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Supreme Court says no women need apply to Golf Club. Mod warning post 119
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I thought this roundabout had stopped last night, and I was just getting over my dizziness from the last ride...ha ha.
We should all discuss this over a round of golf up at portmarnock golf club where all are welcome to play.
Now lets forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice-cream :pac:0 -
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That's a simple structure designed to keep the common riff raff from the working class out. But that's a whole other debate
You calling me riff raff...I'm being persecuted...persecuted I say.....lols.
Why would any woman seriously want to spend 12 grand to join Portmarnock golf club anyway??? I don't really see the point of the court case, why even bother.0 -
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But, this means you are back to the messy grey area you just said was 'very blurry' at the start of your post. You would have a situation where you allow segregated clubs, but if a certain threshold of activity is shared, then they must allow mixed membership. Do you think this position is consistent? Isnt it very grey and blurry, open to debate, and to exploitation?
So, moving away from sport - I mentioned womens book clubs in my original post. Given that men are allowed read, should men be allowed join such members clubs? Should men be allowed join all womens social clubs?
Or maybe book clubs should be allowed be segregated.
But, by your reasoning, what would happen if the book club started having a few social events, where both men and women were allowed? Would men then be allowed demand full membership?
What if there was a womens tennis club that occasionally allowed mixed doubles? What if it allowed mixed doubles every sunday? 3 times a week? At what point would it suddenly be forced to have mixed memership?
What if there was a womens social club, that allowed men at some of its events, but not all?
Doesn't this, which you seem to be advocating, get awfully grey?
I think there are two consistent reasonable positions here - one where private clubs are allowed choose whether they are segregated or not, and the extent to which they allow their non-preferred sex to join them - and another position which is that no club is allowed discriminate based on sex.
Anything else is very grey and blurry, and essentially asking the courts to decide how much of a segregated clubs activities have to be non segregated before it opens itself to a case demanding equal membership.
I don't see any other option - I think we either say 'private', 'never sexist' or 'case-by-case [verrry messy]'
Its a real can of worms, no matter which way you look at it!
What do other posters think?
fergalr, your first post earlier in this thread did address some interesting points. Sorry I skipped over much of it at the the time as I didn't have much time to read through it all and comprehend it. I see what you are saying.
It is either 'all' or 'nothing' regarding sports, social and recreational clubs, otherwise it is very messy.
You are right about some men perhaps getting offended by the idea of women wanting to work out in a 'safe' environment. While I understand that, I was giving reasons as to perhaps why places like Curves exist. I don't know or can't think of many other reasons other than the ones I gave. ie, the safety aspect, feeling more comfortable (akin to female only showers & toilets) also programmes and equipment that cater more to the female form. Traditionally gyms are seen as a male dominated domain, maybe it is a way of encouraging more women to take it up (hence the gaudy pinkness). I don't know of anything else. Perhaps a person who frequents female only gyms can shed some more light as to why they would be thier preference.
In regards to mixed team sports, do you think that would work? I do know there is a mixed touch rugby nearby and have heard it is great craic. As for allowing all sports let all genders participate, I don't know. Would is mean the olympics would just abolish male and female categories? Would lightweight men now fight middleweight women? Is this what you are suggesting
Womens bookclubs, as far as I know read books that females are more inclined to like. If a man so happens to like these types of books or vice versa, then I don't see why they should be excluded.0 -
Well, fair enough.Basically, I just don't see much wrong with a social group having their own rules for membership. That's my opinion. As I said, I don't think it's necessarily sexist.
Again, I don't necessarily see bright lines between social groups, and clubs, and organisations and companies. But I think I agree with your conclusion overall, for the reason that I think if the state was to try and regulate the membership rules of *all* of those entities, it'd be a big mess. I'm not sure about this conclusion though.
I'd like to see someone mount an argument saying that it makes sense for *everything* from schools, to social clubs, be forbidden to discriminate by sex - or see someone mount an argument saying that everything should be decided by the court on a case by case basis - and explore the consequences of both.When I said that I was female and not offended. Well I meant simply that. I am female. And was I offended when I read this in the news? No I wasn't. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't see how that's sexist.
