Here is a cause you can take up for the downtrodden:
Double standard par for course
By Margery Eagan | Tuesday, April 6, 2010 | bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo by AP
Here we were, all tuned in for a much-hyped press conference on a sex scandal featuring threesomes, spanking, slapping, biting and Tiger Woods’ repeated claims, “I would wear you out.”
There was not a single question about any of it yesterday. What about your putting, somebody asked Tiger toward the end of this boring charade. And the reporter was not making a joke.
But what was writ large yesterday at Augusta National was the male/female double standard, still going strong in 2010.
Tiger apologized to everybody. His family, his fans, his fellow players who had to endure pesky Tiger questions.
But he had no words of apology to the multiple women he bedded.
This is not to defend porn stars and strippers or anyone else who knowingly carries on with a married man. But porn stars and strippers are human beings, too. They’re somebody’s sister or daughter.
I felt particularly bad through all this for Mindy Lawton, the $8 an hour manager/waitress at a restaurant near Woods’ home where he’d order an egg-white omelet with broccoli. Lawton’s family described her as extremely naive, gullible, and totally dazzled by Tiger’s attention. Throughout their 14-month affair, her sister said, she really believed Tiger loved her. “I thought I meant something to him,” Lawton told reporters.
She meant about as much as that egg-white omelet, if that.
The redemption of Tiger Woods - as far away as his next PGA triumph - offers a great lesson. Men survive these scandals. Women are ignored, forgotten, scorned, even today.
Women still can’t be members of Augusta National, which made it a particularly ironic place for Tiger’s return.
If Augusta treated Jews, blacks or anybody else the way they treat women, there would be no masters tournament there this week. Yet they get away with banning women with claims they’re on a waiting list.
“A complete myth,” says Martha Burk, who organized a protest against Augusta in 2003 and was frequently ridiculed for her efforts. “But we still don’t take sex discrimination as seriously as we take race discrimination,” said Burk, who has won multimillion-dollar sex discrimination settlements against the likes of Morgan Stanley.
“As to why Tiger did not address (the women) himself, I’m not surprised,” she said. “His apology is insincere. I don’t think he has any personal courage.”
Oh Martha, touche! So right then, so right now.
Article URL: bostonherald.com |
