porcellian isn’t officially part of Harvard, so the University has zero jurisdiction over it. They aren’t about to kick out future wealthy alumni and piss off their families. They’re also not about to jeopardize the Hallowed Social Traditions that give Harvard its cachet. If that means some women and minorities get thrown under the bus and have to work extra hard in life to catch up to the old boys, “oh well”. It’s pretty infuriating, and it’s one of the reasons why Harvard is so overrated.
There’s a difference between proposing a women-only organisation on the grounds that women need a safe space because of men’s sexual aggression and men wanting to keep their men only organisation with a claim that its members can’t control their own sexual aggression.
Similar, but different. One of these arguments is not like the other.
Bryce,
Buttercup described the purpose of that club pretty well. Are there any women only clubs that do this same thing?
I’m not really fond of any networks of powerful, rich people furthering their own wealth and power at the expense of others, but if it’s going to exist, it should be detrimental or it’s just perpetuating male privilege.
This kind of power doesn’t come out of Curves gym.
This has to be one of the more willfully ignorant false equivalencies out there. It’s the kind of thing a blatant troll would say.
You mean Bryce isn’t a blatant troll?
Too late to edit, but I just noticed my phone changed gender neutral to detrimental for some reason.
Maybe my phone is an MGTOW?
Well, no, Bryce, they’re not similar. Similar would be if the Porcellian club existed to give men who were victims of sexual assault by women a safe space; not if it exists to give men who are perpetrators of sexual assault a “safe space” not to rape women.
Yeah, the only safe space for those would be a desert island… I wouldn’t even have the poor snakes of Snake Island deal with such huge assholes.
I just read the Porcellian Club was originally called first the Pig Club because it started out as a dinner club whose first served meal was suckling pig. They should have kept that name.
Ugh. Honestly, this sort of news/goings-on makes me feel ill in a way that Rooshes and Elams do not. Roosh and Elam and the vast bulk of the misogynists out there are relatively powerless – they’re looking for something to blame for their failures in life (and we all have failures in life) and society comes ready-built with a convenient excuse. I hate it, but I understand it.
This, on the other hand. These are people with silver spoons in their mouths and horseshoes up their butts, and they represent the absolute pinnacle of entitled douchebaggery. These are people that conspire to fix our wages and our gas prices; they become our elected officials and petty, small-minded middle managers. Their success in spite of (no, because of) their empty-skulled misogyny, classism and racism inspires new generations of assholes to be as petty as they are.
They are the source from which society’s hate flows; the literal Patriarchy.
@Bryce,
I (and hopefully everyone else) will give you a mulligan on that one 🙂 I don’t think you can easily come up with any:
Do keep in mind that the original argument is that women shouldn’t be allowed into our club because we might rape them.
(Not that all sororities are good, and to be honest? I can imagine a drunk, aggressive sorority woman sexually abusing a man. But calling it apples to apples is tremendously misrepresentative)
Off topic, but I’ve been busy elsewhere and so may have missed the discussion:
Is anyone going to the London protest tomorrow? If so, is there a plan for us getting together for it?
You know men can rape men too? So by that logic we should shut them down entirely. You know, just to be safe.
There is a big difference in wanting a space where you won’t be raped and claiming you require a special space not to rape. They are saying that they are rapists awaiting any opportunity to rape. That is nothing remotely like wanting to be safe.
They belong behind bars if they assume any woman around them is in danger from them.
@PoM:
I just wanted to join the chorus thanking you for your post here. Wonderful. *returns to super-secret-ninja-cloak-mode*
They basically did, they just pretentioused it up a bit. (Porcellus is Latin for piglet.)
Aiming to go on the march tomorrow, yes. Will try to look out for the Momentum banners, probably, and will also be keeping an eye out for the “Over 50s for Corbyn” banner 🙂 because bluecat mentioned it a couple of days ago. But realistically I have not much idea where we’ll end up in the crowd – depends how easy it is to move around and whether we (hopefully) get there in good time.
I’ll see you (and hopefully bluecat) too. I’ll be the tall skinny dude.
EJ, argh, didn’t see that last night before going to bed. If you happen to catch this before leaving this morning, I’ll be wearing short grey hair for this (and every) occasion to go with a purple-grey-blue striped scarf; my OH has long black hair (jammy sod, I started going grey multiple decades ago and he still hasn’t).
Update: An hour in, I have found no opposablethumbs and no bluekat. We are also surrounded by police and not moving.
Everybody use the secret Katie whistle signal!
Update: We moved eventually. There were speeches. A good time was had by all. A Nigerian lesbian speaker whose name escapes me tore the roof off.
There were lots of anarchists there today. The Black Bloc showed up in a phalanx of masks and hoodies, and stood around being intimidating (it worked inasmuch as it scared the hell out of me) and there were numerous people with Antifa badges and banners.
All in all it was great. It was my partner’s first demo so I took delight in pointing out all the different groups which make up any good Left march, and spotting the thousand and one causes which the signs and banners advocated.
@ EJ
Well that’s police officers for you. 😉
@EJ
Was it Aderonke Apata?