Sometimes I wish we could have "gentlemen's clubs" of the sort that existed in Victorian Britain (not the US strip club version), third-spaces where one could go to read or converse or play cards with other men or even have a meal or a drink. Having social space that's limited to a set of people one knows, more or less, and that has rules on behavior seems like a civilizing influence that's missing today.
> Having social space that's limited to a set of people one knows, more or less, and that has rules on behavior seems like a civilizing influence that's missing today.
You just described a country club, right down to the innate classism and exclusivity rules.
Country club’s are really a subset of this kind of thing and tend to have an overly wide membership to the point where you’re unlikely to know every member. The VFW is another modern take that’s got a very different vibe.
Isn’t the whole point that you get people of similar socioeconomic status? Half the reason expensive things are sometimes nicer is that there’s no massive crowd in those stores.
Male-only country clubs also exist although are slightly more controversial and less common, such as Burning Tree, Garden City, Butler National, Augusta National (until the last ~10 years), Pine Valley (until the last few years).
The unfortunate reality for most of us is that these places are among the most desirable and hardest clubs to be accepted to in the world - and we probably wouldn't get in.
Private clubs have an exemption in several of the key civil rights laws, so they often can discriminate where businesses open to the public could not.
They can run into trouble when they allow the public to use their facilities, or grant membership so freely that they start to seem like they aren't really private.
They may not be able to call themselves male only, but there are many private organizations that are all men. The Augusta national golf course was one for a long time
> Perhaps no club makes its restriction more apparent than Black Sheep. At the end of the club’s lengthy driveway sits a large rock and the internal slogan amongst members is, “No Women Past the Rock.”
No, but just like everywhere else, you can engineer a byzantine set of hoops to jump through so that the only people who "qualify" end up being the "preferred" sort of clientele.
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
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.
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)
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.
Practically every culture on earth (except ours as of 10 minutes ago) had some sort of place for single-sex bonding, which suggests there’s something important to it. Traditional cultures aren’t incel, to the contrary it’s only in modern cultures that mass-scale failures of relations between the sexes seem to arise.
As for bjj, the scenario of the instructor dating a female student and breaking up the gym in the ensuing fallout is a well-deserved trope by now. There are women at my gym and you can make it work if everyone’s bending over backwards to be professional, but it’s obviously Different.
Every culture that treated women equally? Or were there male only spaces because women were seen at 2nd (or 3rd tier people, below the pets?)
I trained at a gym where that scenario happened, people were already leaving because the teacher was an ass in general, played favorites with the male students and created at cliquey environment.
There really isn't anything women can't handle in front of men. Thinking you have some dark thing that cant be said in front of women or that you need to change how you behave is odd and exclusive to you.
No culture treats men and women equally-- they differ in how they treat men and women differently. Just today in my progressive coastal startup, for example, there was a proposal to set up a dedicated ERG for the women employees. In a company where people are routinely pulling 60-80 hour weeks, it was considered a plausible priority to take time aside to especially ensure that the women were feeling comfortable.
Whether or not this proposal is a good idea is not even the point: the point is that it was considered plausible, and hence that not even coastal progressives actually think it desirable to treat men and women equally.
I'm not making any claims about what anyone can or can't handle. I'm simply observing that just about every mixed group ends up adopting female norms of communication. I'm not even saying that's necessarily a bad thing for a mixed group, I think it's to some extent natural and healthy in social settings. In fact taboos that proscribe the ways men may speak in the presence of women are also quite common cross-culturally. But the fact that there is a difference remains.
I used to feel the same way as you but then I discovered I was wasn't really getting on well in female dominated groups after-all. It's all smiles and pleasantries on the surface but you're not one of them and aren't part of their gossip, but can quickly become the subject of it. If they really are trusting you with their gossip and speculations about other members then perhaps you truly can assimilate. There's also talking about sex which women do with each other far more readily than with men.
With my current close friends I get included in far more gossip than I care to be and know the intimate details of past partners, kinks, fantasies etc.
Sigh. Perhaps it's sometimes ok to discount <6% of the male population for the sake of conversational brevity? Are you implying that homosexual men are suffering by not having women at the clubs? They have other reasons to not have women in their spaces. What does your little snarky comment add to the conversation?
Yes, that's true. But I don't know that you're actually scoring a point here, because I do believe that if you take a group of all gay men, and introduce a woman, the group dynamic will change. Not the same change as when you have a group of straight men, or a group of mixed straight and gay men, but it'll change.
And on top of that, I've heard some gay men complain about straight women in their spaces. That's just another example of this phenomenon.
> If you lose the ability to be a normal person whenever
That depends on what "normal" is, and I don't think you or I get to define it.
I mostly hang out in mixed-gender groups, but I absolutely have seen the difference in vibe others in this thread have noted, when I'm hanging out with a group of just other men. Especially when compared to a mixed group that has both single men and single women.
> men are putting these strange rules and requirements on their own selves
I wouldn't call it a "rule" so much as a "phenomenon". It just seems to kinda happen. Not always, and not in every mixed-gender group, but it does happen. I don't think anyone is making up or following any kind of "rules", and I can't control group dynamics or behavior on my own.
