Ugh, the men of the world have it so hard. Especially the straight white ones. It’s just, like, will someone please acknowledge their struggle and give them special opportunities in the areas where they are being systematically oppressed?
Take Harvard’s Hasty Pudding: an all-male drag and burlesque group that is standing strong and refusing to let pesky women take over the world with their rights and their feminism.
Those pesky women would be two college seniors, Tess Davison and Olivia Miller, who, with the approach of Hasty Pudding auditions for the spring semester, have signed up to try out for the group in defiance of the historic ban on female actors.
As the rules stand, women are able to work behind the scenes in Hasty Pudding’s writing team, business staff, tech crew or band. But that is just not enough for Davison and Miller, who are fighting for their place as performers, recklessly ignoring the fact that one song exists with the lyrics, “Who run the world? Girls.“
According to The Boston Globe, Hasty Pudding productions tend to include six female characters, all of which are played by men. The paper reports that many students feel “women could easily dress up to play male characters … without losing any comedic value.” In Hasty Pudding’s defense, it would seem the group is pulling brave inspiration from other rare all-male troupes, like the Propeller theater company or literally any group performing prior to the 17th century.
Davison and Miller are are fighting their exclusion by encouraging other Harvard women to sign up for Hasty Pudding’s upcoming auditions (at least 17 have signed up so far). Acknowledging this, the group’s president Robert T. Fitzpatrick told The Harvard Crimson that the prospect of adding women has become a “topic of serious discussion,” while noting that this would require “structural changes to the production, the company, and our larger institutional traditions.”
It’s unclear precisely what these structural changes would entail, but presumably linking the troupe’s touring schedule with the cycle of the moon and hiring additional security to protect the cast members from bears would be among the precautions taken.
Hasty Pudding has yet to respond to The Huffington Post’s request for comment. For the full story head over to the The Harvard Crimson … or just read this ridiculous Wikipedia page about men’s rights.
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