Yes - you said:who cares if women cant join? I'm female and not offended.
What I was getting at is that obviously those two facts weren't just disconnected and floating free. They appear together in context. You could think there was an implication that being female was relevant to the statement that you weren't offended. And really, why should whether you are female or not matter? To assume that only the discriminated against group would be offended, or even more likely to be offended, could be construed as sexist.
But the reason I mentioned that is to show an example of being too picky about these things - conversation on these issues becomes a bit of a minefield when you take it too seriously. So I think its important to cut people slack in debates like this and try and separate their intentions in saying something, from the worse possible interpretations of what they might mean. (This is not directed at you in any way - just speaking generally).
As I said:Anyway this stuff can get subtle; there are fine likes about being too PC as well. (If you want to get very picky, your opening comment about being 'female and not offended' could be construed as a little sexist).
Ah, well this is a bit of a tangent; but I guess its something that comes up in discussions like this so maybe its worth saying something on.With regards to your comment saying that not all opinions should be deemed equally right.. well, define 'right.' Each person has their own truth and from that comes their opinions and what they deem to be acceptable.
I really believe some opinions can be more 'right' than others.
For example, if I had a disagreement with someone who thought a long run of 'Reds' on a roulette wheel meant there was more likely to be a 'Black' come up, that person might say 'Well, its my opinion, and I'm entitled to it'.
You might say that each of us has 'our own truth', as you put it, in that situation. I might have great difficulty trying to explain why I thought the other person was wrong in this case (and this sort of debate is all over the internet!). But the other person would still be wrong! It may be their opinion, which is fine - we have to respect that we have different opinions - but that doesnt mean we have to think that all the opinions are equally right!
If you need another example, discussions on creationism often come down to one party saying 'Well, this is my opinion'. And they may well be expressing an opinion that the earth is only some small number of years old. They may not be able to see any difference between their opinion and that of the scientist trying to convince them otherwise. But, again, this does not mean the two opinions are equal.
Similarly, in this debate, while there are different viewpoints put forward, and different opinions expressed - fair enough, its a discussion! - this does not mean, as I said, that "all opinions are entitled to be equally right."
I don't know - there may be someone out there reading who believes no woman should be entitled to express a viewpoint on this issue, because 'the fairer sex' are all, by virtue of being women, unable to reason about such political and legal matters. Sounds absurd to us? Plenty of things like this used to be said about women before universal suffrage, for example.
Or, someone might be serious when they post something about women only being able to work in the kitchen!
Anyway, if someone had opinions like that, they'd be wrong! Thats all I'm trying to say :-)
Good for you, tbh. I try and be the same, but I don't always succeed.I'm not really fussed either way re who agrees with me or doesn't.
Well - I didn't, and wouldn't, ever say that your opinion is less valuable than someone just because they didn't agree with you.My opinion is my opinion. And just because someone doesn't agree, it does not make my opinion less valuable than theirs.
Still, I think some opinions are more right than others. Sometimes that becomes clear when discussing things, but sometimes people continue to defend the obviously wrong opinions on the sole basis that they are their opinions, as if that muddies the waters enough to mean they don't have to accept the logic put to them.
That just isn't a valid form of argument, that's all I'm trying to say
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Hey, thanks very much, and thanks for your response. I'll try and answer some of the points you raised.fergalr, your first post earlier in this thread did address some interesting points. Sorry I skipped over much of it at the the time as I didn't have much time to read through it all and comprehend it. I see what you are saying.It is either 'all' or 'nothing' regarding sports, social and recreational clubs, otherwise it is very messy.
