[All these points apply to sex and to gender, so for ease of reading, I’ll just discuss gender]
Gender-exclusive groups are common in many societies, such as men-only and women-only social clubs and casual activity groups like a men’s bowling group or a women’s reading circle.
Sometimes this is de-facto, but sometimes this is enforced by rules or expectations, treating the club as a safe space for airing issues people have with other genders, or avoiding perceived problems with other genders.
I came across this old comment in a garbage subreddit by accident when researching. The topic is Men’s Sheds:
“Here’s the thing. No reasonable person has an issue with women having their own women’s activity groups. The annoying part is that whenever men try to do something similar, that’s a problem. Women either want them banished or demand entry, EVERY time.”
I think their claim is nonsense, grossly exaggerated at best. I also know of many counterexamples of men trying to get into women-only groups (as an extreme case, the Ladies Lounge of the Mona art gallery in Australia was taken to court for sex discrimination, with the creator claiming they would circumvent the ruling by installing a toilet). But nonetheless, I can understand why they feel this way, patriarchal social relations change how most people see men-exclusive spaces vs. women-exclusive spaces.
But my response to their claim is that, I am reasonable and I do have an issue with any group setting up places which discriminate based on gender. These safe places can form as a legitimate rudimentary form of protection, yes, but they maintain and often even promote sexism, and should all be challenged and turned into something better which serves the same purpose.
Of course, I’m limited by my own experiences and perspective, so I’d love to hear your opinions on the topic.
Bonus video: “Why Do Conservative Shows All Look the Same? | Renegade Cut” - a discussion about fake man-caves and sexism.
This is a question we’ve faced in the queer community forever. As LGBTQ people there’s a lot of blur between sex/gender. Bars have gotten into hot water with the community over the years for being sex/gender exclusive.
However, in the instance of a sexual environment, like a bath house or fetish club, is such segregation legitimate? For example, I am solely gay and only interested in biologically male genitalia. I completely support trans men politically but if I am in a sexual situation I am only interested in men with penises. However, my husband loves trans men sexually and finds men with vaginas hot af. So IDK. I guess that if I went to a gay sex club and there were trans men there that’s simply not my particular jam, like there are gonna be other cis gender guys there that aren’t going to be my thing either. But ultimately sexual environments would be the only acceptable segregation I can think of off the top of my head.
Also, note that there used to be an incredibly important annual lesbian music event, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, that ran from 1976 to 2015 that arguably died because of their exclusion of trans women. From 1991 forward the festival, which was on private land, had a trans exclusionary policy that divided the attendees.
Kind of a side note but I want to see peoples opinion. Do boys tend to make friends with boys and girls tend to make friends with girls because that is what is natural? Or is it due to the oppressive nature of our current time?
The latter and “oppressive” is a fully adequate choice of words. These gender-norms are enforced by punishment, ridicule, abuse and exclusion, often leading to latent trauma, emotional blunting and loss of empathy. It’s helps start the cycle of male violence early.
Really young kids don’t care and mingle freely. It’s a learned thing; the latter. Although “oppressive” might be a bit on the strong side.
Sure, they’re okay. Honestly we might be a bit too strict about avoiding them, at this point.
Where it becomes a problem is if you’d like to join whatever group, but the only one available is not open to you. Which happened a lot historically, but is rarer now.
I think their claim is nonsense, grossly exaggerated at best.
Can confirm, in my experience the problem with mancaves is that you pretty quickly want to let women in. There’s no tradeoff, we can not talk about our feelings and make a mess in a mixed gender crowd, too.
Yes, obviously it’s not only okay, but such groups are very necessary and should be publicly funded and protected. However almost solely in the specific case of excluding cis men. For as long as patriarchy exists, safe spaces and protection from the structural and individual male violence are needed. They’ll naturally drop away as they become unnecessary, if capitalism, which fuels patriarchy, is permanently defeated.
“Here’s the thing. No reasonable person has an issue with women having their own women’s activity groups. The annoying part is that whenever men try to do something similar, that’s a problem. Women either want them banished or demand entry, EVERY time.”
Men exclude women because men view women as inferior, women exclude men because men view women as inferior.
As a woman, I don’t tend to care too much about gendered groups. I’m of the opinion that if somebody doesn’t want me there, I don’t want to be there.
