This post has clearly brought up a lot of interesting discussion. I just want to add my thoughts...

I never thought of myself as someone who would benefit from male-only spaces as I tend to not like men, but in my mid 20s I started going to bars and clubs oriented towards gay men because I was exploring my sexuality.

I found that often these places have a strong sense of community and camaraderie that I have grown to see as quite sacred. Part of this sense of community is rooted in a shared experience of our gender identity and sexual identity.

Sometimes having women in these spaces could ruin the vibe and sometimes having women in these spaces had no negative effect or was even positive. It really depends on the attitude of women coming into those spaces. Are they there to gawk? Are they there to seek community?

If you made a blanket rule banning women I think it would be very detrimental. For example there are trans men who havent come to terms with this yet, and cutting them out of a space like this is bad.

It would also be disingenuous to claim only women were the ones ruining the vibe. Some men are creeps, controlling, judgmental etc.

To me the important thing isn't that we ban non-men from entering into the space and say it's a men-only place. That excludes people who would be good to have there and doesn't guarantee you remove all of the bad people from coming. But I do think it's important to have spaces that we say are for men. This is a place for men that caters to men and if are not a man don't expect it to cater to your needs.

It's like if you have a Mexican restaurant in the United States oriented towards serving Mexican customers. You can go there even there even if you're not Mexican, but it's disrespectful to get angry if people don't speak English well.

There are always both men and women, who, upon finding out that a space exists that isn't for them decide to try and enter those spaces out of protest. I think in most cases it's probably best to let these people in. Either they will acclimate to the culture or they will get bored and stop going eventually. I know that this will make the space less safe or comfortable feeling for some people, but there's literally no way to have community without also having people be part of that community that are sometimes unsafe or uncomfortable to have around.

Gender exclusive groups are OK when there is a legitimate reason. Unfortunately it just so happens that women-exclusive groups have a legitimate reason very often, which is usually "I don't want to be hit on in every activity I do".

Why are there women only career events? Because many women experience going to "normal" career events, have nice conversations, thinking they made a good business connection just to be asked out on a date and ghosted when they decline. They don't get the same benefits out of "normal" events as men do.

Why are there women only gyms? Because women want to do sports without being hit on regularly.

Now you could say "Well, but that's a problem of some men not sticking to the rules. Just enforce the rules." But the problem is, the rules aren't being enforced, women aren't taken seriously or just told to suck it up, that's part of life. You're in a public space so it's OK for a man to ask you out. To which the women's reaction is: "Well, then I'd rather do X in a private space where there aren't any men who could hit on me."

As long as there are struggles that men face exclusively it's totally ok to have men only groups. The problem:

1. men do not face the problem of being put in uncomfortable situations by women almost anywhere they go, so they have less topics or activities where they feel like they need a men's only group. For most topics/activities men can go to a mixed-gender group and have the same experience as they would in a male-only group. Women can't.

2. a lot of men's groups do not form around "we want to address a typical male problem" but "we have prejudices about women being bad at x" or "we just hate women".

And lastly historically the reason why women wanted to join male-only groups was because those groups were often used to make decisions and policies. Business is being made in golf clubs and was made in "gentlemen's clubs". Women wanting to join those wasn't about playing golf. Sure, we can have a women's club to play golf. It was about being left out of the informal decision making process, the deal making. In my personal experience women are more likely to discuss work matters at work with everybody and at any "women only" outing with colleagues work was hardly a topic. Whereas when it happened that men went drinking with "just the boys" the next day important decisions had been made and suddenly Mark was in charge of the new project. Just my personal experience and I'm not saying it can't happen the other way around in female dominated fields.

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.

Since this part of the premise is obviously incorrect, there is no point in discussing it further

Yes and I don't care about the rest of the culture war.

My anecdotal 2 cents:

I was in boyscouts and I think it was a space to develop positive masculinity, and to learn things by looking up to older boys who had been through the same experience. I think girls being present would have changed the dynamic, because teenage boys act differently and talk about different things when around teenage girls.

Now that being said I’m certain not everyone in boyscouts developed positive masculinity. Boyscouts is far, far less uniform than people seem to think. There were 2 troops in my home town that were wildly different.

But at least from my anecdotal experience, Boyscouts was a good thing that benefitted from being a boys-only experience, and I wonder how it has changed now that girls can join boyscout troops.

At my university there are CS clubs specifically for women because only like 1% of the CS students in both classes and clubs are female

I don’t think there is a one size fits all answer. The reason why women’s groups exist is because most of history has been men’s only clubs. Don’t need to make a space for that since it’s normalized.

But, as empathy and respect starts to grow in modern society, those spaces may not be needed.

I’m a fan of letting others individual organizations decide for themselves.

That is especially true for sports. I know trans sports is a complicated topic. There are some sports that give men an advantage and some that women are more suited for. There are others with no statistical advantage. I think you need to let experts in those fields make those calls bc they know what is safer for the players than I do. (assuming they aren’t just prejudice of course)

Downvoted you for this stunning example of cultivated ignorance:

I think their claim is nonsense, grossly exaggerated at best.

One only needs to look at the scouts of America to see this in play.

Boy Scouts were sued to open their ranks to girls. That suit won, forcing them to open their org to girls.

Girl Scouts were then sued for the flip example - to open their ranks to boys. The suit was almost immediately thrown out for “misogyny”.

After that “victory”, the then-head of the Girl Scouts admitted in private and off the record that she would rather destroy the org in its entirety - essentially razing it to the ground and permanently locking up the name “Girl Scouts” from being used by anyone else - before admitting a single boy.

Now, because they have both boys and girls, the Boy Scouts have tried to drop “boy” from the name, to be called only “Scouts”. This precipitated another lawsuit from the Girl Scouts in that dropping that part of the name will only accelerate their own membership decline.

You literally cannot make this sh*t up.

Men’s-only spaces across the country, like private gyms, are being attacked from all sides on the claim that their very existence is “misogynistic”, and yet service-identical women’s-only spaces in the same city are immune from those same “rules” under the claim that any attempt to apply those same rules to them is also “misogynistic”.

One of the best ways to uncover bigotry is to flip the term in contention and see if it reads any different after that from before. If it does, you’ve found a bigoted pattern in play.

True equality reads identically regardless of how the term in contention is flipped.

Edit:

I have zero issue with women’s only spaces. They are needed. But FFS you cannot eat your cake, and have it, too.

Real equality can only be achieved by applying the same rules equally. If women are to be allowed to have their own women’s-only spaces, men must also be allowed to have their own men’s-only spaces.

Hence the term, equality. Because if things aren’t equal, why even use that word? You might as well call it for what it truly is - anti-male gender bigotry.

Everyone deserves a safe space. And for a lot of women, that space shouldn't have men. I'm a middle class, cis, white guy, almost everything is a safe space for me. It's crazy people get offended when they are like me and someone won't let them into their club.

As long as the discrimination isn't used to hurt people but protect the interests of the group I think it's fine.

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.

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?

“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.

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.

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.

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.