BrianGarst.com

A lot of the talk around Augusta National’s decision to admit its first two female members has me baffled, just as I was baffled when this whole brouhaha began years ago.  What principle, exactly, are the people upset with Augusta’s membership practices enforcing? What’s wrong with gender specific clubs?

On every college campus in America, you’ll find clubs excluding at least half of the population. No women in the fraternities; no men in the sororities. Who does that harm?

Augusta, up until now, was a private, male-only golf club. So what? There are a multitude of private, women-only clubs, and I don’t see the angry feminists busting down their doors demanding men be let in for the sake of equality. Because this really has nothing to do with equality. Anyone was already equally free to start their own private club and set their own rules for it. That’s equality.

These people, who usually prattle on about the benefits of diversity, don’t seem to actually want any. What’s that, how can I say they don’t want diversity when they are trying to make Augusta more diverse? Because if every club has the same rules, the same membership, and the same demographics, then there is no diversity among the universe of private clubs. They’ll all be the same. What’s the fun in that?

Sure, you can make a particular women’s only college more diverse by forcing them to accept men, but in so doing you’ll have made colleges as a whole less diverse. Take the extreme example and say you eliminate gender specific colleges altogether. People will necessarily have fewer choices when it comes to the type of collegiate environment they can choose, meaning the total universe of colleges has become less diverse.

True diversity means allowing different types of clubs, universities and other institutions to exist. If every institution must cater to the exact same crowd, then people will have less interesting and meaningful options available to them. Yes, Augusta is prestigious and well-known, but should their success mean that they are no longer free to set their own membership rules? Shouldn’t the same be expected of every club, or better yet, none at all?

gender issues