Wait -- the Magic Circle didn't admit female members until 1991?!
I thought the 1960's and 70's were when all the all-male universities and other organizations opened up to women. And that mostly groups left after that were those that had a functional reason for being all-male, i.e. male tenor-bass choirs. Or certain male "fraternal" organizations.
But magic obviously doesn't have any functional reason for being male, and it's about an activity (magic), it's not a fraternal organization. So how the heck did they go until 1991 before admitting women? That sounds crazy to me.
We're talking about a niche professional organization with annual membership in the mid to high hundreds at the time. Based on what wikipedia says about the process of getting in I assume churn is stupid low. I would find it unlikely but not at all unbelievable that the rule was never actually tested from the mid 1970s until 1991.
Considering the subject matter of the organization it wouldn't surprise me if there were some other women pretending to be men who weren't kicked out. With really turnover being only 18mo in probably made her a boat rocking newb in the eyes of leadership at the time.
Doesn't surprise me even a bit.
I was born in the early 1980s. My entire childhood was filled with people[1] explicitly telling me I can't do this-or-that because I was a girl. Other things I wasn't explicitly told I couldn't do, but I just thought weren't for me because they were zero women doing them.
I badly internalized some of it. I think I've gotten over it now though.
My first job was explicitly sex segregated, this was the late 90s. It was in a kitchen and they only had men do certain jobs even though literally every person in that kitchen was perfectly capable of doing every job, physically. Just some jobs were considered manly and given only to men. My female friend begged to be allowed to wash pots and pans, which was a "man's job" in our kitchen. She was told no, because she didn't have the correct genitalia to wash pots! She was eventually allowed to, after being persistent enough. Guess what? she could wash pots just fine, lol.
[1] the people included everyone but my parents.
I think it bears mentioning that women were probably not excluded from cleaning cookware because it was believed they couldn't do it. They were segregated to maintain a male-dominated society where men call the shots and women are just generally held back.
All the talk about “women are too emotional” or things like that have always been after-the-fact excuses.
I long for the day when judging people by their gender will be as shunned as judging them by their nationality, heritage or skin color.
Its 2024 and that day has not come yet.
Hair length, too?
Superficial things in general. Including hair length.
For men, long hair is quite normalized (think viking look, metalheads), but women with short hair could need some action.
This reminds me of a rumor I heard long ago about how there was an awkward impasse when Ginni Rommetty became CEO of IBM. Apparently one of the perks of the job was an annual membership to some golf club but it was men-only, literally an old boys club. I forget what the conclusion was though.
'Functional' reasons are in the eye of the beholder. Most people work at a far lower level than what a compassionate person considers functional.
Nearly all organizations are intrinsically discriminatory, but the only valid (indeed, necessary!) discrimination is, "Does the person accept the unity of humanity and the need for a compassionate world society?"
One must always remember the importance of considering the paradox of tolerance.
Sounds like the magic circle needs the closure more than her indeed
I didn't know Mulan was a magician.
I like to think that prior to the ban the meetings were like the stoning in life of brian
I agree that that would be great, but -- as a man -- I'm painfully aware of the knuckle-dragging nature of most of our fellows.
Unfortunately, our daughter has learned that many women are crap, too, just not nearly as horrible overall as men.
Men (and many women, too) have long complained that women are not fit to be, for example, the POTUS, to which I say, "How much worse could a woman be than all those men?"
"I would never join a club that would have me as a member." --Groucho Marx
The pity is that most people are naive enough to believe that most other people are decent human beings. It took me nearly five decades to understand that I shouldn't project my basic sense of decency on others, which is a grave mistake as most people are just selfish, exclusionary morons who think they're on the 'expert' side of the Dunning-Kruger scale.
Selfless compassion in the small and in the large -- that's the solution to all Earth's problems.
Most people are both decent human beings and moderately selfish. It's just the nature of being human. Humans have flaws.
But some people definitely are not decent human beings. Just like if you have a couple apples in the barrel that are spoiled you have to treat the whole barrel as spoiled, we have enough evil human beings to spoil the whole barrelful.
If most people were decent human beings and only moderately selfish, the world's governments and UN would work much, much differently than they do now. As well, America's recent election would have gone much differently. Ignorance is selfish, lying is selfish, letting the greedy become wealthier is selfish, and any and all oppression is selfish.
Global heating is caused by selfishness born of ignorance, and that ignorance is selfish for our currently untenable status quo, especially here in America.
IMO that is all explained by the second part of my comment.
A few people are not decent, and it only takes a small number of those to ruin it for everyone.
What was just done in America is going to hurt people all across the world, and it was not a small number of people.
> it was not a small number of people.
Exactly. The laws of the mob apply.
Gather a large number of decent people. Seed that mob with a small number of evil people. Now that mob is evil.
