I could care less about golf - let me be very upfront about this. Golf has a long and proud history of discriminating against a great many people who are neither rich, white, nor male, and this has a lot to do with why this whole sport leaves a bad taste in the back of my mouth. The fact that I am even writing something even vaguely related to golf is sort of a surprise to me.
Tradition for the sake of tradition is, in my experience, often dangerous because it leads to thoughtless perpetuation of stereotypes and other bad ideas. Such is the case with the Augusta National Golf Tournament and IBM's continued sponsorship of this event. The short story goes like this: It is tradition for the major television sponsors of Augusta National to be given a green jacket and honorary membership to this exclusive club. It is also tradition for Augusta to exclude women from membership, and as the double-edged sword of democracy dictates, it is their right to do so as a private organization. Let me be very clear about this: I completely agree with their right to do so, but I also believe that each and every one of us has an equal right (and maybe an obligation as people of conscious) to be absolutely fucking outraged by it.
IBM has sponsored the Augusta National Golf Tournament for years, despite their long history of progressive employment policies, is continuing to do so despite the fact that the current CEO is a woman, and there is no indication that she will be granted membership to Augusta National Golf Club.
Maybe it's not the responsibility of current IBM CEO Virginia Rometty to take this up as a cause, and certainly Augusta is within their legal right to treat Virginia Rometty as if she were less of a person than your average male CEO television sponsor, all of whom have been granted membership whether or not they actually like playing golf. But in the year 2012, shouldn't we all be sort of pissed off that this kind of institutionalized sexism continues to exist? People who defend Augusta are really just apologists for, and facilitators of their poor behavior, because as long as we allow this kind of shit to exist, it will exist.
Again, I'm not saying we should write any laws, or force Augusta to start granting membership to women in any state-mandated kind of way. Despite the fact that I will be a registered democrat for the foreseeable future, and most people seem to think this means I want to legislate the hell out of every situation, I think we have way to many laws as it is. But people are stupid, so we need many of these laws because we simply cannot count on people to make good decisions. However, the way out of the legislate-everything, nanny state situation is pretty clear - if you disapprove of something, don't support it with either your time or your money. It's like bitching about how terrible and employer Wal-Mart is, then turning around and shopping at Wal-Mart. Those $100 dollars that you spent were 100 votes for the status quo.
Augusta is another perfect example. Granted, with only 300ish members, the average person cannot show their disgust with outdated, sexist ideology by withdrawing membership, but you can choose not to watch, and people like CEO Virginia Rometty can choose not to financially support this kind of institution. Watching the tournament at Augusta, either on TV or in person, is turning a blind eye to their choice to value women less than men, as is IBM's choice to continuing to support them with millions of dollars in sponsorship money.
It is for these reasons that I completely agree with the sentiment expressed by Eileen Burbidge in this open letter to IBM CEO Virginia Rometty. Word.
Happy fucking easter by the way. Today, let's celebrate the fact that all those people who "don't believe in evolution" think that it's perfectly reasonable to claim that a dead guy to came back to life to live forever as some sort of father/son/holy ghost chimera, and then choose to celebrate this ghastly debasement of nature with another fucked up chimera - the rabbit that lays eggs. I mean, you can't make this shit up can you?
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