27. Boys in Town – The Divinyls 1983

 

I am just a red brassiere
To all the boys in town
Put this bus in top gear
Get me out of here

 

Soooo, the other day a bunch of privileged old white males decided that they were too important to mix with ‘Oh my God! Women!’.

That’s right, I’m talking about the Sydney Australian Club’s two thirds vote against allow women membership.

My first thought was along the lines of How dare they! Then I checked out their website and moved along to Who cares? Finally I watched some of the copious amount of media commentary on the issue and finally got it.

I guess my point is that a club that provides its members with, I quote,  ". . .excellent dining facilities, en-suite bedrooms and apartments, a fully equipped gym, and . . . first rate business facilities . . ." really isn’t offering that much. Sydney is full of excellent dining establishments, accommodation, gyms, and even business facilities. However, it is the exclusive networking opportunities and associated prestige that women are denied that really gets my goat.

Sure, most of the club’s prestige comes from its almost 200 year old history. Sorry, but the world was very different in 1838, when the Australia Club was established, to what it is today. The world is no longer the bastion of white males, but maybe the elderly white males that are members of the Australian Club haven’t got that memo yet, or maybe they’re just desperately holding on to their former glory, or . . . maybe they’re scared that broader society will find out what they’re doing in those en-suite bedrooms and apartments.

En-suite bedrooms and apartments aside, the most pathetic part of this club is that its membership includes judges and past Prime Ministers. These are people – the positions are gender neutral, not exclusively male – that are responsible for upholding the law for all Australians and representing all Australians in parliament. I question the understanding of broad societal issues that privileged males that only associate with other privileged males can have.

As a final note, decisions like this are not exclusively applied along gender lines and they can often be the start of a slippery slope towards formal decisions such as racial segregation in the USA, apartheid in South Africa, and the caste system in India. That said, as stated earlier in this post, I like to think that the privileged old white males that made this decision are a dying breed holding on to their self-awarded former glory.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_oRZqAamP4

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