From: shava@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Shava Nerad Averett)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: OES and Pentagrams
Date: 9 Apr 92 22:24:45 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

>Excerpts from netnews.alt.magick: 5-Apr-92 Re: OES and Pentagrams Peggy
>Brown@ubvmsd.cc.bu (1128)
>>> Sounds sexist to me.
>
>In article <4dsFT3O00Vo9FVN0kK@andrew.cmu.edu> sk4p+@andrew.cmu.edu
>(Shawn Clayton Knight) writes:
>>It was founded to provide something for women.  Your term should, if
>>anything, be "counter-sexist".

I see.  Separate but unequal, perhaps?  So, for example, if the medical
profession were effectively closing access to M.D.'s to women, it would
be ok, so long as women were allowed to be nurses.  Yes, I'm *sure* I've
heard arguments like this before.

Give the ladies something to do to keep them busy and quiet.

There is only *one* reason for the masons to be segregated by sex, IMO,
and that is that they are a men's lodge.  Like a men's medicine society
of the Hopi.  I actually have no particular problem with that.  During
much of the mid to late 1800's there were these things called 'women's
voluntary associations' (YWCA and the Ladies' Temperance League spring
to mind, but they were highly varied in their charters -- almost all
did charitable work though) that paralleled the *secular* aspects of
men's masonry.  Some of them even evolved 'mysteries' and lesser 
sorts of initiatory dramas (I understand the campfire girls still have
some of these aspects, and I went to at least one summer camp that did).

It is no longer, however, the norm for men and women to be segregated
in their social lives.  At the time masonry was in its flower, it would
have been very socially risque for it to have been a mixed-sex society.
I don't know, but suspect that the OES dates from the same period as the
founding of many of the women's voluntary associations.

In this day and age, I find it uncomfortable that the masons have not
integrated.  The fact is, it means that the masons tend to attract men
who prefer to associate more with other men than with women, as a *norm*
and not as an aspect of something sacredly separately having to do with
men.  I do not think this does the organization much good as a group
with a charter for the moral improvement of its membership.

On the other hand, this is a vulnerability and a tendency, and I have 
been around one lodge where the younger membership were all very proud
of the strong women in their lives.  I just feel that this condition is
the exception.

I have run into lodges that have histories of being all white, all protestant,
and so on.  They are all very proud that the AF&AM has overcome these re-
strictions, and that they are more open now.  However, if you mention the
idea of allowing women, they seem horrified.  I believe this is because the
population of the current membership welcome having some haven away from 
the womenfolk, and the masons are one of the last bastions of such retreat.

I think that the AF&AM should allow lodges to integrate male & female by
vote of the lodge membership.  The only reason not to do this, is that
too many of the leadership understand that the women would put pressure
on the men to vote to integrate, and they don't want the hassle.

Then again, perhaps they all believe that women are so perfect that they
require no social support or moral improvement.

Now mind you, I say this, and I kind of *like* the masons.  Perhaps it
is simply sour grapes.  

And I'd love to have someone in the masons tell me to my face that women
are not suited to understand the sort of ritual and dogma that is presented
as part of the lodge.  Which belief is by no means policy, but I suspect
that *many* of the older masons believe it in their hearts...

/* wife and daughter of masons, maybe sometime mommy of masons -- if I have
   any boys, or if the world gets a little nicer... */

-- 
Shava Nerad Averett				shava_averett@unc.edu
/*  all materials (c)1992, Shava Nerad Averett, and have nothing significant
    to do with the University of North Carolina, a mostly owned subsidiary 
    of the NC Legislature, a mostly owned subsidiary of the DOT.      */