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!
