What kinds of all-male clubs make sense?

A friend posted “Men are showing up to the Wing and women are pissed” (New York Post) to Facebook. Highlights:

The Wing was supposed to be the ultimate sanctuary for women … “There’s usually at least one [man] whenever I visit,” says Kaitlin Phillips, 29, a member in New York for the past two years. “It’s bizarre to choose to occupy a space women specifically wanted for themselves. Classic patriarchal entitlement complex.

The Wing, which started with one location in New York in 2016 and has grown to nine locations in seven cities, including a new international outpost in London, never had a membership policy, because, reps say, they didn’t think they’d need one. Instead, they simply billed themselves as a women’s co-working space and social club.

This lack of official paperwork garnered the attention of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, which in 2018 opened an investigation into the company. The Wing’s large membership — more than 11,000 worldwide, according to reps — meant it couldn’t pass as a “social club,” and therefore can’t discriminate based on gender. This, coupled with a lawsuit brought by a 53-year-old man earlier this year claiming gender discrimination, led the Wing to formally adopt a membership policy: “The Wing is a space designed for women with a women’s-focused mission. Members and guests are welcome regardless of their perceived gender or gender identity. Recognizing that gender identity is not always consistent with someone’s sex assigned at birth, we do not ask members or guests to self-identify.”

“It’s just annoying,” says Caitlin White, a 31-year-old West Hollywood member who sees at least one man working in the space each day. “Why do men need to be there? Why can’t they respect the spirit of the place? Men have to have everything.”

“Maybe make it one day a week that men are allowed?” White says. “There has to be a legal way to work this out that still respects the space.”

This prompted a response:

I can understand women wanting to have a space without men. What I never understood were male-only clubs. Why would men want a space without women?

Of course, I immediately attacked the responder for his gender binarism and proposed starting “Club 58, where everyone is welcome” (link to 58 gender ID possibilities). But his question remains. When does it make sense to have an all-male group? Some ideas so far…

What about a support group for recovery from the referenced “Classic patriarchal entitlement complex”? Wouldn’t it make sense to limit that to members of the “patriarchy” who suffer from this disorder?

Based on “‘I messed up big-time’: Former Miss Kentucky who worked as a teacher admits exchanging lewd selfies with 15-year-old” (Daily Mail), a group for males who have been similarly victimized. How could someone identifying as a woman understand the pain, suffering, and long-term psychological damage endured by a 15-year-old viewing pictures of Miss Kentucky’s upper body?

Readers: What else? (other than obvious male-only medical issue groups!)

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19 thoughts on “What kinds of all-male clubs make sense?

  1. In general men and women prefer to be in environments where the opposite gender is present — it is biological. That a small number would prefer to be in a single gender environment for all or some portion of their lives does not seem to me to be something that the government should take an interest in.

    • This is the exact opposite of reality. Both men and women generally prefer sex segregated “safe spaces” for most of the day. A mildly attractive woman immediately destroys a space for male comradery, basically because at least 20% of men are pathetic simps. Women don’t like a minority of men around because some dude will tend to try to “take charge”.

      You would think boxing and such-like would be safe, but no, chicks will show up and it becomes legally tricky to shoo them away. Why are you here? This is stinky sweaty men punching each-other in the face with no AC. We are all here to avoid you. Yet they show up like ants to sugar. The sugar is that they are not welcome.

      It is for this reason I applaud our transgendered allies competing in sports and gaining access to female spaces. Please, Xirs impose yourselves good and hard as normal hetero men never would. Let’s see where this goes. There are points to be made good and hard and lessons to be learned.

  2. Military obviously. Flying clubs. Racing organizations. Nothing takes the fun out of racing as much as a woman with a clipboard.
    Voting should be all male, article is proof. Women destroyed unisex organizations and they are solipsistic enough to complain about it.
    Not claiming everything for men, women can have 100% of the Universities. Have fun with it ladies.

  3. Nonserious:

    The He-Man Ditch Digging, Septic Tank Cleaning, Nuclear Spill Abatement, Summer Roofing and Cock-and-Bullfighting Club.

    Suicide Buddies – The Website. We’ll call it goners dot com (available through GoDaddy!) or maybe XYBother dot com.

    The Hot for Teacher After School Encounter Group

    The Grab ‘Em By the P***y Gentleman’s Cabaret

    Actual, Serious and Really Exists. I don’t know whether it ‘makes sense’, but:

    The American Mountain Men. I thought this one was going to be 100% for-sure all guys. However, reading through the requirements it’s not made explicit anywhere that applicants *must* be male. Still, I somehow don’t expect them to be gate-crashed any time by women who want to dress in 1800-1840’s authentically hand-cut and sewn outdoor mountaineering garb and spend a lot of time in the wilderness under primitive conditions.

    http://americanmountainmen.org/membership/requirements/

    As far as Club 58 is concerned, you are way, way low. There are more than 100 gender identities and the list is getting longer every day, according to the BBC:

    https://www.wattpad.com/341462536-complete-list-of-genders-the-complete-list-of-all

  4. > “Club 58, where everyone is welcome” (link to 58 gender ID possibilities).

