America’s favorite golfer must understand that corporate dealmakers use 'men – only' clubs to maintain power // from Ms Ellen Snortland on 15 April 2010
Bully for him! Tiger Woods had earned my scorn and contempt years ago, well before the revelations of his marital problems. I knew he was an enema bag without knowing about his double life, cheating addiction or peccadilloes with numerous “dillos” with his pecca. More fundamentally, he earned my disgust through his lack of principles and absence of a stand on gender apartheid at the apex of corporate and athletic America: the Masters Golf Tournament and Augusta National Golf Club.
In case you’re not a golf enthusiast, have been living on a desert island or don’t follow sports in general, let me give you a thumbnail portrait of the Masters, one of the most important golf events on the planet. According to the Wikipedia, it is “one of the four major championships in professional golf. Scheduled for the first full week of April, it is the first of the majors to be played each year. Unlike the other major championships, the Masters is held each year at the same location, Augusta National Golf Club, a private golf club in the city of Augusta, Georgia, USA.”
Buried in the same Wikipedia article is the fact that Augusta National Golf Club is restricted to only men, and in my opinion is the equivalent of 1950s-era "whites-only" buses, water fountains and lunch counters. However, gender apartheid is often "winked" at, minimized and certainly accepted at the most powerful and monied levels of our society.
You may be saying, "O, but Ellen! Where's your sense of humor? Boys will be boys, and can't they just play a game without including the girls? For goodness' sake! Come on now! You're making a mountain out of a molehill!"
Let me disabuse of you the notion that golf is just a little game: we’re talking billions of dollars and a social network that reaches into the highest platforms of government, the military and capitalism.
But before I give you a little profile, let me lead you to one of the most inspiring gender analysts we have writing today: Martha Burk. I’m proud to claim Martha as a friend, although I must admit I have author envy. Burk wrote a book I wish I’d written called "Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It." In addition to writing "Cult of Power," Martha led a protest in 2003 that brought a lot of attention to gender apartheid in golf. But don’t take my word for it; get the book and read it cover to cover. It’ll explain just why women of all colors face such a major glass ceiling in the Fortune 500 corporations, nationally and internationally.
Which brings me back to Tiger Woods. Tiger was not only the youngest golfer to win the Masters tournament at Augusta, but the first man of color to do so. Augusta National Golf Club let the first African American into its hallowed ranks for the first time in 1990, only seven years before Woods played and won.
Tiger Woods has more authority and moral positioning to stand up for ending "men-only" policies at Augusta than almost anyone else I can think of ... but of course he wouldn’t, because his behavior indicates that, to him, women are playthings, not people to be taken seriously. If I’m being too harsh in that judgment, since I don’t really know the guy, at the very least his sexual shenanigans would make him reluctant to take a visible stance about ending discrimination against women.
Woods is purportedly receiving treatment for his sex addiction. Typically, treatment involves making amends for commissions and omissions that are based in the person’s drug of choice, which in this case seems to be heterosexual sex outside of marriage. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that Woods has taken objectification of women to new public lows.
Hey, Tiger! Do I have an amends idea for YOU!
Use your bully pulpit — or Tiger pulpit, in this case — to insist that the Augusta National integrate its club further with women. Why? Because it’s a disgusting bastion of male privilege and for you to take that kind of stand would be a triumph of morality.
Again, Burk’s "Cult of Power" is a must-read, but it doesn’t take a hole-in-one golfer to understand that corporate deal makers use "men-only" clubs to maintain power, cut deals and, yes, exclude women from the halls of power and decision-making. Having a penis apparently is still the most important club to have in one’s bag.
The term "bully pulpit" came from President Teddy Roosevelt’s using the term for the White House and its astounding power to impact opinion and change. Roosevelt used the term "bully" as an adjective, like "great" or "magnificent."
Wouldn’t it be "bully" if Tiger could turn his personal fiasco into a major stride for women? I’m not holding my breath.
09 April 2010
“““Mother to Son””” … by Langston Hughes
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
the Future: subsequent generations growing and … grown … up // all thanks to family law’s “civil” courts
---- USA - and Worldwide - cases abound ----
Teen sues county for placing her in custody of sex offender grandfather, father (Cowlitz County, Washington)
The kids are growing up--and they're angry.
These are the kids whose childhoods were ruined by so-called "family court investigators" who knowingly placed them in the home of batterers and sexual abusers. Note that the accusations against formerly custodial mom were minor or negligible at best (a dirty house?) and that the girl's own father warned that she shouldn't be left with Gramps unsupervised since he had been CONVICTED of sodomizing a 10-year-old girl.
Yet Dad VERNIL JONES, who lived with his mother and sex offender father, got primary custody anyway. Though the girl was supposed to be "supervised" around the grandfather. Which obviously never happened. Not that anybody really expected it would happen, unless they were really, really stupid. So naturally, this poor child is molested every day for ten freaking year. Outrageous, as this was completely preventable.
http://www.whas11.com/news/Teen-sues-county-for-placing-her-in-custody-of-sex-offender-grandfather-90358309.html
Teen sues county for placing her in custody of sex offender grandfather
by EMILY FRIEDMAN
Posted on April 9, 2010 at 12:02 PM
(ABC News) - A Washington state teen is suing for millions of dollars in damages after she said a family court investigator "ruined her life" by knowingly sending her to live with her grandfather, a convicted sex offender who proceeded to abuse her nearly every day for a decade.