Depending on the context of the group, there’s a valid reason for their existence, for example pregnancy groups (probably sex-exclusive though?) as I don’t really see what a male/man would get out of it.
I’m sure similarly valid groups exist for men, but I can’t think of any right now.
I tend to be more okay with women’s only spaces just because they feel safe – due to certain men displaying overt and unwanted sexual desires and seemingly just unable to control themselves, which can be uncomfortable or trigger traumas – so naturally I believe men should be entitled to their own spaces as well.
If the purpose of the group is that they’re sexiest, I honestly don’t know why the opposite gender would want to hang around them anyway.
As ~always with gender and politics, there’s a pretty big gap between what is and what ought.
What is: The people who make and seek out men-only groups have a stereotype of being shitty, sexist people. The stereotypes around women-only groups are a lot weaker and less negative. These stereotypes are not rules, but do certainly lead to some social stigma.
What ought 1: In a better world gender-specific groups might exist for people to find support and connection around their gendered experiences. There’s some experiences that aren’t commonly shared across genders and it can be a lot easier and safer to share with people who you know also have that experience.
What ought 2: In a still better world there wouldn’t be a significant desire for such groups because we are all sensitive and caring enough that such a group doesn’t make sharing meaningfully easier or safer, because it’s already easy and safe.
Not every men’s group is a shitty stereotype. It does seem unacceptably common, though. Not every women’s group is a safe space, and some are just as toxic and abusive as the far-too-common men’s groups. Do we ban them? I don’t think we can. Because women’s shelters need to exist even if men are domestically abused too and never in my fucking life have I heard anyone suggest a battered men’s shelter might even maybe be a good idea. Okay, fine, so violence and safety reasons … Except, shit, not everyone is hetero… A same sex partner can probably find out where women’s shelters are. And men are abused to by their partners, men and women, in alarmingly higher rates than anybody seems to take note of. And what do you do with Trans folks? Because their rights are human rights too and why the fuck do we still need to explicitly say that anymore? sigh
And that doesn’t even begin to cover social groups.
I guess if you’re not an asshole, a bigot, an abuser, or whatever … best you can do when you encounter these things (and you will) is ask yourself whether something gendered is reasonable or not. The answer might be yes, or no, or conflicted either way. I’d like to say that it should be okay if we don’t agree about the answers. I’d like to say that people should be able to accept that the other person is making a good faith effort to determine the relative “okayness” in an individual case with an individual perspective. Sadly, we humans seem not to be wired to do that. I’m just gonna continue thinking gendered stuff is pretty dumb on the whole with a couple of conflicted views on a couple of specific things because I know I don’t live in a perfect world.
Not every men’s group is a shitty stereotype.
determine the relative “okayness” in an individual case
Well, yeah?
OP asked the question in general terms, I answered in general terms. With more specific information you can make a more specific judgement. That’s why I said “stereotype, not rule” and separated is vs ought?
I don’t need to list out every possible reason someone might want a gendered group to show that there is a valid reason. Instead just give one. In fact I avoided talking about domestic abuse shelters exactly to avoid this sort of ‘whataboutism’.
As a cis man, I think very lowly of men-only groups. Usually (from my admittedly limited experience) if a group goes out of their way to identify as “men-only,” the people there tend to be the kind of men who are very misogynistic and generally insufferable to be around, even for other men. Any group genuinely focused on the hobby or culture they claim to identify with wouldn’t really care about your gender.
Women-only groups though, I tend to sympathize with and respect a lot more, and IMO they are the symptom of the West being a heavily male dominated society rather than an innate desire among women to be exclusionary. If the world didn’t revolve around men and had genuine gender equality, there probably wouldn’t be a need for many women only groups either, but that’s unfortunately not the world we live in.
I can’t really speak on trans/nonbinary exclusion though because I have no personal experience being on the business end of it. I try to only participate in groups where they don’t care about your gender to begin with.
I was in a men’s group once for a few sessions, we talked about everything from anger issues, how to work on improving ourselves, how to handle rough parts of it relationships etc.
It was very nice, we were all very different people with different backgrounds and problems and I believe we all got a lot out of just opening up in a group like this.
This was hosted by the Swedish organisation Man which exists to help men with all the issues modern men are facing, hoping to combat toxic masculinity.