Are you suggesting we should be compassionate for the "selfish, exclusionary morons"?
Not quite following your gist.
I disagree with you to some degree. Maybe I'm a slow learner (I've had 6 decades to learn my lesson) but I still find that most people do in fact want to be and do good. I find this often when I travel on the road, make myself a stranger in strange parts.
To be sure, I have been called Pollyanna, but I do wonder sometimes if in fact it isn't cynicism that is the problem with the world.
Being compassionate to selfish folks means demonstrating and teaching them the fundamental nature and utility of universal compassion. Each person has the free will to be as selfish or selfless as they wish. Maybe they've never been educated that it is selfishness that is dangerously heating our Earth, has caused all strife ever, fosters ignorance, and allows the poor and marginalized to be callously left to rot.
While we must work to establish a world society of compassionate service to one and all, we must also acknowledge the paradox of tolerance, and take that into consideration for how we manifest our compassion.
That a significant percent of America has just rejected truth and compassion in favor of lies, meanness, and bigotry is evidence enough of the stark truth, my friend.
>The pity is that most people are naive enough to believe that most other people are decent human beings
If most means "over 50%", isn't that a contradiction? (people who assume others are good are probably good too)
In truth by far most people are good, but:
* we are held back by out human nature - tribalism, xenophobia, fear of things that are different
* there are indeed some bad actors who use this to their advantage
People are good by nature. Don't anyone let you convince you otherwise.
People are capable of being good, by nature. Because of free will, however, they are also capable of being selfish, to the detriment of others.
We each sit upon the razor's edge, with the free will to be how we are, each day anew, to embrace selfishness or selflessness.
That most people embrace the selfishness of their tribe is evident by world events, my friend. How many tribes embrace selfless service to humanity and have power in this world? Not nearly enough.
I used to believe the same thing. The covid era opened my eyes to how many selfish assholes there are.
The intensity of world events is nature's way of separating the wheat from the chaff.
As Maya Angelou said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."
It is really difficult for us to see people who are very different from ourselves, and it is damn near impossible until we, ourselves, have leveled up our own personal ethics, morality, and understanding of what humanity entails.
I don't understand the story, can someone explain? What I got is they try to track someone who was expelled for misrepresentation. Why? What is different today vs 30 years ago?
The organization first was male-only. A woman disguised herself as a man, and managed to join the organization. 18 months later, the organization stopped being male-only and would start accepting women to join too. The disguised woman undisguised herself, and the existing members got shocked enough that even if women were now allowed, they were so angry at her "deliberate deception" that she got kicked out regardless.
Now the organization wants to allow that same woman to join again, but they cannot find her apparently.
The irony of a bunch of magicians being angry at deception was lost on them it seems.
Phenomenal comment, this got a smile out of me.
This sounds like borderline stalking. I am not a woman, but I have my experience with getting treated unfairly/getting patronized. And I never felt like I wanted to give a bad actor a second chance to talk down to me, even if they pretend to have good intentions. If you fucked someone over, you dont have the right to run after them. Leave them alone, stop confronting them over and over again with your own stupidity.
It's stalking and it's objectifying the person for publicity decades later. Failing to locate her privately and now doxing her name in a major paper
Yeah, it's just another symptom of the same damned disease.
I think the new circle is somewhat different from the last one?
Also I don't think it is stalking, when they did not even found her. If they did and she said go away, and they pressured on - that would be stalking. As of now, it is likely she does not even know about it.
Well, given that it's in _The Guardian_, there's a pretty good chance that she is indeed now aware of it.
Minor quibble: the current Magic Circle is not "different from the last one" because it is the same organisation—though it has obviously had a significant change of policy and a considerable turnover of membership in the three and a half decades since Sophie Lloyd was accepted as a member.
"there's a pretty good chance that she is indeed now aware of it."
Indeed. Maybe that was the point?
Or well, I actually rather suspect the motive to be the planned movie about the events, which is in need of PR ..
Magic Circle, is that something everyone is expected to know what is?
Folks in the UK are likely to: it is the professional guild for magicians.
Or, informal term for a group of corporate law firms based in the UK. It wasn't clear to me what the article was actually about until the very end, not sure why didn't feel like spending at least one sentence making it clear up front who they're talking about.
I also assumed they were talking about a magic circle law firm. It's compounded by the fact that this kind of story is something you wouldn't be surprised hearing about a law firm in the old days (though hopefully not as late as 1991).
For Americans, the best parallel is the Alliance of Magicians from Arrested Development.
Not the Academy of Magical Arts at Magic Castle?
Earnestly, they don't seem nearly messy enough.
“We’re already in talks about making a movie of her extraordinary heist.”
So that's why we suddenly had a change of misogynists' heart after thirty three years.
Magic Circle needs this expelled members written consent to use their likeness in film.