You are right about some men perhaps getting offended by the idea of women wanting to work out in a 'safe' environment. While I understand that, I was giving reasons as to perhaps why places like Curves exist. I don't know or can't think of many other reasons other than the ones I gave. ie, the safety aspect, feeling more comfortable (akin to female only showers & toilets) also programmes and equipment that cater more to the female form. Traditionally gyms are seen as a male dominated domain, maybe it is a way of encouraging more women to take it up (hence the gaudy pinkness). I don't know of anything else. Perhaps a person who frequents female only gyms can shed some more light as to why they would be thier preference.
As I see it, the argument runs thus:
I don't think that a womens only gym is a good idea.
In some ways, the reasons why women want it are irrelevant. The point is that the gym disallows a whole class of people from using it, due to the arbitrary beliefs of its members about that class of people. We generally agree in society that that sort of thing isn't on.
I mean, consider if we lived in a part of the world where, statistically, crime was more likely to be committed by black people rather than white people (for example, parts of USA). There are white people in these parts of the world who feel intimidated by black people. Would it be ok to open a whites-only gym? What if the existing gyms were mainly used by black people and white people felt nervous in them? What if white people had stopped using the gym because of this perception?
Or, another example - some people are very paranoid about muslim air travellers, post 9/11. And some people are very scared of flying already. So, would a non-muslim only airline be ok, to cater for people that felt intimidated thus?
I really think the answer to these questions is 'No'.
It really doesn't matter if people feel more comfortable in the absence of other people of class X. Discrimination against every member of that class, because you have some beliefs about the likelihoods of that class in general, is wrong. Even if those beliefs are well founded statistically.
In other words, even if you live somewhere where a black male is much more likely to commit crime than a white male, its not right to discriminate against every black male on that basis. It shouldn't be possible to open a whites only gym in Los Angeles, for example. It's just not fair, and its not right.
For a more concrete example, imagine I own a big company, and I produce stats showing that over the past 40 years in my company, men do significantly better on average, according to some objectively measured standard of performance (eg: widgets produced), than women. Maybe the men in general produce 5% more widgets on average, over their lifetime. Not every male worker is better than every female worker; just the average male is better than the average female.
Now, there's a recession on, and I have 20 jobs to fill. I know that I will get vastly more applications for these jobs than places. Is it OK to stick on the hiring notice 'Men Only'?
In this example, that is an efficient thing to do, because men in general did perform better in the past.
Or another example might be that if I have a job that requires physical labour - heavy lifting and so on. I want big strong people to do this job, and I'm going to hire the bigger, stronger candidates. Again, its a recession, and I'm going to have a whole load of candidates for not many jobs.
Statistically, it would be quite an efficient way to prune the CVs I get by just discarding all the ones with female names. Sure, there might be the occasional woman who is particularly big, and strong. But, even though she'll do a better job than the man I end up hiring instead, I have a lot of people to hire, and only so much hiring time, and on average, its more important to me to fill the jobs quickly, and reasonably well, than it is to me to find the absolute best person in every single case.
Can I just stick 'men only' on the job advertisement? Or is it ok to just discard the CVs with female names?
Personally, I think its really obvious that this is NOT ok to do. The belief here is that you just can't discriminate against individual people because they belong to a broad class like male/female, even if that has certain traits. Its not right to use those class traits to limit the opportunities of every individual that is in that class. The example above would just not be fair on the individual women that happened to be particularly big and strong.
Most people would probably agree with this sort of argument.
Which is exactly the same argument that shows its not reasonable to discriminate against all young male drivers, just because the class they belong to crashes more, statistically.
And its exactly the same argument that shows its not reasonable to discriminate against all male gym goers, just because women might feel intimidated sharing a gym, because some men are likely to be threatening, or leer, or whatever. Its tough if you feel intimidated by men in general - but that doesn't mean its ok to discriminate against each and every one of them, and stop them using your gym.
If you consider a slightly different situation, where maybe its not that women find the men threatening, but instead where they have some sort of moral objection to having men seeing them work out (maybe they have religious modesty concerns?) This doesn't hold either.
Consider a hard line muslim (or otherwise very conservative because of religion) business owner, who believes women shouldn't work outside the home. Should they be allowed refuse to hire women for their business purely on the grounds of sex, and religious belief about sex? Again, as a society, we tend to say 'No' there.
