I feel like such a tool when I follow Zoe's meaningful posts with my silly rants, but here I go AGAIN.So, I went to business school, apparently the most woman hating anti-progressive MBA program ever, i.e. The University of Washington MBA program, which happens to be an excellent, usually liberal school so I don' know what's up with the MBA program. I recently went to an alumni function and asked the Dean what they were doing to boost female enrollment, and he almost choked on the olive in his drink. You see, the percentage of MBA's who are women are usually around 25-30%, and guess what, our status as a minority in this context seems to embolden the champions of the patriarchy, who positively relish the chance to reinforce their belief in the inferiority of the weaker sex. Case in point-
While in grad school, I was a member of Women in Business (WiB), a national organization with chapters in practically every MBA program in the country. The activities of this club are devoted to supporting the success of women in the business world, where, as previously mentioned, women are in the minority and otherwise disadvantaged. (If there is any doubt about this fact, quick, name 5 female CEOs!) WiB is open to, encourages, and is practically falling all over itself for men to join. Like, duh, of course we would want men to support the goal of equality in the workplace. The events that WiB put on were things like talks by, you guessed it, women in business, symposiums on work-life balance, weekend retreats, which were, again, open to men and men did attend them.
To this day, I still cannot believe how many times a guy from my class would ask me if, on our retreats, we danced around in our nighties and had pillow fights. Seriously, do you not understand how that is demeaning, or do you just not care?
So a group of guys decided it would be hilarious to start Men in Business (MiB, ha ha, funny), a club devoted to mocking WiB and getting together in secret locations and, this is the most important rule, NO GIRLS ALLOWED. At the time, it was suggested that this might be a tat bit sexist, backwards, and completely childish, not to mention a total insult to the women in the program who faced challenges in their careers that these guys were apparently completely unsympathetic to, and to an organization (WiB) that is actually trying to fight prejudice and make the world a better place for everyone. The women who dared to take this position were vilified as ball-busting feminists, and the men who objected to this embarrassing spectacle were ignored and socially isolated. Did I mention that the majority of MBA programs across the country are trying to increase their female enrollment by making their programs more supportive of women? Gee, I wonder why my MBA program isn't interested in this goal?
Here it is four years after graduation, and on a list serve that is for our whole class, these MiB guys are still sending out invitations, "gentlemen" only, for get-togethers, most recently taking a stab at Hillary Clinton in the process of encouraging the men in our class to join them for camping and air-guitar. (I'm not kidding.) Some of us actually protested this invitation, and oh boy, how dare we! The most common response we got was just to dismiss the idea that the message was even sexist, i.e., "What gives you the right to hurl charges of sexism where none exists?" "Agreed. The charges of sexism are baseless."
Well, thank you for clarifying. I, mistakenly, apparently, thought that an event in which everyone from my graduating class was invited EXCEPT the women was excluding people based on gender, which in my mind, is sexist. In fact, isn't that the definition of sexism? But apparently I was totally wrong to think that I could form an intelligent opinion on my own. Thank god the men are there to define my experience for me and tell me how to think! I am so grateful. Having to figure out this man stuff on my own is so hard with my pea-sized woman brain. I am going to go get in my nightie and think about how much I admire these manly business men who hate women, which is totally justified because we are so uppity. Thank god they are there to put us in our place!
In other news of interest (to me), the Pittsburgh Penguins have made it to the Eastern Conference final for the Stanley Cup thanks to my goalie (and some other players, I suppose). Good luck Pens!
Love,
Tegan Jovanka
P.S. Ace!
