Into the Bunker...

Golf Courses - Common Sense Under Threat

News from the BBC suggests a long awaited new front is about to be opened by the forces of political correctness. Their brand new shiny Panzer is a green paper proposing a "Single Equality Bill" targeting private clubs, with the usual suspects playing the media role as villains. Yes in the red corner, we have...The Working Man's Club (music hall style booing and hissing etc. from the right) and in the blue corner, the most evil, insidious type of body in the known universe, The Golf Club (squeals of genuine outrage from the left). As usual it isn't so much an "Equality" bill as an "Enforced Uniformity" bill.

The BBC take is that:

"The Single Equality Bill will mean clubs can no longer restrict access to women at certain times or be banned from the running of the organisation."

and some clubs apparently,

"restrict access to the club house."

but very generously,

"Clubs with single sex admission policies will be able to continue."
BBC News

As it happens I've been to a few Working Men's Clubs and had a good night out but I'm going to have to concentrate on the golf club side to illustrate just how stupid something that seems so superficially reasonable like this can be.

I've got a fairly ambivalent attitude to golf these days. On television it's a sport, like cricket and tennis, that I'd rather watch in edited highlight form; for all the skill and sporting prowess I simply find it dull watched live. Worse than that, the poison dwarf is a big golfer, as anyone who has the misfortune to encounter him in the mother ship, bedecked in his club sweater, when he's only on the third hole of his full eighteen hole shot-by-shot analysis of his last round. The problem is that despite all of this I actually really like the game, on the odd occasion on which I have the time to have one of my fairly inept attempts to play it. Moreover it's a bit of a family tradition; my grandfather was a reasonably good golfer, my father was, and still is, a very good one, my grandmother played and, albeit only taking it up after retirement, even my mother plays now, all at the same club.

Will this club fall foul of the proposed new law? Actually yes it will. Saturday morning is the preserve of a men's medal competition and, though I think it may now have changed, when I was a junior member there was a men's billiards room and a lady's tea room. So does this give rise to mass discontentment among lady members? Not that I'm aware of, in fact most of them on the rare occasion that I've ever heard it discussed seem to have been more than happy with the reduced subscription rate that comes with the occasionally restricted access to the course. If and when the ladies wish to organise an event of their own, the male golfers are equally accommodating and are also accepting of the fact that simple demand dictates that there are far less such occasions when they may not use the course and as such they pay more for their privileges.

There are no restrictions for women on voting rights in the management of the club, which I agree would be unacceptable. It hardly matters though because if there was demand for a change, a happy compromise would be found long before any poll was called, especially considering the number of lady golfers with more than a little influence over a male golfer to whom they are married.

What legislation like this does is give the opportunity for one disaffected person to use the power of the courts to upset a very happily balanced apple cart. There would probably not even be a need to show that they were were personally disadvantaged by the arrangements, just that they existed and offered an opportunity to take a cheap shot.

The classic counter argument is the "what would you think if it were black golfers who had different rules" one. It sounds good, but at the end of the day is complete bullshit. While men and women can and do play golf together, my father and grandmother once wining the family fourball competition, for all the handicapping rules, there is a tendency to end up playing in same sex groupings. There are probably a lot of reasons for this, some of which are simply social ones, but even with handicaps an option there is also a desire to play, when it becomes more competitive, with players of a similar ability where compensatory factors like the tee used or big handicap differences play less of a role. Not simply for physiological reasons, but also of the different amounts of time, on average, spent on the game it would be highly unusual to have a perfectly equal balance in playing ability within a club between men and women.

For reasons of practically then, not prejudice, then they tend to compete separately, and as it happens for reasons of demand most competitive fixtures tend to be arranged on the male side of the club. No such reasonable excuse of practicality could be made on the grounds of race, it could only be based on prejudice. The situations are not equivalent.

The original article did not mention, in its first edition, a different set of provisions ensuring the right to breastfeed, wherever, whenever, which I only spotted later. I'm a bit more ambivalent on this one.

From a molecular biology background background I of course very much endorse breastfeeding as the healthy option. It really does not offend me in the slightest, and yes, it is a perfectly natural thing to do. But let's be honest there are lots of other perfectly natural things that we don't do at the dinner table. Most have the women I know well who have had children have breastfed and have had a generally feminist outlook and thought nothing of breastfeeding sat around in someone's living room. I've never known one though who felt the need to breastfeed at the table in a restaurant; they wouldn't think twice about what any strangers thought, let alone worry that their friends may disapprove, but they almost unanimously thought it a the wrong kind of place to do it in a nice relaxed way, so would always find a comfortable corner somewhere they could spend a few minutes bonding with the baby. Frankly, they also knew that it gave everyone else a few minutes break from the little one, who as pleased was we may have been to have out with us, they knew could get a little dominating of proceedings for those of us less child centered than themselves.

