These people still want their cake and to eat it.
When men wonder why women won’t just let them have their cosy little clubs in peace, one answer is that we fear the mentality those cosy little clubs can sometimes produce. Which brings us to the defiantly all-male Garrick Club, and the list of members published this week by the Guardian.
Okay, anyone see the hypocrisy on display here? It is not okay for male only spaces, but if a man identifying as a woman wants to enter a female only space that is not oaky? Actually, it isn’t. I firmly believe in the principle of single sex spaces, but I am consistent – that it applies equally to both sexes. Women should have their female only spaces and men can have their Garrick club. Goose and gander.
The classic gentlemen’s club defence is that it’s just more relaxing to socialise without the opposite sex around; that they’re little different from a girls’ night out or a men’s Sunday five-a-side game. That might be more convincing, however, if the average girls’ night out involved hitting the prosecco with a couple of cabinet ministers, a swath of senior judges, the head of MI6, several A-list actors and a monarch.
So what? Irrelevant. The principle stands. If they want their gentlemen’s club, they should have one in a free society. It is one of the basic civil liberties – freedom of association. Although, to be fair, I wouldn’t want to join, and I’m edging on quoting Groucho Marx here, so I’ll refrain. The rest of the article is nudge, nudge, wink, wink conspiracy bullshit, mixed with the usual Guardianista envy and spite.
The freedom to exist of the Garrick club is as essential as the existence of female only spaces.
Let women in to a male-only space or workplace and they will invariably want it changed to suit them. That’s what they do. Childcare, time off to look after kids, time off for PMS, flowers, whatever. I don’t know what happens to men entering a female space, because those men must be crazy anyway.
My wife belongs a women only running club, there is a women only room at the gym. Nobody cares. That seems to be the thing with Guardian columnists, we could be living in a perfect, idyllic paradise and they would find something to complain about.
For people who never stop banging on about (mostly imagined) ‘injustice’ and ‘fairness’, they sure do seem to be unable to actually recognise them when they are right under their noses….
Near me, there is a grammar school only for girls (95% non-white pupils because there is something in that culture that puts education to the fore).
My “leftie” friends who teach there don’t find anything wrong with it. I’m sure they would think different if it was a boys only school.
I put leftie in quotes because their alleged leftiness does not quite match how they live their private lives. Quite normal for leftists.
I think I’d let Trans Men loose on them – to hell with them. Charlotte Proudman in particular may be the sole person alive today more intrinsically evil than Richard Murphy.