Lily Allen once sang, “It’s hard out here for a b****.” It seems like the world, or at least the Internet, is starting to notice. Keira Knightley protested against Photoshop by appearing naked and untouched in a recent Interview magazine spread. Less two weeks before, Hollaback released the controversial video “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman.”
But with two steps forward there’s a kick in the butt right back. The Adventurer’s Club of Los Angeles, a group of explorers and daredevils whose members include James Cameron and Buzz Aldrin, recently held a vote to decide whether to allow women as members.
32-30 decided to keep it boys only. The close vote was so contentious that one member resigned, AP reports.
The club interests include hunting and fishing, base jumping, adventure racing, orienteering, and not menstruating (we made that last one up, but it’s not too far-fetched). They’re a group of guys who like traveling dangerously before coming back to some all-male bonding in the club headquarters above a drugstore.
The club also has a museum featuring items past members used on their travels. One includes a canoe that travel writer Dana Lamb used on his adventures in the mid-1900s. Oh, sorry, Dana Lamb and his wife Ginger Lamb, with whom he often traveled with but was denied membership because she doesn’t have a dick. Ginger Lamb who also designed the flag. The same flag which the club brags about taking all over the world and bringing back for their museum.
It might be ok not to be part of a “private gentlemen’s club” (definitely not a cover for a strip club). And the website does look like a 7th-grader’s joke project for a web design class. So where are the adventuring females like Gertrude Bell, Junko Tabei, Delia Akely and Valentina Tershkova supposed to go to kick back and share stories of flying into space or summiting Mount Everest?
Thankfully, there are organizations that aren’t sexist assholes. The Explorers Club is the most notable. Plus, they give free membership to active duty Military personnel and disabled veterans. Automatically infinitely better than the Adventurer’s Club.