Its just wrong to discriminate based on sex/race/creed. Even in the special case where the discrimination is efficient, or grounded in some statistical reason, its still wrong. Even in the case where the discrimination stems from some sort of religious belief, or personal believe about modesty or whatever. If all our organisations, public and private, could discriminate on such grounds, we'd live in a pretty messed up place.
So really, quite why the women in Curves feel the need to work out in a female only gym is largely irrelevant. In much the same way that if someone in south africa opens up a whites only gym (or someone in south dublin operates a gym forbidding immigrants) - it really doesn't matter why they feel they've done so, its still wrong. I know this is quite a hard line of argument to take, and I'm not ascribing evil motives here - but its worth thinking about.
By all means, have a gym with specialist female gym equipment, and don't feel the need to have lots of gym equipment for males. But if a male wants to use your gym, its wrong to turn him away just on the basis of sex.
Now, all of this is different to the argument about whether the government should stop in and legislate that such discrimination be illegal in every case!
I think ideally the government wouldnt make any laws about this, and that people would be sensible enough to realise its wrong to discriminate on sex or race or whatever and just not do that. I dont like government involved in things when it doesnt have to be.
But clearly thats not the case in society at the moment. So the next question is whether, given that sex discrimination is wrong, the government should legislate to stop it in every institution, public and private. Thats a hard question to answer.In regards to mixed team sports, do you think that would work?
Thats a tough question too. The honest answer is that I think it probably would work, in the end, but I'm not sure.
We don't live in an ideal world. Separate from whether its wrong or right, people do feel the need for (for example) a womens only gym.
If the government was to ban discrimination on sex in sport, and the end result was a rapid decline in the already low female participation, it'd be a disaster.
That's the difference between trying to reason about whats right and whats wrong in an ideal, abstract sense, and trying to reason about what should and shouldn't be allowed in society - where the rubber meets the road, as it were.
I think ideally, it should work, if people were sensible about these things. And perhaps the only way to make people sensible is to legislate accordingly and hope sensible catches on. (Womens lib, slave trade abolition etc - a lot of people thought these were very bad things at the time, but are more enlightened now).
But the honest answer is, I don't know whether I think it would work or not. It'd be very hard to test for ahead of time too - its one of those things you can really only do all or nothing.
I have heard likewise.I do know there is a mixed touch rugby nearby and have heard it is great craic.
Its interesting to note though, that even in the rules of that game, discrimination based on sex exists! Women get more points for a score. Which might be fine in general, but I imagine if you are on an amateur team where the standard isn't very high (non elite levels) its maybe a bit tough on the guy on the team with a girl thats just as good as him (maybe he's just genetically a bit heavyset, and not as fast). She always gets passed the ball, because she gets more points - just because shes a girl! I don't really know much about the game though. Overall, I think it sounds good. I think theres good social benefits to having guys and girls do sport together - I think that'll act against unfair discrimination in other spheres such as business eventually too - but thats another tangent.
On a related note, I'd done a bit of adventure racing, which frequently requires mixed teams of 4 (or sometimes teams with at least one female). There's no distinction during the race between male and female - everyone pulls together. Because there are so many different disciplines and challenges, mental and physical, everyone brings something to the team. And anyway, often the women are effectively as strong as the men over multiple days, as endurance matters more. It works really well, and its great fun, and I'd prefer it over a situation where it was male only.
Yep, that'd be the natural conclusion. (Note, Im not advocating this here, just exploring it - came up in the context of the logical conclusions of disallowing sex discrimination wholesale).As for allowing all sports let all genders participate, I don't know. Would is mean the olympics would just abolish male and female categories?
Well - *scientist voice* thats an implementation issue!Would lightweight men now fight middleweight women?
I mean, you can think of it like this, why have different weight classes in boxing, or rowing, or whatever? The idea is that unless you do that, the heavyweights will always trounce the lighter ones. Because the heavyweights were just born with better genetics for fighting with, because they are just bigger.
