Why do they need to be male-only to solve the male loneliness epidemic? Why can't men socialize in public spaces in a way that isn't offensive to others?
I say this as a former dude who has spent the vast, vast, vast majority of my life as a man, socializing with men and not-men, in public. I have never had a single issue.
They need to be male only spaces because introducing women to the space fundamentally changes the social dynamic among the men, especially the single men
I have seen this ever since the moment me and my friends hit puberty in high school, to this very day. When a group of men is hanging out they are more relaxed. The moment a woman is in the space the vibe changes
I cannot be the only person who has noticed this
This is a good point. I am a married man. As a woman, my wife cannot give me guy time - hence I love to hang out with my friends (who are all guys) - and I cannot give her girl time - hence she loves to hang out with her friends (who are all girls). The only women I am happy to be friendly with are colleagues (in a professional manner), family and ladies that my wife and I are friends with.
A lot of people baulk at this sort of arrangement/tolerance - but I bet it's quite common.
I'm sure it's common, but I've always hung around in mixed groups, doing whatever, so I'm puzzled and curious what guy time or girl time even is.
You've really never had an attractive member of the opposite sex show up and the girls/guys get all competitive? I'm wondering how that's possible, it happened multiple times a week - a day even - to me in high school and college. I guess always being in mixed groups meant it was always subtly in play.
5 dudes chilling is a different dynamic than 3 guys 2 girls. People who keep insisting it's about some weird need for men to be offensive don't seem to have ever observed basic gender dynamics.(not saying you are, other responders)
Maybe this happened when I was 19.
I haven't observed this sort of thing happening in decades.
Note I mentioned high school and college as the time of these interactions.
That being said it just comes more subtle as people get older or alternatively remove themselves from the dating pool.
You'll note that most people saying this stuff are being extremely non-specific about what it means. My impression is that a lot of what they want to do would be offensive to lots of guys as well. Essentially they want a space to act in a way that women would feel quite threatened by. Not that mixed groups don't already have that as an issue.
You couldnt be more wrong in your guessing. The answer lies in games all women play with both men and women constantly, never being truly honest with words, expecting men to pick up meaning between lines, predict their emotions and so on and on. We have enough shit in our lives already, no need to add more.
Its frustrating and tiring experience for all men, thus the need to vent out somewhere else where these dynamics dont play out semi constantly.
I am pretty sure women see it similarly in reverse although details in dynamics are very different.
As a man I don't recognize that game playing as something all women do. It's just not something I've experienced in my relationships platonic or otherwise with women. Maybe it's a Europe vs. America thing (edit: from your other comments, you seem to be in Europe so not that) or something personal to you and your experience but it sounds very 'incel-adjacent'.
Yep, there's always a strong element of "what opinions, motherfucker" goose comic in these discussions. And we always end up at "tell me you're an incel without telling me you're an incel"
What I've learned is that as an outsider, a group is less likely to be a threat to me (I'm male) if there's at least one women there. Maybe that's because attention is then directed inwards, and that, in turn, might cause the relaxed feeling at the inside to diminish.
>I cannot be the only person who has noticed this
The US marine corps noticed this and it was a huge point of contention (kind of still is).
So you are automatically assuming men are the offenders. This is very much a constructed prejudice. Did you ever consider that men want men-only spaces to avoid being accused and talked down to? While I never visited a mens only place, I totally understand why that would be the rule at some of them.
They don't, and no one is stopping you from opening a gender neutral club.
> offensive to others
Sound like you have issues. It's a club. They meet up to play board games. Maybe you could start a club of people who are offended by everything.
> Why can't men socialize in public spaces in a way that isn't offensive to others?
They can, and thats not the point of having men’s groups and men’s spacing. This only reveals your assumptions and biases.
Sometimes men just want to hang out with other men. I’m a straight man who usually gets along better with women than men, but I still also like spending time with just other men as well. It’s just different. I have no doubt that my presence in a group of women changes the dynamic.
There needs to be some place men can just spend time with other men. Yes, it’s a problem if those men only places become important to business or politics such that it disadvantages women, but there’s got to be something else instead, then.
Women should also have places where they can be together without men.
And there should be a majority of places where men and women can spend time equally.
> There needs to be some place men can just spend time with other men.
This is literally anytime, anywhere though. Do just not meet up with their friends? You can go to dinner, get drinks, go hiking, play sports, bike, ski, sunbathe, play videogames and many more things in single-sex groups without raising an eyebrow. The real classic for men of a certain persuasion from a western cultural POV is golf right?
