Martha Burk: "These guys are just like Tiger"

Martha Burk is interviewed here. She asserts that the other golfers are just like Tiger Woods vis-a-vis women (presumably also in terms of their sexual behavior as well). In fact she says some pretty outrageous things, in my opinion, about the other golfers. (I will assume she doesn't know any of them personally, though she may claim to know about them.)

I recall protesting Martha Burk outside a hotel in northern Virginia some years ago as she hosted a women's conference that sought to de-unisex the Augusta club, among other things. Ms. Burk is fine with golf courses for women-only but not for men-only. Her suggestion that this particular golf course should be de-unisexed because so many important business deals are done there is simply not accurate. Anyone who knows about high-level business politics knows that one gets into such clubs *after* he has risen to the top of the pyramid, not as a result of it.* She neglects to mention some very nice women-only golf courses (for example: The Ladies Golf Club of Toronto) that attract moneyed and powerful women as members but doesn't suggest they need to be made de-unisexed.

But overall, unisex facilities are not acceptable to me. Actually I agree with Ms. Burk that places that are otherwise public in nature should not have access to them restricted, or membership to them restricted, based solely on a person's sex (unless intimate personal modesty issues are clearly present, such as with bathrooms). The problem I have with her is that she is all about objecting to Augusta's unisex rule but not at all about objecting to, say, Toronto's. Also, she is just plain nasty. Listen to what she says about people she has never even met. She assumes pro golfers are categorically powerful, misogynist, sexist, etc. Not only is this highly prejudicial, it isn't likely to further her cause. After years of flinging nasty-grams over the fence at Augusta's management, you'd think by now she would have learned a new strategy to try.

Martha has her own web site. You could email her to tell her what you think of her, but I seriously doubt she'd care. If anything it would only make her think she's ever-more right about everything.

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* The chances of me ever even being within 10 miles of the place are effectively nil and I am "all man", baby! :)