Personally I think a mixed group would’ve worked for me but I am pretty sure some of the people, especially the ones with violent history, felt more secure in a men’s only scenario.
On the flip side, I think men could use more men’s groups because male loneliness is problematic. Women don’t want to feel responsible for men’s loneliness (rightly so), so the natural solution is men need to do better at making friends with men. The problem is doing it in a healthy way
That said, I would suggest the solution is hobby groups without gender exclusion. Like carpentry, basketball, knitting, dance, ballet. Hobbies seem to self select.
Most of my hobbies are female dominated in my conservative area.
good point, but I fear that just creating male only spaces will not solve the problem with male loneliness. as can be seen in x-pill communities.
what men need to heal male loneliness is learn about how patrairchy has shaped their fathers & generations beyond, and how they haven’t learned to approach emotions in a healthy way.
a good book I HIGHLY recommend men to read is Bell Hooks - “The will to change”
she explains what damage patriarchy did to men and how to access and feel emoti8ns fully
I wish for all men to be seen fully in your entire vulnerability. we’re waiting for you.
I agree. I think hobbies are a good middle ground and neutral.
It would be nice if men wrote more books like that. The only men who would listen to a women tell them how to change are probably not the target audience.
I can only say be the change you want to see. It creates a chain reaction that will eventually reach men that wouldn’t touch the book.
even a small step in the right direction of confronting patriarchy will have powerful results.
I think there’s a parallel with other social clubs, too.
My medication kicked in while writing this and it shows. TLDR: in Germany, there are various social clubs including international cultural exchange groups (generally composed of immigrants/children of immigrants and Germans in a roughly 2:1 ratio) and clubs based around specific countries open only or mostly to immigrants from those or neighboring countries (whether openly or simply through convention, selection bias, and social pressure). The former are fun and the latter tend to be toxic unless there’s currently a large wave of immigration/refugees from the country they represent in Germany, in which case they can help coordinate resources and support, as well as help people deal with culture shock and the trauma of needing to flee their home country.
I’m an American immigrant in Germany. I love international groups and being able to bond with people about dealing with German bureaucracy as a non-native. I have zero interest in American emigrant groups.
In international groups, we do make fun of Germany, but it’s not mean spirited. We also commiserate about the actively negative aspects of living in Germany as an immigrant. In American groups, I suspect it would turn into U-S-A chants or something similar.
International groups here welcome Germans as a rule, whereas for groups for specific nationalities, it tends to be limited to people who can speak the language.
There’s a real need served by national groups for brand new immigrants who are overwhelmed by everything being different (often significantly more different than Germany is for an American), and they’re great for creating a sense of community that can be helpful for short term immigrants (though they can hamper long term integration).
I suspect I’ll warm up to American groups as a way to give new immigrants a crash course on German culture if we get a wave of American refugees in the next couple of years, because those are the demographics (large groups of people temporarily displaced from the same country who all come at once) that tend to benefit from these type of groups.
I’ve been told that national groups for Arab countries tend to be full of either bitter, unpleasant people and/or gay people and blatant alcohol drinkers, because everyone else just meets at the mosque. Although given that I have no first hand experience and the person telling me about it only has experience with a handful of cities, it may not be accurate for the rest of the country.
Is it problematic? yes. Is it evil? no.
As long as these gender-exclusive spaces don’t preclude people from participating in wider society, it’s fine. I can live just fine knowing I’m not welcome in womens safe spaces. I think most women are okay with not being invited to the boys weekend.
Just overall this seems like a non-issue. Where I draw the line is things like, men not letting women into certain jobs, or barring them from voting, etc. Basically if you prevent people from participating in society in some way. That has nothing to do with people wanting their own spaces.
This is pretty much where I stand. I don’t think gender segregation should exist but I don’t think it’s high on the list of things I want to dedicate energy to fighting. If you don’t want me on your hike I probably don’t want to hike with you anyway
I think the bigger problem is groups that aren’t explicitly gender-segregated but which are so hostile to ‘unexpected’ genders that they end up being segregated anyway. That’s the sort of thing we should be trying to eliminate as much as possible. And I think that’s much more common with men’s hobby groups than women’s but I’ve never been a man so I can’t speak from experience as a man trying to get into something female dominated.
Having been a man my whole life, I have never struggled to get into any female-dominated hobby group etc. It’s not an issue whatsoever.