> I don't think that's a society issue. I think that's a you issue.
I think this discussion would be more productive without thinly-veiled ad hominem attacks.
The person you're replying to seems to have constructed this elaborate scenario in their head where they're "one of the good ones" and is somewhere between unwilling and incapable of imagining men wanting to spend time with just other men some of the time. Apparently someone wanting this must be lonely, incapable of socializing with women, and offensive to others as a default.
This says a lot about that person, that they can't imagine men socializing any other way. I think they're making excuses for their own bad behavior.
I don't think race matters but clearly culture does. Ukranian or Somali spaces would not be what they are if just anyone could go. Even having to speak English or explain things to outsiders changes the dynamics entirely.
I guess that's true. Seems like loneliness is increased by people's habits of seeking sex, and seeking to talk about sex, and their expectations that others will do that.
Homies that want to smash change to chad mode and suddenly don't want to talk that gay homie shit around the girls. You'd be threatening each other with sloppy toppy, a girl will join and 1-2 guys will instantly turn into businessmen to impress her.
No. It’s a human issue. Some women with a female version of the you problem make the male you problem worse. Why some places can’t be man-free or woman-free to get biology and game theory out of the way?
A mixed group works different socially than a male only group.
That's not because the men are socially incompetent. It's because it's a fundamentally different social situation. Even when everyone is an elite socializer.
I'm afraid you may be the one who needs to learn more about socializing.
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.
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.
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:
//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.
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.
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 recommend everyone watch the series Lodge 49. It's free to watch with ads now.
Not only is a great show that touches on relationships and loneliness and modern alienation with a touch of magical realism and esoterica and alchemy but it focuses on a fraternal (in name only, women are members) order that your grandfather might have been a member of but have disappeared due to rising individualism, rising rents and displacement.
But there's no reason we couldn't start building them again. Not high end exclusive clubs like Soho House but just a place with books and a reasonable membership fee and a bar with cheap drinks for added revenue and occasional "open to the public" events.
There could be ones for software devs, ones focused on philosophy or great literature, ones for musicians or artists.
I've run the back-of-a-napkin numbers and even in expensive cities it doesn't seem impossible if your goal is to just break even and foster a community.
Think the main reason is because real estate is incredibly expensive now. To run some kind of social space and make it financially viable you need to be collecting a significant amount to pay rent and wages.
Only way I can see it working is if the government pays for social spaces. An extension of the library system but more focused on events and socialising rather than being a quiet space for reading.
Actively providing money to clubs would be a tough sell. Grant writing is hard, grant reviewing and auditing is expensive, and there could be a PR nightmare if the government provided money to an "immoral" club or didn't provide money to certain classes of clubs.
I don’t think it would be terribly controversial for councils and local government to just have a building somewhat like a community hall and just let people rent it out for very cheap for whatever social or club events they want.
Freemasonry is hit or miss depending on who you meet and who you hangout with. Liberal freemasonry is even better IMHO because you actively work on yourself. You can choose to stay with men, be in a mixed group, and there are female only Lodges for the women who don't want to be with us stupid men.
I live in a big city where every member ends up knowing other member (male or female) even if your own Lodge is restricted to one sex. It's a lot of fun and I do believe it could be beneficial for a lot of incels.
These still exist in the US but the membership has plummeted. Some examples:
- Freemasons
- Odd Fellows
- Fraternal Order of Eagles
- Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks
- Loyal Order of Moose
We have an Eagle's "aerie" in my little town. It has a nice banquet hall area on the main floor and a member's only bar in the basement with pool tables and a deck that overlooks the river.
In the U.K. there were lots of their places before American style capitalism invaded. Coffee houses predate America as a whole - on both sides of the Atlantic.
There's the Mechanics Institute Library in San Francisco. I used to be a member. If you want to see people sitting around in wing-backed chairs, half asleep, that's the place to go. It's quite a good library, too.
My local library has both quiet areas and social areas, including meeting spaces. There are weekly social events for knitting, second-language practice, seniors, and more.
High school kids go there to work on class projects together, just like I did at the library when I was a teenager.
they had to move off mission around the corner to a backstreet, so there are less mission vagrant rogues trying to sneak in now, and still the hardcore of interesting people.
when i first moved back to the city from overseas, noisebridge was an awesome third place to hang out and hack on stuff while meeting regulars.
I mean, I am a decent person, but somehow I ended up with a key that worked for the the building and the 2nd floor of the old Mission location of Noisebridge by my second or third visit, despite never having been a member or paying dues etc. I got it from someone else who had also gotten it from someone else if I remember correctly. Only members were supposed to have keys, I think? I wasn't shy about the fact I wasn't one, but I didn't flash the key around either. Hopefully they have tightened up on that if it's a recurring issue.
Stuff like getting the key was just part of the scene in SF that you could randomly encounter, like the time I was working security for the American Psychiatric Association trade show at the Moscone Center and the Church of Scientology protested against the conference right outside, then a flash mob counter-protest of anons in Guy Fawkes masks appeared. SF is just weird like that for some people I guess. Maybe it's just me?