    Your rebuke of gender binarism is all very well, but I am dismayed to see such an outmoded, gender-limiting number as a mere 58. According to my web search, as of 21:25 UTC, the correct number is at least one hundred and twelve. But note that “this list is non-exhaustive”!

  5. I’m not sure male-only medical issue groups are obvious, Phil.

    Such organizations would fail to include people like Caster Semenya, a female with testicles, who presumably could one day suffer from testicular cancer.

  6. I once heard a radio conversation between a talk show host (man) and a feminist (woman). The man said he belonged to an all-men club, and liked it because he could have more relaxed conversation. The woman wanted to outlaw such clubs, and challenged him to give an example.

    After some badgering, the man said that he could burp in the company of other men at a meal, without worrying about offending someone. The woman seemed genuinely shocked by this, and eventually the woman said that maybe he should be forced to eat with women present, so that he would learn better manners.

    I think she made his point better than he could.

    • I like how men had to pretend to be offended by Donald Trump’s locker-room comments back in 2016. And they had to virtue signal that they themselves would never ever objectify women when talking with other men.

    • @Scarlet:

      Objectifying is one thing, admitting to sexual assault is a bit tougher to swallow. Also they weren’t made in a locker-room, but in public and on camera. Doesn’t show common sense really.

  7. I dance with my wife in Zumba class. It’s a Latin/hip hop dance class that is typically almost all female, but there are male instructors and we typically have 2-3 men each class. I was in a morning class and I’ll swear I saw a 50’s woman having a meltdown with gym staff because “a man” was there. She promptly left. I’m sorry lady, but this is not “Curves” (an all woman fitness gym). I get one if these ladies about every three months swearing that this class is “women only” when it’s not. And it’s funny because it’s always a woman in her 40’s, 50’s, or 60’s and Indian or Caucasian.

  8. Hard to believe “Why would men want a space without women?” is a real question. It’s like asking “Why would anybody want a world where people have to talk to each other instead of staring at their cell phones?” It’s a reminder that the social engineering busybodies have been in charge so long that people under 40 don’t even know the immense riches they’ve been violently robbed of.

    Men-only groups are incredibly important for male character development, especially during childhood and adolescence. They enable boys and men to learn how to form social hierarchies and pursue group goals effectively. They nurture the development of the best characteristics of masculinity, especially the masculine virtues that women don’t really understand, such as honor (as men understand the word) and loyalty (as men understand the word).

    As every man knows, inserting a woman or two into a group of men tends to disrupt these dynamics. The women want the men’s attention, the men start competing to show off for the women, the men start to lose their social cohesion and focus on group goals. The social hierarchy still matters, because it determines which men get the most desirable women, but without enough men-only time, the hierarchy never becomes cohesive enough to accomplish great things as a group.

    This is one of those Human Nature 101 things that everybody used to know intuitively, but has somehow forgotten. The modern prohibitions against single-sex groups are very destructive, and they partly account for why today’s men are so weak and feminine (and ironically, unattractive to women), and why Western Civilization is in decline.

    • So your argument is that men can’t learn honour or loyalty unless they have nothing to compete over?

      And that mixed-sex groups can’t achieve “great things”?

  9. An addendum to my comment above: It is also true that women-only groups are incredibly important for female character development, especially during childhood and adolescence. But the reasons are different. (I won’t elaborate.)

  10. There has to be a way to game the legal restrictions on all male groups. If single sex social clubs are legal, create some sort of open source social club framework and they could combine per event by mutual consent. It might have something in common with terrorist cell structures. Antifa is petty successful in limiting participation to a subset of the population. Or maybe Bitcoin is a better analogy.

    There are various all-men groups nowadays formed by political conservatives or orthodox Christians who otherwise feel excluded by society. Perhaps cultivating an image that turns off women is the key. Even if you’re not really into “the patriarchy,” affecting such a image might work as female-repellant. They’ll try to shut you down, but not join you.

  11. Pursuing idiotic ideals (i e. “non-discrimination”) leads to idiotic outcomes. Qulle surprise.

  12. Prostate cancer support groups only work if only men attend. I went to a few different groups back when. Group run by a patient who had suffered prostate cancer and done one of the “cures” was the moderator. This group had good attendance and lots of back and forth questions and discussions. Men got lots of information about lots of male issues. The group run by lady psychologist was mostly a bust. Men just sat around and listened to her give speeches and left. So then the after meeting lasted for days with men calling each other to ask questions.

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