I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. It has probably also happened in many places for Hash chapters around the world because many of them do have "men only" clubs that take place on Mondays because the original Hash House Harriers was a military group and this was in the early 20th century when only men were in the military. Things were also quite a lot different culturally back in those days.
Anyhoo, the complaint was filed with the mother Hash of all Mother Hashes, the main chapter of the Hash House Harriers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Their response to the complaint was rather humorous too.
As I have mentioned in my blog many times and as we state in person to anyone that arrives at the Thursday or Saturday Hash meetups here in Chiang Mai (these are the days for men and women) the only reason why Monday is "men only" is based on tradition and has nothing at all to do with sexism. Realizing that even though sexism is not the intention here and that some people out there might get offended in this ultra-sensitive world that we live in, we established a Bunny Hash which is the "women only" Hash House Harriers chapter here in Chiang Mai as well.
I remember the day that this duo of women turned up to come with us on the men's Hash as our meetup point is public information. We do not try to keep this secret. We were very polite with these women but were also very stern that they were not going to be coming with us. We offered them information about the upcoming Bunny Hashes as well as the events that were taking place that were for men and women on Thursday and Saturday. They were clearly angry but I think that they actually turned up to stir up some controversy and weren't really all that concerned about going on the run or not. We were not going to bend our rules for them because we don't bend them female members of the Hash who live here and have been members with us for many years. At one point one of the girls started filming us. Thankfully things did not get very heated and if they put the recording online, I haven't seen it.
Thailand is definitely NOT the kind of place that stirring the social-media pot gets the government to intervene on your behalf but let's just imagine for a second that it was. Our response to any legal pressure to force us to allow women on our Monday runs would only result in us privatizing the entire thing and not allowing access to the public at all. Private clubs are not applicable to the rules that exist for public events in most places in the world, and Thailand is one of them. If for some reason they were successful in forcing us to let them attend, our response would next be to shut down the Monday run altogether.
It was kind of funny that when the Malaysia "Mother Hash" got an email from these angry women their response was something along the lines of "It's got nothing to do with us, contact the Chiang Mai Hash House Harriers directly. Every Hash House Harriers chapter is independently operated and there is no central leadership... good day!"
These two women are the kind of people that really shouldn't be trying to be in the Hash House Harriers at all. If they are offended by the fact that we have some traditions that can be viewed as being a bit sexist, they are going to be very alarmed when they hear what we have to say around the circle at the end of our runs.
So if you are the type of person that is easily offended or are really into social justice or anything else like that... you would be better off not attempting to join the Hash. We welcome anyone who wants to come but by doing so you have to adapt to our culture... not the other way around!
On On!