> Hopefully they have tightened up on that if it's a recurring issue.
It was a huge issue. Noisebridge has had to do a "reboot" three times now, 2014, 2017, and 2024. The whole place was closed for some time, everything was cleaned out, and members were re-authorized.
Those clubs still exist in London but they're just for the elite to make shady backroom deals with their rich buddies :)
They're really exclusive and they always have been. You and I would not get in, not now and not in the Victorian days. Even 'new money' is usually not ok. You really have to have gone to the right school and have the right family.
Just to challenge that slightly. There is a range of clubs, some are honestly very easy to get into if you end up there for some work event and talk to at least two people. It's the ability to socialize, and lack of clubs focused on new industries that's made them elusive to the new-money (There isn't a National Software Club for example). I'll also knowledge most would run about £1-2k a quarter which is restrictive (by design) cost.
Hmm yes I've seen men's sheds but they weren't actually men exclusive and very topical to making stuff. A bit like a makerspace but less focused on tech and more on woodworking.
I realize that it is silly to tell non-believers to go to church to fix their problems but it’s funny how often people talk about place or group or organization that seems to be missing in society that was fulfilled by houses of worship in the past.
I co-ran a co-working space that focused on relationships, it's really powerful to have spaces that allow introverts a zero effort socializing experience.
We also threw open to the public art shows and parties with drink sponsorships and everything.
What's better than a church environment? A "city gates" environment.
I am not part of the church any longer, a properly run co-working space, not one that tried to emulate soul less corporate America, gives space for the wealthy tech bro and the poor artist to have multi round interaction that both build trust and provide implicit (and sometimes explicit) accountability. Most of us operate in environments where, outside of family and work there is nothing of value to lose, and churches and other places that exhibit ideological ratchet effects aren't great.
The city gates, that's really the best place to be, we far outpunched our startup weight in the city we were in because we built trust more than anything.
I come from a missionary family that has probably planted more churches by number than any other group, one family far outstripping many mission agencies. That experience and family knowledge was absolutely critical to making what we did work.
But in the U.S. I don't think anyone is interested in funding a 3rd places startup, it's sad that the same people who will talk about the power of 100 true fans don't get the power of 100 people in true community and the way that opens up thousands of paths for people to try things they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
That's true, but pretty much every religion beyond certain size focuses on growth and power at all costs, and treats the social function as a sidequest. I hate religion exactly because I see what it does to people's brains. Parents abandon their children "because priest told me to do so".
They exist at either end of the class spectrum. Working Men's Clubs used to be very common around the UK and many still exist. The one near my childhood home is Victorian-era and was recently refurbished. As long as I can remember it had frosted windows. That's now gone and it's been rebranded it as a family-friendly event space. It's basically a member subsidized pub and your drinks should cost less.
You don't have to wish - these literally exist today, both in the US (see link below) and elsewhere. The problem is that they are expensive and hard to get in to.
I am very sad that my local hackerspace seems to eschew any of the social aspects and focuses (at least outwardly from what I can see) solely on entrepreneurship.
Freemasonry cannot be modern by definition, but the closest would be liberal Freemasonry where the main rules are 1. Work on yourself with the help of your brothers and sisters (a bit like zen Buddhism), and 2. Apply the rules of Freemasonry in the outside world (mainly don't be an asshole).
> I feel like our culture has a strong anti-golf bias
Golf, generally, is pretty expensive. It's like minimum $50 for an outing, you need equipment, correct clothes, etc. Some places require membership, often priced intentionally exclusively. It's pretty natural for something exclusionary to get a negative cultural bias.
Oh, and it is a terrible resource hog. You can't fit many people on a golf course at any given time without disrupting gameplay, and all that grass requires a lot of water and maintenance.
> any reason to spend a couple hours outside with my friends sounds amazing
This is, of course, available in many forms that don't involve hitting balls with sticks, but also there are many varieties of ball+stick that satisfy this.
Golfing is an artificial competitive activity that exists in an artificial and manicured version of nature. There is nothing wrong with it if you like the activity, but you can just go for a hike or stroll in a park if you want to be with friends outside.
Japanese tea gardens are pretty artificial and manicured, and they’re awesome. It’s great to have undespoiled natural beauty, and it’s also cool to see what people can do with a landscape.
> Whats the difference of your definition to a pub?
CAMRA's definition includes "Is open to the public without membership or residency" and a bunch more that amount to "does not necessarily serve food" to distinguish from restaurants.
https://eastindiaclub.co.uk/ is a famous one that exists to this date with some of the antiquated rules. Been a few times with a friend who is a member.
That is the exact long-term vision. Isn't that the absolute dream? Have to start a bit decentralized but I would love to eventually get a physical location to have that important third-space.
You can but then you need some other way to gatekeep because a community of trust has to have an inside and an outside. Someone needs to keep people who don’t belong out, for whatever value of “don’t belong” you want to build a community around.
I think any modern version would need to be way more inclusive and not just in terms of gender, but also class and background. The old-school gentlemen's clubs had a pretty narrow membership by design
