Boys Will Be Boys

Picture this: A female while student threatens to charge Alpha Kappa Alpha, the black sorority, with discrimination unless they accept her as a member. Fearing trouble, they comply. Once admitted, however, the white student insists that she will never feel accepted unless they take down the pictures of Aretha Franklin and Malcolm X in the sorority house and replace them with pictures of Pat Boone, Doris Day, and other quintessential WAPs.

Or picture this: A male student, acting on the same principle, clams the right to join the Radcliffe Pitches. Of course, he cannot sing the A above middle C, so he says he will feel oppressed unless they lower the songs a few octaves or else only sing pieces for mixed chorus.

Or imagine: Under pressure from female students, the university orders the Hasty Pudding Club to go co-ad. "No more guys in tights? You're losing a distinct subculture here," protests the club president. But full integration is deemed more important.

These hypothetical cases make us uneasy. In addition to the clash between non-discrimination and freedom of association, we sense an invasion of one culture by another and a levelling of differences that decreases overall cultural diversity even as it seems to diversify group membership.

But, you protest, no one would ever advocate the changes proposed above? Not true. Boston's formerly all-male clubs are now the focus of a women's campaign to expunge all traces of white male culture from the clubs' ambience. The situation in Boston foreshadows what would happen if Harvard's final clubs caved in to the constant pressure, and reveals the real problem with such integration.

Four year after the Boston clubs began to admit women, few women have joined. Was the victory useless--or just incomplete? The latter, say some women; the place is still "too male," all that wood and leather, and cigars, and...well, men.

It's not that the atmosphere is sexist, the women add; it just reminds them of their fathers. In addition, they feel oppressed by the Anglo-Saxon tone of the clubs, calling them "WASP theme parks." One female ex-member of the Tavern Club summed up the discontent by saying that although some men are "trying to change," most are unwilling to "change the things that most are most those white Anglo-Saxon males grew up with."

Such complaints are short-sighted and spiteful. These women had a bad time with their fathers, so they want to monitor men everywhere. They don't fell at home in a certain culture, but instead of finding one they like betten, they invade the centers of that culture and insist that it change to accommodate them, because anything they don't like must be oppressing them. It's as if someone knowingly sat down at the French Table in one of the houses and complained he or she felt oppressed and excluded because he or she didn't speak French.

In the examples above--the French Table, the Hasty Pudding Club--most of us recognize the group culture's uniqueness and right to exist. But when it comes to all-male clubs, in Boston or at Harvard, there arises a resistance to accord them the same rights.

What make WASP maleness so different? The knee-jerk liberal answer, white male hegemony, doesn't explain it all. Note that the women complaining about the Boston clubs weren't saying the men excluded them from the power networks; in fact, many women said, the men were quite welcoming. No, it was the culture that turned them off, not because it was sexist like the Tailhook Convention but simply because it reminded them of men bonding together without women.

These women, and those who oppose final clubs at Harvard, find it inconceivable that men find anything empowering or identity forming in all-male companionship besides a chance to put women down without being caught. All other groups are granted this right. When Jews gather at Hillel, we're not plotting to take over the world--just enjoying a shared can ture. Why can't men do the same.

A final note on the rhetoric forced cultural mixing, especially timely this weekend. Long-established, homogenous groups are just bastion of discrimination waiting to be integrated? Then Columbus wasn't invading America--he was only trying to make it more culturally diverse. What? You say the indigenous culture was destroyed? Sorry, but it had to be. Columbus didn't feel at home in to, you see.

Jendi B. Reiter '93 usually writes on alternating Mondays, but will not be printed this week because of Columbus Day. Her next column will appear on October 26.