I think there's some strange cultural hangup I'm missing where the entire place needs to be single-sex.
> Do just not meet up with their friends?
What friends?
Well that's a different issue. Are we really saying men can only make friends in single-sex environments because I think that is trivially untrue?
Why can’t there be some semi-public place where only men, or only women, or only whomever you choose, is allowed? Why can’t that exist?
What you described is unrelated. Yes, people can and do go out and do stuff.
Then just don't go? I personally prefer mixed gender spaces but I can understand why some people might prefer single gender spaces. It doesn't mean they necessarily have "an issue".
Because men and women are different and have mixed and single sex spaces have radically different norms and interaction styles. Given that all respectable mixed institutions default to female interaction styles this is profoundly alienating for men.
If one has never spent any time in all male spaces or has and thinks that men are defective women, like the average male therapist or counsellor this may not be obvious.
Spot on. This is immediately evident at Primary School level, whereby normative female behaviour for that age is seen as the ideal. As psychologist Michael Thompson puts it “Girl behavior is the gold standard in schools. Boys are treated like defective girls".
In the US by the 8th grade, 48 percent of girls receive a mix of A and B grades compared to 31 percent of boys. More tellingly, Boys account for 71 percent of all school suspensions. The gap remains through high school and in college, with females representing nearly 60 percent of all college graduates.
“If you treat girls as the gold standards and boys as defective girls, that’s going to be demoralizing,” Thompson says. “What do elementary and junior high girls always say about boys their age? ‘You are so immature.’ If that’s the norm, then this system is just rigged against the boys.”
There's a wonderful bit in a 2013 Time article which illustrates that this predominant viewpoint is often indelibly coded on the (majority female) teaching staff, to the grave detriment of the male students:
https://ideas.time.com/2013/10/28/what-schools-can-do-to-hel...
//Peg Tyre’s The Trouble With Boys illustrates the point. She tells the story of a third-grader in Southern California named Justin who loved Star Wars, pirates, wars and weapons. An alarmed teacher summoned his parents to school to discuss a picture the 8-year-old had drawn of a sword fight — which included several decapitated heads. The teacher expressed “concern” about Justin’s “values.” The father, astonished by the teacher’s repugnance for a typical boy drawing, wondered if his son could ever win the approval of someone who had so little sympathy for the child’s imagination. ... If boys are constantly subject to disapproval for their interests and enthusiasms, they are likely to become disengaged and lag further behind//
Have you ever seen teenage boys? A lot of them are basically quasi-feral owing to the newly elevated levels of testosterone unleashed on their brains which are still a long way from being fully baked.
I don't know that "girls" remains the gold standard so much as girls are more able to conform to broader behavioral expectations. This is not to say teenage girls are immune from hormonal-driven behavior issues, but it manifests in different ways. I have a 13-yo daughter and let me tell you it's no walk in the park. But it's absolutely not a surprise to me that boys account for the majority of problematic behavior.
This sounds right. It's not like girls are being deemed "the gold standard." Instead, there's an existing set of behavioral expectations, as you put it, and girls (for whatever reasons) just happen to have an easier time conforming to these expectations.
If societal expectations are things like: kindness, respect, agreeableness, calmness, paying attention, not talking back, not fighting, and so on... and girls tend to conform to these while boys tend not to, that doesn't necessarily indicate a conspiracy against boys.
Same reason why women like having women spaces. There certain experiences exclusive to being a male.
There are no women only spaces where I live. Nor were and no one complained. Unless you talk about monastery of toilette.
Example?
Talking about your feelings without fear of a woman getting the ick.
And so what? Given the display of men's feelings w.r.t. to "mixed groups", I (heterosexual male) get the ick about some people here... For me most of it is about the space/relationship where certain things should happen, but I guess scientific misogyny is a thing too.
Why so toxic without understanding (and caring to understand) the other side of the discussion?
Plenty of full explanations in this thread.
Cigar smoking.
I know of an older woman (has grandkids) who smokes cigars at the cigar shop I smoke at. The discussions with "The Boys" are different when she's around.
I'll have to let my HR manager know women can't smoke cigars. She clearly doesn't know, went through a bunch at our last company meeting.
As a general rule men with money can’t behave well around women or at least don’t want to
Men who show off their money. Not all do. But then, some women like men who obviously have money; that was true back when money was invented.