In court documents filed late last month, the unidentified teen claimed that she was just six years old when Cowlitz County Family Court Services investigator Mark Workingor took her from her mother and placed her in a home with her father and grandparents.
The teen said in the court documents that it happened in spite of her own father warning Workingor that his father, Vernil Jones, had been convicted of sodomizing a 10-year-old girl.
"She went through 10 years of incest of every kind almost daily by her grandfather," said Lincoln Beauregard, the attorney representing the teen.
"The bottom line is, regardless of where she lived, she should not have lived with a pedophile," said Beauregard.
Jones since has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the assaults against the teen.
Attempts to reach Workingor were unsuccessful, and messages left for Ron Marshall, the Cowlitz County's chief civil deputy prosecutor, were not immediately returned.
Marshall told The Daily News in Washington that while he had no comment on the pending litigation, Workingor no longer was working for the county.
Teen Spent 10 Years With Abusive Grandfather Despite Warnings
Outlined in the court documents is the sequence of events that led to the teen being placed under the same roof as Jones.
In March 1999, the teen's father petitioned the court for custody of the then-6-year-old. According to the court documents, the father told authorities that he was worried that the teen's mother "neglects the child's supervision, nutrition and hygiene" and had a "history of drug use."
The father also claimed that his daughter suffered from "chronic head lice infestations" because of the "filthy home" the mother kept, according to the court documents.
The investigator found that while the teen's mother had provided the majority of the teen's care since she was born, she was doing so inadequately and awarded primary custody to the father. Also included in the investigator's recommendation was that any contact between the child and the sex offender grandfather "be supervised by either the father or the paternal grandmother."
The teen's lawyer referred to that recommendation as "outrageous," and called the county's decision to place the child with Jones "egregious."
The teen's lawyer said that his client decided to bring her case to the public's attention in hopes of helping other children like her who have become victims because of the "egregious actions" of Cowlitz County.
"She hopes that bringing visibility to her case will be a form of justice to her," said Beauregard.
Teen sues county for placing her in custody of sex offender grandfather, father (Cowlitz County, Washington)
The kids are growing up--and they're angry.
These are the kids whose childhoods were ruined by so-called "family court investigators" who knowingly placed them in the home of batterers and sexual abusers. Note that the accusations against formerly custodial mom were minor or negligible at best (a dirty house?) and that the girl's own father warned that she shouldn't be left with Gramps unsupervised since he had been CONVICTED of sodomizing a 10-year-old girl.
Yet Dad VERNIL JONES, who lived with his mother and sex offender father, got primary custody anyway. Though the girl was supposed to be "supervised" around the grandfather. Which obviously never happened. Not that anybody really expected it would happen, unless they were really, really stupid. So naturally, this poor child is molested every day for ten freaking year. Outrageous, as this was completely preventable.
http://www.whas11.com/news/Teen-sues-county-for-placing-her-in-custody-of-sex-offender-grandfather-90358309.html
Teen sues county for placing her in custody of sex offender grandfather
by EMILY FRIEDMAN
Posted on April 9, 2010 at 12:02 PM
(ABC News) - A Washington state teen is suing for millions of dollars in damages after she said a family court investigator "ruined her life" by knowingly sending her to live with her grandfather, a convicted sex offender who proceeded to abuse her nearly every day for a decade.
In court documents filed late last month, the unidentified teen claimed that she was just six years old when Cowlitz County Family Court Services investigator Mark Workingor took her from her mother and placed her in a home with her father and grandparents.
The teen said in the court documents that it happened in spite of her own father warning Workingor that his father, Vernil Jones, had been convicted of sodomizing a 10-year-old girl.
"She went through 10 years of incest of every kind almost daily by her grandfather," said Lincoln Beauregard, the attorney representing the teen.
"The bottom line is, regardless of where she lived, she should not have lived with a pedophile," said Beauregard.
Jones since has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the assaults against the teen.
Attempts to reach Workingor were unsuccessful, and messages left for Ron Marshall, the Cowlitz County's chief civil deputy prosecutor, were not immediately returned.
Marshall told The Daily News in Washington that while he had no comment on the pending litigation, Workingor no longer was working for the county.
Teen Spent 10 Years With Abusive Grandfather Despite Warnings
Outlined in the court documents is the sequence of events that led to the teen being placed under the same roof as Jones.
In March 1999, the teen's father petitioned the court for custody of the then-6-year-old. According to the court documents, the father told authorities that he was worried that the teen's mother "neglects the child's supervision, nutrition and hygiene" and had a "history of drug use."
The father also claimed that his daughter suffered from "chronic head lice infestations" because of the "filthy home" the mother kept, according to the court documents.
The investigator found that while the teen's mother had provided the majority of the teen's care since she was born, she was doing so inadequately and awarded primary custody to the father. Also included in the investigator's recommendation was that any contact between the child and the sex offender grandfather "be supervised by either the father or the paternal grandmother."
The teen's lawyer referred to that recommendation as "outrageous," and called the county's decision to place the child with Jones "egregious."
The teen's lawyer said that his client decided to bring her case to the public's attention in hopes of helping other children like her who have become victims because of the "egregious actions" of Cowlitz County.
"She hopes that bringing visibility to her case will be a form of justice to her," said Beauregard.
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