Now, you might say, well, why have classes at all? So the bigger people are better fighters - the goal here is to have a competition so that the best fighters win. Its the olympics. The biggest fights win - job done!
I mean, its not like genetics dont play a role in sport overall - ask anyone with a naturally huge body who wants to be an elite distance runner, or a really short man who wants to do the high jump.
But, we do have these weight categories, because we feel otherwise its just not fair on the people who were just born smaller - not their fault - and might still be better fighters technically, have a better fighting spirit, train harder, etc.
I'd argue its probably the same with dividing on sex. We do it because sex is a crude, but powerful, predictive factor of genetic ability - in otherwise, unless we did so, few women would beat men in elite sport where muscle powe per weight plays a big role.
The thing is though, why divide on gender and not other predictors, like race? Or height? Ankle bend for swimmers? Slow twitch fibre allocation for endurance athletes?
Imagine its the future (maybe not too far in the future!), and you have a magic test that tells someones genetic ability from their DNA for sport X.
You could then take people, male and female, all races, etc and give them headstarts on the 10k race, according to their genetic ability. First across the line is the person who has trained hardest, trained best, sacrificed most, had the best athletic spirit etc. Its much less of a genetic lottery, and much more about individual preparation and achievement. Would that not be a better way to do things?
So, I guess what I'm saying is that ideally if you were to forbid discrimination based on sex, then you'd have some other way of taking into account genetic ability to allow people compete against each other on a more level playing field.
Either that, or its just first past the post, and you just deal with the fact you are less genetically fast at running 10k, whether its because you werent born Ethiopian with their great lungs, or tall with their long legs, or male with their higher muscle/weight ratio.
If you want to go down the road of giving people who have naturally less good genetics an equal chance, though, you could probably do a good job even with current medical understanding. You asked whether lightweight men would fight middleweight women - perhaps the answer is yes. Or you might look at things like natural muscle mass, width of shoulders, or a range of other things instead. But the end result is that two people who are roughly equal in ability would end up fighting, and the best would win.Is this what you are suggesting
Well - its what I'm exploring as a consequence of a world where all discrimination based on sex is against the rules, more so than suggesting.
It'd be a pretty radical set of changes, and one that I think most people would disagree with - if for no other reason than we are bad at challenging the status quo, in our own heads!
There is definitely an inconsistency to how sport is done at the moment - there's no allowance for the really short guy who wants to do the highjump, but there is an allowance for the person who have a second X chromosome.
(Edit: These things sometimes get pretty blurry anyway - if you see the recent controversy over whether Semenya was a man or a woman - its not always as clearcut as its made out).
Neither of those people chose whether they'd be male or female, short or tall - it just happened, it was genetics, and maybe the short guy really wants to be a world class highjumper, and has achieved so much more of his natural potential than the current world champion - but its just tough luck because he was born short.
From a different perspective, I think its unfair that in many sports if there is a woman who is just naturally very good (or maybe if its a game where skill is important like soccer) she just can't play in the best league - thats not fair either.
I dunno - its worth thinking about, if you consider the logical limits of a society where sex discrimination is not allowed. Not sure thats the best idea, but we should consider it.
I'd agree with that position. They probably shouldn't be called 'womens bookclubs' though - what, men can't like bridget jones' diary or something? They certainly shouldn't be allowed stop someone joining just cause they are a man.Womens bookclubs, as far as I know read books that females are more inclined to like. If a man so happens to like these types of books or vice versa, then I don't see why they should be excluded.
I dunno - its all a complex set of issues. Its hard to know what the best thing to do is, but I think if everyone thought about it a bit more, we'd be better off. I also think theres a lot of rubbish written when people discuss these things.
For example, on the car insurance issue, theres frequently people that start arguing crash statistics, which is irrelevant to the real issue, which is whether its ok to discriminate against every single individual in a class because of some trait that individuals in that class have a higher probability of displaying.0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q18fvHKlI6Q
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