Page 26 - Dainfern Precinct Living Issue 8_2023

Humour

&

WOMEN CLUBS

B Y J AMES CLARKE

everal years ago Johannesburg’s Rand Club Ring. Ring.
decided to allow women to use its front THRENODY, DON’T ANSWER THAT PHONE!
entrance. Until then women could use only the Too late.
Sside entrance in Fox Street. Even then, they I knew it. It’s the E*D*I*T*O*R. Threnody (she’s my
had access only to the restaurant. The next hurdle was secretary y’know) says the editor says if I carry on like
to allow women to use the grand staircase into the this I’ll be horse-whipped by irate women readers.
heart of the club – a staircase ironically dominated by a
huge portrait of the Queen. Maybe I should confine myself to discussing this new
theory that women invented language way back in
For nearly 100 years, women had been forbidden to pre-historic times. It’s hardly surprising. Men had to
use those marble stairs. The original reason, I was told, stalk wild and dangerous animals right up until the cow
was because members might then be able to look up was invented and that required silence or, at most, the
their dresses. I say! I suppose this would have led to occasional “Psssst!”
the slopping of drinks and perhaps older members
collapsing. Exhausted hunters, returning home dragging a
mammoth or woolly rhinoceros, would hardly have
But women don’t wear dresses much nowadays – they been in the mood to join in chatter. Womenfolk, having
wear trousers – so it won’t matter even if they slid to constantly tell their kids to eat their boiled lizards
down the banisters. nicely, would have had a much greater need for words.
And working communally, gathering berries, would
I recall seeing, for the first time, women in the club’s have been conducive to chatter.
bar. According to a friend, some were even offering “I say, Sybil, you smell dee-vine! Are you using that
opinions. Many old members when they saw this for warthog gall bladder juice again?”
the first time said it was the end of something, I forget They probably compared each other’s head lumps from
what. the night before, when they were bonked (if you’ll
forgive the expression) on the head by club-wielding
Today the club is no more. Anybody can now hire the lotharios before being dragged off for a romantic
magnificent old building for an event. interlude. (As I say, clubs have always been important
to men.)
Men’s clubs worked well for centuries. Then came this
women’s liberation thing and next thing even London’s This is why men can happily sit in a club lounge all
Reform Club was having to eject women from its afternoon and evening and say nothing. A man can
steps because they were using abusive language and simply go “hurrumph!” and the club steward will know
demanding membership. to bring a pink gin.

Why were men’s clubs so chauvinistic? I think it was Women would be talking all the time about kids and
because men are more able to sit in a companionable clothes in that high-pitched way they have.
silence for long periods. Women cannot sit in silence
for longer than... Clubmen don’t care how their fellow members dress -
as long as they wear a dark suit, black shoes, quiet tie
and non-commercial cufflinks. Nor do they discriminate
as long as members are all male, have a similar
standard of education, speak the same language and
share the same views.
Modern women currently attacking male exclusivity are
displaying nothing less that the Bobbit syndrome.

Ring, Ring.
Threnody! DON’T TOUCH THAT PHONE!
(XHEAD) HEY? WASSAT?
A friend tells me of a fellow who, to prove to his wife
that women talk too much, read out a news item: “Men
use about 15 000 words a day - women use 30 000.”
His wife said, “That’s because we have to repeat
everything we say.”
He said, “What?”

24 DPL issue 8 2023