This Club Refuses To Join the 21st Century

In an event that seems ripped straight out of an episode of Parks and Recreation, the Adventurers' Club of Los Angeles chose last Thursday to remain, literally, a boys' club. That's right — the organization voted not to allow women to join their oh-so-exclusive organization, because didn't you know girls are too dainty and delicate to be adventurers? What if they break a nail?The "private gentlemen's club" was founded in in 1921 by Captain Jack Roulac, and it's clearly committed to remaining in that time period. Not only is the organization's website akin to time-traveling back to 2003 (whoever designed the website had a thing for Calibri and Egyptian hieroglyphics), but according to CBS Los Angeles, members put up "massive resistance" to the idea of women being allowed into the club. In the 93 years that the club has existed, this was the first time someone has proposed offering membership to women. It would have needed just two-thirds of the vote to pass, but although former president Marc Weitz assured members that women would still need to meet the same qualifications as men, the motion failed to get enough votes. In fact, according to Weitz, some members were adamantly opposed to the idea. He tells KCAL9:

It was massive resistance. I mean, people stood up. I gave my pitch as to why it should go through and people stood up and argued against me quite vehemently.

I can't help but picture these opponents as the angry weird people who show up at town meetings in Parks & Rec.

The club is dedicated to "world-wide adventure," such as "trekking across Death Valley, climbing the Himalayas, diving the Arctic and Antarctic or sailing the worlds waterways." And everybody knows girls simply aren't capable of those kinds of feats of strength and bravery — oh wait. Weitz already had a woman in mind for the first female club member, and Andrea Donnellan is a serious badass by the standards of anyone with a brain (she's a NASA geophysicist whose research has taken her to Antarctica, the Altiplano of Bolivia, and Mongolia).

It also looks like there's an all-female travel group that's planning a casual trip through Death Valley next year, and I'm sure Junko Tabei is surprised to discover that she didn't really climb the Himalayas in 1975. That website devoted to women working in Antarctica must be a total scam, and the Mariners' Museum must feel really awkward about that whole "Women & the Sea" timeline, because women obviously can't be sailors.

But don't worry about it too much. At least the Adventurers' Club still hosts Ladies Night to console us.

Images: Giphy