All right, why does Portmarnock Golf Club deny full membership to women? Yes, yes, yes, coming to this column to read about golf is liking going to Crossmaglen Rangers to find out about cricket, but nonetheless, on this occasion I'll try valiantly to write about golf without vomiting. We intrepid journalists, writes Kevin Myers
As usual with male-female issues in this country, the fury over Bord Fáilte giving money to help fund a golf thingummy at a club which doesn't allow women members has been richer in stereotype and rhetorical evasiveness than in intellect.
The most wearily predictable complaint was that if the term "black" was substituted for "women" in the Portmarnock ban, there would be an outcry. This is the Cortina argument, and a tiresome commonplace in a discussion about any "minority" group: for like the old Ford, it's a cheap and simple way of getting there, in this case relying on a reflex guilt-spasm over racism and slavery to achieve intellectual compliance.
National Women's Council
Sorry, girls. Nothing doing. The State-supported National Women's Council of Ireland has 15 members, all of them women. But that doesn't make it Thelma, Alabama, any more than a gathering of men which wants to remain all male is a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob. In creating clubs, you always have to prohibit, otherwise all you've got is a shopping mall. Sex is as bad or as good a reason for exclusion as any other. Ask any women's fitness class.
But there's a certain disingenuousness in the way that male golf clubs - and excuse me while I just get sick over the side of the ship here; ah, that's better - talk in public about their respect for female golfers. On the few occasions when I've found the iron resolution to cope with those dazzling male golf-sweaters and not quite so dazzling male golf-minds, I've been left with the firm impression that men golfers loathe golfers-with-ovaries for two reasons.
The first is that golfing girls apparently think that the purpose of the game is a good long natter to be, very occasionally, interrupted by the odd half-hearted foozle at a ball. The second is that, even with the wind behind them, women can't hit a ball further than a 10-year old boy buried up to his neck in sand can throw it with his teeth. In reply: This sounds both plausible and, better still, wholly admirable. If only all golfers were like this, ovaried or otherwise, in no time at all golf-courts, or whatever they're called, would be so clogged up that the sport would be abandoned, and vast tracts of the countryside would once again be returned to civilisation.
Portmarnock members apparently don't wish this to happen to their golf-court: which is, alas, their right. It is also their right to exclude women, and no-one would think twice about any women's society which sought to exclude men.
Is it right for the Government, through Bord Fáilte, to offer funding to the Nissan Irish Open in Portmarnock? On the grounds of taste, culture, decency and all that's valuable in Irish life, no, absolutely not. One can hardly stick one's head up in the Irish countryside any more without revisiting sniper alley in Sarajevo - white balls whizzing around the place, and maimed farm-workers dying intestate in the ditch. For the State to be subsidising this lethal delinquency at a time of critical labour shortages is perfectly inexcusable.
What's the problem?
But on the matter of how Portmarnock GC organises its business, what is the problem? The State funds any number of all-female organisations, but I know of no male-only organisation which receives money. And it's not as if the Government grants will go to Portmarnock golf club; they won't. They will go to the tournament itself. . .
Excuse me for a moment, while I stick my head out of this port-hole for air. Only two thirds of the way through this column about golf, and I feel as if I've swallowed a gallon of bilge-water. Deep breath. Okay, I'm ready again.
The Portmarnock affair simply proves that feminists want the weight of government to be brought negatively to bear on institutions whose general conduct they disapprove of. So where does it stop? If Portmarnock were by feminist fiat to be compelled today to admit women as full members, might not the GAA tomorrow be made to spend equal amounts on sporting facilities for the two sexes, regardless of demand? That would be a sad day indeed; but not as sad as this one, when I am reduced to writing about the most gruesome pastime - with necrophilia with one's grandpa a possible exception - that humankind ever invented.
Personality deficiencies
Frankly, I think women should be grateful there are men-only golf clubs. Like baseball hats, or those oh-so-funnee signs saying , "You don't have to be mad to work it here, but it helps", they serve as a health-warning of serious personality deficiencies in the neighbourhood.
Listen girls: male-only clubs are sad, grisly places, and you should rejoice that their members are finally out of the cupboard or sock-drawer or whatever it is, and have declared that they prefer the company of chaps. Let them. Instead of whingeing, which you're rather too fond of doing, please join me in a prayer service as golfers and golf-fans gather by the thousand at Portmarnock for the Nissan Open. And together, we may entreat the Lord to summon a vast tsunami: that it may, without compassion, drown the whole bloody lot of them.