A Baptist News article about Men-Only Christian gyms got me thinking about how some men want a safe space, by which they mean a space free of women.
Conservatives love to shit on the idea of safe spaces — colleges, classes, groups, cons — that don’t tolerate harassment, bullying, hate speech, intimidation, etc. What’s the matter with these liberal wimps? Can’t they exist in the real world? They are, however, very fond of the idea of safe spaces for themselves. As I put it almost a decade ago, “they want the entire world, or all the parts they might use, to be ‘safe.’ And ‘safe’ doesn’t mean ;no death threats, no harassment, no bullying’ it means the absence of anything and everything they dislike. Women. Blacks. Latinos. Gays. Atheists. Muslims.”
Celeste Davis has pointed out that for many men, their homosocial bonds with other men are more important than their relationships with women; they don’t like women and don’t want to be around them. And by “don’t want to be around them,” I mean they don’t want women in sight (possible exceptions: wait staff, family, girlfriends, but not consistent exemptions). Not in their workplace. Not in their online discussions. Not at their sports events. Sometimes they offer flimsy justifications — they can’t complain about you harassing or discriminating against them if they’re not there! — but they often don’t even bother.
Misogynist Warren Farrell, for instance, has declared men in IT are perfectly justified in not wanting women coworkers: “The less safe the environment is for men, the more they will seek little pods of safety like the tech world.” I admire his chutzpah in making a multibillion dollar industry sound like a treehouse some boys erected in the backyard.
As for sports, reporter Julie DiCaro has talked about how men go ballistic hearing her read sports news on the radio — they go to sports to be away from women, dammit! Economist Stephen Moore — misogynist, alleged deadbeat dad and adulterer — had a similar meltdown when a basketball game had a woman referee. He’s also prone to rants about how co-ed games similarly impose on all men, and coed soccer in schools is traumatizing generations of boys. Why must women pollute everything with their girl cooties?
The story about men-only gyms includes a quote from one gym founder that it was just too hard to coexist with women running around the gym stark naked (which, obviously, isn’t what the women were doing). “I had to choose between honoring the Lord, honoring my wife, and guarding my eyes, or training my body. So I quit four gyms.” As the reporter says, there’s no suggestion that he has any duty to honor the women by not seeing them as a piece of meat or by keeping his lust for them in check; it’s his wife that matters. I think this reflects the idea that men’s attraction to women isn’t something they feel as much as something women do to them. Consider the Pence rule, the idea a man should never be alone in an office with a female subordinate or have lunch with one. To avoid scandal. To avoid temptation. To avoid sexually harassing her. Somehow the point of this policy is not that the man can’t control himself, it’s that women are too tempting.
The thing is, as someone observed online recently (I don’t have the link), men are capable of behaving decently. They are capable of being better than the bear (it occurs to me that references to “choose the bear” may look very weird a decade from now. I’m still going to make them). We know because they can treat other men decently, with loyalty, respect, consideration and sympathy. Not always — men gender-policing other men is a thing — but frequently. They can do the same to women, if they choose.
As for male-only spaces, men absolutely have the right to get together for a boy’s night out, for the big game or to have a private guys-only D&D group/cigar club/science club. This does not translate into a right to have anywhere they want to be turned into a no-women-allowed space; guys hanging out at their home is one thing, a bar (or restaurant or sports arena) that bars women is usually illegal.
No Chicks! has more consequences than misogynists admit. The Pence rule, for instance, women out from mentoring sessions, building connections with their boss or having any sort of private. As former Facebook exec Sheryl Sandburg says, if a leader insists on the Pence rule, they should give up on closed-door meetings or one-on-one lunches with anyone, male or female (or intersex for that matter). It’s the only fair way.
Case in point, while working on Undead Sexist Cliches (the book) I came across a story in Harvard Business Review. A man and a woman joined the same investment firm with roughly equivalent qualifications. Suddenly the guy rocketed ahead and acquired all kinds of high-powered clients. Why? It turned out the all-male partners had invited him to play in their all-male racquetball games after work. During one match they’d mentioned a nonprofit that needed a financial manager and suggested he volunteer — lots of important people on the board so he’d make good connections. They’d been rights. The woman was never invited to hang out the same way and never got that kind of tip. That’s why gender segregation matters and why DEI is needed. The partners weren’t consciously trying to give the guy a leg up over the woman but it happened anyway.
I also think segregation matters because it sets up a barrier between men and women that shouldn’t be there. It furthers the idea that women don’t belong in public or to be treated as equals. Not having coed sports cuts off the chance to build male/female friendships (for many misogynists that’s a win). Men who stick to a guys’ only gym for fear of their own lust may never learn to see an attractive woman as anything but The Other, The Temptations, The Vessel of Sin. .
Segregation also matters because it makes male/female relations worse. The men who go to a guys-only gym will probably keep seeing women as The Other, The Temptation, The Danger. It won’t help them learn to see them as people. To paraphrase Fred Clark, assuming men haven’t reached the point where they’re an actual threat, they’d be healthier going bowling with women. Or performing in community theater. Or playing D&D or chess. Bridge the gap. Don’t seal it up tighter.