Maybe female-dominated friend groups, but those usually contain more men than their male-dominated counterparts.
Some men just reaaaally wanna portray themselves as victims of gender discrimination.
By most measures, I’m a pretty stereotypically “manly” guy, and you can say pretty much the same thing about most of my male friends.
I’ve never really felt as though a woman being present in any way impeded anything we were doing. If anything it improved things in a “the more the merrier” kind of way. As long as they’re ok with the cigar smoke, fart jokes, having to pee outside, etc. anyone is welcome to participate in our bullshit.
But I do feel like we can get in the way of women bonding and venting it the ways they need and want to. The old “it’s not about the nail” kind of thing.
And of course, there’s a whole lot of guys who are just dangerous toxic assholes who probably shouldn’t be allowed to be around women in general, but trying to figure out which ones can and can’t be trusted is a tall order and it’s a lot easier to just say “women only.”
So I don’t really see much point in men-only spaces, but I do see it for women-only spaces.
There’s some exceptions, sure, like men who have certain kinds of trauma that involve women may need some safe places to work that out. And it’s not that women can’t also be dangerous, toxic assholes, but in terms of numbers, severity, and actual risk, things are kind of on a different level than with men, so it’s easier to deal with that on a case-by-case basis.
What does it’s not about the nail refer to?
I know it as a reference to this video.
In my marriage this is often reversed. I find myself telling my wife, sometimes, “It’s not about the nail!”
Sure, of course they are.
I’ll even go so far as to say that even more fine grained groups are okay. What becomes a problem is when every group excludes people that really shouldn’t be.
You get a chess club, why the fuck can’t a woman join? Right? Calling it a men’s club is just exclusionary for no purpose. Even the girl/boy Scout divide was pointless in any real sense, and was a missed opportunity for those scouts to have guidance on how a scout is supposed to treat others.
Hell, when it comes right down to it, even a specific cis organization is fine, just the way trans specific ones are. The problem, again, is when a club is exclusionary just for the sake of it.
We all have aspects of our lives that aren’t shared by people with other genders and/or types of genitals. There’s struggles and discrete experiences that a trans man can have that I never will, and vice versa.
But, again, once it ceases to be about that kind of specificity, it starts being bigotry in disguise and needs to fuck right off. Ain’t no good reason women shouldn’t be allowed into things like community action groups. A gender division there is just pointless and stupid. If they also exclude trans men, it’s as bad (maybe even worse).
Hell, the masons are full of shit in that regard. Fraternal orders are hypothetically okay, but since when have the masons actually been about men sharing the unique aspects of life that men share? It’s just exclusionary bullshit (and I’ve seen it from the inside, so I know it’s utter bullshit). They’re the best example of how not to be a gender based organization.
I’m not saying that men shouldn’t be able to gather and just hang out. We should, as should women. There really is a different vibe, and there’s no way around that. But once you start organizing that on a bigger scale, you have a different threshold to meet.
Since, historically, most of the men’s organizations not only excluded women, but actively served to continue oppression of women, being a de facto patriarchal enforcement group, those groups get the worst attention. They weren’t really men’s groups, they were power control groups that men only could use to gain, maintain, and exploit control. That’s why there’s pushback on them, not the fact that they were/are gendered.
A lot of these groups might not be as gender exclusive as they may appear?
I looked up our local mens shed and membership is not gender restricted. The objects of association are focussed on issues related to men, but membership is not restricted. I suspect that this is fairly typical amongst mens sheds in Australia.
There are Dads groups and Mums groups, and these are also not very exclusive. I’m a cis-male and attended a “mums group” with our new born twins. Yes it was literally called a mums group. I felt welcome, although at one point I left the room when I felt as though the conversation was headed towards the physical effects of pregnancy and birth on mothers, just because I didn’t want anyone else to feel uncomfortable.
I can see that a group which excludes a gender could develop a toxic culture, but I don’t think gender exclusive groups are necessarily bad because of that risk.
“Here’s the thing. No reasonable person has an issue with women having their own women’s activity groups. The annoying part is that whenever men try to do something similar, that’s a problem. Women either want them banished or demand entry, EVERY time.”
