Love the thread title
1. Golf isn't a men-only sport! Like almost every other sport with a history it was once almost exclusively for men due to women being seen culturally as glorified cattle incapable of any interesting activities, however there's nothing particularly inherently manly about it. And on the name:
http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/golf.asp
Let's put that one to rest.
2. It's a shame there aren't more girls active in this thread yet as I'm very poorly qualified to give the female perspective given my infamously ambiguous personality. For those who don't firmly believe I'm a man though I'll give it a go.
When I see "girls only" establishments, be they bars, railway carriages or anything else, I find there are two main categories. Some are there not because girls want to be around other girls at all, but because they want to be away from men. Specifically horny, single, straight men who think they are more attractive than they actually are. You would think this would be a tiny, irrelevant minority, but they're actually everywhere and extremely aggravating, turning relaxing walks into terrifying ordeals and generally completely ruining girls' days. I'm sure there are plenty of girls who are the same but I do know none of my male friends has ever complained about it happening to them.
To touch on the gender balance issues I will say that in this country today I feel men and women are about even when it comes to career and educational prospects. That's cool. Still, in terms of social standing it still feels very much like we're living in a man's world. How am I made to feel when I go outside my house?
Like a piece of meat.
I know this is a very melodramatic thing to say, and believe me I'm not attractive (imagine an unfriendly-looking school dinner lady rather than Scarlett Johansson) but honestly, not a week goes by when I am not harassed in the real world by a horny member of the opposite sex who thinks I am desperate to go out with him for some unfathomable reason. I'm not just talking about being asked out and declining, I'm talking about men who follow me home, follow me to work, follow me to shops, buy me presents, send me presents, tell me to leave my husband, turn up at 1am at my front door crying that I won't go out with them and saying they'll kill themselves if I don't - it's ridiculous! Thankfully most men are sane, or gay, or taken, so it's not every single day but if even ugly women get treated like this so often by our society it's no wonder some have to hide away. In my case I like staying at home anyway so it isn't so bad. If I wanted to go out to a bar I'd assume endless harassment would be part of the deal.
I'm sure most "women only" organisations would welcome gay men, taken men, and naturally men with basic respect for other humans. It's very difficult to weed out the horny, annoying type though - nobody readily admits to being one. So the decent males end up unfairly excluded as part of the efforts to allow the pieces of meat some freedom from being stalked and bothered by the hungry wolves.
It can be seen online as well. Make a female character in any popular online game and try to play it properly; see how long you last before punching your desk. You'll either be harassed and called a man(?) if your avatar isn't cute or followed around and "helped" so much you can't actually enjoy the game. I used to play a game called Nexus which had a marriage system. Being married had no benefits except that you could teleport to your spouse (pointless unless you were friends who played together and wanted to cheaply farm a certain dungeon). For some reason, just like in real life the predominantly male population of the game were obsessed with getting the "...is married!" flag in their profile and ran around asking every female character in sight to be their bride. It was so bad that in the end I made a second account and married
myself so that I could play the game in peace. Why do people act like this to the opposite sex?
Thanks to the attitudes of a lot of men towards women, being mistaken for a male suits me perfectly.
The second type of "girls only" place confuses me and is I think closest to this mens club concept. Some girls enjoy banding together with other girls to chat about girly things. The only example of this I can think of (they're quite rare) is a link someone hilariously sent me a while ago, mistakenly believing it would be something I would want to do:
http://londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk/
This could also be linked to the first type as female geeks are a highly prized commodity amongst the single male geek community and we do suffer a lot of attention for it, so there's probably still some element of avoiding creepy stalkers to it. From the design of the site though I can only assume part of it is that some women simply prefer talking to other women without men butting in with their unwelcome XY chromosomes. All of my friends bar one are male (and the one female is a devout lesbian) so I can't really understand it, sorry. I enjoy hanging out in male-heavy forums such as this one because I feel more at home.
Perhaps there's also potentially an aspect of guys getting riled that women arrange these "no boys allowed!" groups and making their own clubs in a throwback to old ways to get even. A friend of mine once complained that a local club of his gave free drinks to girls - they do that so that people like him have more girls there to chat up and don't have to sit around in a room full of other men! It seems as though it favours the women on the surface but there's definitely a bonus for the men looking to meet some as well. I imagine the base motivation is entirely for the mens' benefit in this case and the women are being lured in like mice to a trap.
Another topic I think links into the remarks I made earlier is how utterly unhealthy the attitude of many heterosexual men and women to the opposite sex is in this country at the moment. I don't know why, but we seem to have forgotten entirely how to treat the opposite sex for the most part. Male-dominated forums are full of derogatory, incorrect comments about women and how awful they are and I'm sure the converse is true wherever women congregate online. Relationships are often seen as unpleasant things which ruin a person's freedom and individuality. I wouldn't be surprised to find that a lot of straight people actually strongly dislike the opposite sex on some level, however contradictory that sounds.
[At this point in typing Rui went to play Tekken 6 and completely forgot what she was talking about.]
Back on the original topic, I have absolutely no idea what men at these men-only clubs do either, though my imagination would probably make them blush. Aside from the issues touched on above though I think there's a prevailing attitude amongst 'old boys' that women are annoying, distracting, poor at sports/conversation/thinking and generally just ruin everything by existing.
It doesn't really bother me if they want to make "no girls allowed!" clubs just because they like chatting to other super-manly men; chances are I wouldn't want to be in the same club as that kind of chap anyway so it suits both of us. Same with the gender-opposite version for super-girly girls. Wouldn't catch me dead there.
By the way, I asked my heterosexual male husband this question as he walked in to help collate more answers and here was his response:
"I think men go to men-only clubs to avoid the type of woman like my mother who won't stop nagging and phoning me all the time!"
So there you go. Now I'll know why if he starts disappearing at the weekends.
It's time to roll out this great old comedy sketch as a reward to anyone who actually got through my ramble. It seems appropriate at this point:
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R
