Monday, March 21, 2016

"Thank God for Men"---Well, of course.


Today this in the Huffington Post:

“They ride on the coattails of the men,” said Raymond Moore, a former player and the CEO of Sunday’s BNP Paribas Open. “They don’t make any decisions and they are lucky. They are very, very lucky. If I was a lady player, I’d go down every night on my knees and thank god that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born, because they have carried this sport.”

I find this nearly as amusing as it is annoying, and it could be written about virtually any entity—for example the US Senate or maybe even a seminary. When I was teaching at Calvin Seminary one of the classrooms was lined with 22 large photos of retired professors and more photos lined the halls and walls of other classrooms. I snapped this picture before I left. Alas, all my camera could capture was this wall of 18. I’m sure when I arrived as the first full-time woman professor in the school’s history, some were thinking the same thing about women: 

“They don’t make any decisions and they are lucky. They are very, very lucky. If I was a lady [professor], I’d go down every night on my knees and thank God that [all these men whose pictures are lining the walls] were born, because they have carried this [seminary].”

I once asked my students in a class how the seminary might be different if women had been the founders and all the professors and administrators. They looked at me as though I'd lost my mind. What a lunatic question!