And another thing...(Brief Article)

I hate golf. It's an old-fashioned, even Biblical hatred that is rooted almost entirely in envy-as opposed to modern "hate," which, we are constantly told, is based on fear of gays or some other member of the Coalition of the Oppressed. I do not fear golf.

But I do admire Hootie Johnson. He's the head of the Augusta National Golf Club who, despite intense pressure from feminist groups and propagandistic media coverage, is standing in the clubhouse door barring women from joining. Augusta has a mere 300 or so members, and their net worth is, by rough calculation, well in excess of the GDP of Belize (then again, Augusta member Jack Welch's personal GDP alone trumps that of Belize).

Feminists assume that whenever men congregate without them, it is to write a new draft of the Protocols of the Elders of the Patriarchy. The reality behind Augusta is much simpler: Rich people buy things for themselves that the rest of us want but can't afford. This is, after all, why we call them "rich." And the men of Augusta are paying through the nose for what the rest of us guys have to buy on the cheap: all-male companionship.

I've thought about this a great deal, as I feel compelled to organize a regular all-male poker game. Whether the evolutionary determinists are right that this desire stems from the prehistoric division of labor wherein men bag mastodons and women stay in the village to bag three-bean salad may be debatable. But the fact remains that men do not seek the aid of other men merely in the face of adversity; they seek the company of men because they find it enjoyable.

I learned this lesson fairly early. I went to an all-women's college. (This may sound like the beginning of a story in Penthouse-"I never thought I'd be writing a letter like this . . ."-but it's true.) When I arrived at Goucher College for its first year as a coed school, there were some 30 men and over 1,000 women. Roughly 10 percent of the male student body had attended my high school, i.e., three guys. About 8 percent were Korean- American and named Derrick (two guys). I did the math: If the University of Michigan had a similar ratio, they would have enough Korean-American Derricks to cast the train-yard scene in Gone with the Wind solely with K.A.D.'s.

I learned a great deal at Goucher-much of it not of my own choosing, which is as it should be (I suspect I am the only member of the National Review family with a dog-eared copy of Catharine MacKinnon's Toward a Feminist Theory of the State on his bookshelf). Regardless, in such a masculinity- deprived environment you learn, very quickly, that if you do not make friends with the very few men around you, you will have no male friends at all. This fear that you will have no "wing man" is, oddly enough, somewhat similar to what men go through in all-male settings such as the army, prison, and the locker room (I have first-hand experience only with the last of these). Men team up with comrades because it is ...