So there’s at least one type of men’s only space in the UK; some gay club nights are men-only, and enforce this with registration/membership. Was a bit of a culture shock visiting from Ireland, where, as far as I know, this is not a thing (even the most male-oriented club nights _allow_ women, and there’ll usually be one or two; I’ve never known anyone to have a problem with this).
I’m unsure whether there’s a legal issue here (one thing that comes to mind is that I know the UK at least historically had weird laws about what constitutes public sex, so maybe excluding women allows them to legally have darkrooms or something?) or if it’s just cultural.
That's because gay clubs/bars have ended up chock full of straight women. People claim it's because it's "safer from all the gross men in other places", which may be partially true. But also I believe it's because gay clubs can just be nicer overall, plenty of interesting drinks like cocktails available rather than just beer, more variety in music, etc. I think they may disallow women because for the bi/pan men in the crowd - their behaviour changes when women are present, they get more aggressive, domineering, chest beating. I notice it all the time in queer but non-gay friends constantly.
Which always annoyed me because I've been to a few Soho "gay" bars since and they're just full of straight women/hen dos. Asked for a cocktail..."we don't do cocktails". How the fuck do you call yourself a gay bar anymore then!
I go to a regular meet and one of the places next door is a drag bar, whose entire purpose seems to be to host hen dos. Ugh.
Anecdotally I heard this was because straight-women would prefer these clubs due to less pressure and more fun, which caused straight-men to try get into the clubs just to hit on them.