My rpg club took the incdusivity road in the 2010, and is now a very inclusive/diverse place. We do have the blue haired enbies that riqht winger hate, and some old players who after acouple of beer starts complaining about RPG becoming woke (An inclusive place means they’re welcome too)
We do have a couple of women only group and a point someone launched a men only table. While we had one of the old player complaining about the women only game, no blue haired enby complained about the men only game. So I have the impression that this whole women only space are OK, men only space aren’t is some bullshit.
Note that, this worked becaused the gender specific game include people identifying as this gender, are the exception, and have a justification. It’s not I don’t like wo•man so I want only a gender but * I want a game exploring masculinity/feminity and therefore will limit the cast gender*
This is dancing around the Karl Popper paradox of tolerance, but it sounds like your RPG club would draw the line somewhere and kick out someone acting blatantly disrrspectful.
It sounds like in this specific case, men wanting a male only group would be in a minority, so it makes sense that women and non binary folx wouldn’t feel disturbed by that. Vs. a men-only bar that all the business people go to or something, where exclusion would be the group in power enforcing their power.
That last sentence hits pretty hard. Like why would anyone want to be involved with something they don’t understand and/or care about?
LGBTQ+ Men’s Groups do exist. You know that right?
They are open to trans masc also.
The issue is generally for Men’s Groups which are focused on cishet but “accepting” (begrudgingly) of queer folks.
there are women only spaces for our protection and safety… (which is why we’re open to trans people as well)
there are men only spaces because they want to exclude women / maintain their power (fraternities, lodges)
it is VERY important that humans today learn this difference.
LGBTQ+ Men’s Groups do exist.
They are open to trans masc also.
The issue is generally for Men’s Groups which are focused on cishet but “accepting” (begrudgingly) of queer folks.
yeah that last point you mention is huge. thank ya
Can you give an example for when those safe spaces add more value than for example making it a feminist only space where feminist men are welcome as well? In my experience feminists spaces attract very few men anyways.
sure: when (and that is quite often unfortunately) women who seek these spaces have been abused by men repeatedly and can’t risk another trauma trigger.
and feminist men know where they’re welcome. so it’s rarely (in my own experience never) truly feminist men who want to join those spaces because they understand boundaries.
Cause not all men will be genuinely there for women’s protection?
I’d also say that there wasn’t an issue with men only space to discuss testicular cancer, say.
Not all women will be at feminist spaces for women’s protection either so it’s important to remove people from a safe space whenever they make the space unsafe. I’m open to the idea of women only spaces if they serve a function but in practice the most common function I have seen them be used as is for enforcing gender norms and excluding trans and nonbinary people.
Most queer spaces make a point to not police on queerness because queer people get excluded so often from gender exclusive spaces. Policing on ideology prevents that issue entirely and doesn’t make the space less safe. It actually makes the space safer of it.
I’d also say that there wasn’t an issue with men only space to discuss testicular cancer, say.
Why wouldn’t trans women be welcome at such spaces?
It was just an example, perhaps not the best one.
Anyone who can get testicular can show up.
The point is that gender is not binary and that there will always be people who will get excluded for no reason when you try to define a boundary for exclusion.
“I’m open to the idea of women only spaces if they serve a function”
- who asked though? these spaces are for healing and safety and those who need to heal and recharge make the rules. we dont need your okay to create space the way we need it.
- that doesn’t prevent other/additional groups forming which ALSO include men, any queer folks, nb, trans.
and those people know that.
so what exactly is the problem with women only safe spaces?
I’m speaking of my experience of being trans nonbinary and having been discriminated against under the guise of gender exclusive spaces. Cis women have a long history of excluding trans and nonbinary people from ‘women only’ spaces so excuse me for being sceptical of the concept.
Removed by mod
You sound like a terf.
The misuse of AGAB language to exclude trans women from women-only spaces is just transphobia dressed up in “woke” language. “Assigned <gender> At Birth” is a verb. It is something that happened to trans people coercively. It is very frustrating to see cis people weaponize this term that they don’t understand to just do slightly different sounding transphobia. If a space is women only but excludes trans women, then it’s just an admission that the group does not see trans women as “real” women. If a women only space wants to exclude all nonbinary people for whatever reason, that’s fine, but this “AFAB-only” schtick is very transparent and it would be refreshing if those groups would just be honest about their transphobia instead of playing this silly language game that they pretend is still inclusive.