In the end yes, any restaurant making a big scene about a breastfeeding is making a bit of a spectacle of themselves and would be best avoided in future, but I'm not any keener on the minority of mothers who seem to pick out the most public place possible to feed the baby as an assertion of their rights.

Frankly the idea that everyone should be marvelously tolerant of babies or young children in all circumstances, at all times, breastfeeding or not, is not in of itself, a fundamental human right of the the child or the parents anyway. I don't know if restaurants can set a minimum age limit beyond that prescribed by law, as pubs can, but if they cannot, they should be granted that right. It's not as if there is a dearth of child friendly restaurants. I think it's perfectly reasonable that on some occasions you should be able to pick out somewhere for a special occasion where you know that you won't be subject to the charms and delights of other peoples children below the age when they they can be expected to respect the general style and atmosphere of the venue.

While I'm at it...a message to parents who whoop and cheer on suburban trains as their children run up and down the carriage screaming and climbing up every seat back and hand rail. You are breeding a self-centred little brat.

Paradise is...

A Much Needed Shearing

...on the clinging, humid heat of days like these, a haircut like yesterday's where I feel like by body temperature has dropped by about ten degrees. A proper haircut done in in a barber shop, not at some poncy hairdressers. I'm from a part of the country where men don't really do hairdressers; boys do, but only when they are forced to go with their mothers and sisters for reasons of practicality, and even then very rarely and under sufferance. I always preferred the quick trip to the barbers with dad, if only because there was compensation of a bag of monkey nuts as compensation for the trauma the trip caused.

It doesn’t change much in adult life. For the ninety percent of men who stick to variants of the usual half dozen basic themes it’s just simpler. All you have to do is quote a number, rather than deliver an hour long verbal design brief, it only takes twenty minutes, there will be change from a tenner and you don’t even need to tip.

To be fair the occasional trip to my mother’s rather upmarket salon did have benefits. These extended beyond the ranks of rather pretty girls who worked there, maybe saving me from some of the more negative stereotypical northern attitudes.

I always had my hair cut there by a guy called Paul, who was rather cool other than being a bit of a Goth albeit in an understated way. He'd always talk about the then undulating, rather than nose-diving, fortunes of Leeds United and when he saw he was getting no traction on that he would segue effortlessly into the Leeds (now Rhinos) rugby league season.

It was only when he started commenting on how much nicer my hair was than my infinitely more attractive sister's that I realised that behind most stereotypes there is an element of truth, but also that the first openly gay person I'd encountered was still pretty cool. To anyone who might want to criticise this reinforcement of a stereotype I'd simply have to say sorry, I've never met a male hairdresser, outside an old style gents barbers, who isn't very entertaining, but nor have I met a straight one.

I think a lot of prejudices are rooted in early encounters. If the first gay man I had met was one of the more outré than out guys, who formed the backbone of the amateur dramatics groups that one on my former girlfriends was involved with, then I could too have been a typical northern homophobe.

An Anniversary Present

These guys made Little Britain’s Daffyd seem straight as a die, having little conversation outside theatre matters apart from just how gay they were. Even so I could get on fine with them, even if did sometimes need me to thrust (non-literally) my heterosexuality in their face in a mocking, ironic way to get them to move on to another topic. I had a bit of a spew at one who grabbed me somewhere I really would rather he hadn't, which he deserved - it was out of order in any context, but genuinely laughed when another bought me back a cock ring from a gay pride rally to celebrate my then girlfriend and I’s first anniversary.

I think the same principles work on a broader stage too. I’ve always had my doubts about some of the many pressure groups claiming to represent one minority group or another, regardless of the fact than in many cases their ultimate goals are laudable and their grievances against bigotry and ignorance are fair and reasonable. Too often though their approach is too focussed on the faults of those whose minds they wish to change, too obsessed with whipping up indignation within their own communities and those whose instinct is to support them, and all too often loses sight of the boundary between equal and preferential treatment.

A number of well-loved actors and even MPs who are at ease with their sexuality have done more for gay rights than Outrage ever will. Successful Muslim business men do more to offset any negative images of Islam than the MCB has ever done. Monty Panesar does more to promote a positive image of multiculturalism in the celebration of a single wicket than any sermon of the part of the CRE.

These organisations claim that they were needed to allow these positive role models to prosper, but I think they overstate their own importance. I think most people with some of these prejudices actually know they are wrong, but their attitudes become entrenched when lectured by the pressure groups. What they need is to want to change, not to be battered into it. There are honourable exceptions of course, but too many such groups seek to constrain behaviour through the law and if that doesn’t work they will seek to limit speech or even thought. It’s not to say that there are not certain egregious examples where the law needs to intervene, but when it does is should only do so after the greatest consideration, as it can actually make the battle for hearts and minds harder to win.

Anyway, time to go and face more abuse over my new supposedly neo-Nazi skinhead (it isn’t), and to look forward to the bank holiday chill which will doubtlessly have me missing my thatch.