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Comment by monksy | Hacker News Reader

I think we're starting to hit a critical moment with this.

As men we have an unbelievable amount of expectation on our reactions, communication, behavior, past behavior, and others behavior. (Their friends and their partners)

On top of all of this: Men spaces have been mostly eliminated.

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"Men spaces have been mostly eliminated."

An organization that was once called "Boy Scouts" is no longer catered only to young boys. And yet the Girl Scouts remain female only.

That's mostly it being a victim of its own success; here in Canada, Scouts long held a better reputation than Guides. Something fundamentally different about how the organizations and parental leadership approached the kids, I suspect.

Same goes for virtually any space that used to be male-only. It's become socially unacceptable (and often illegal) to exclude females from anything, while it's still perfectly OK to exclude males.

What’s an example of a male-excluding space you’ve seen that couldn’t have a female-excluding counterpart?

Boy Scouts

1. Women-only workout areas in gyms - quite common, never seen one for men

2. All-female colleges (many), there is perhaps one or two all-male, if they even still exist

Just google something like "women business network".

Also the "WIN" network.

Scouts are not integrated. Troops are separated by sex. They are safe in their spaces.

>Men spaces have been mostly eliminated.

I mean sure it's illegal to exclude women but there are plenty of things they're just not going to show up to.

Want to be around only men? Go to a BSD meet up. (or join most channels on freenode.)

(note I'm not saying any of this is good, but there are plenty of places that are pretty exclusively attended by bales.)

Its not illegal to have a private club with membership rules that exclude women. There are still several golf clubs that do so. In fact in the US its not even illegal to openly discriminate in hiring as long as the business has less 14 employees. In California that number goes down to 5 employees and local laws may be stricter still.

Not sure how open those men's spaces of the past. would have been to more emotional openness. Could see it going either way.

That's not really surprising, is it?

Any minimally functional group eventually lead to opportunities.

The outgroup (women in this case) want to access those opportunities. Any push back against that will be labeled as misogynistic or ridiculed.

Men have no other choices than to open up the group and let it become just another open space for everyone.

What is surprising is how some groups: 1) just lay down and accept this unilateral loss... 2) even when it is never reciprocated.

I understand the feeling but I think this is too zero-sum. You know who has the most positive reactions by far to men doing healing work in men-only circles? Their wives/girlfriends. Not because the men somehow become more 'feminine' or lose power, but usually because they get something that they badly needed and were stuck about for a long time.

This is using anecdata to dismiss another poster, and isn’t the kind of comment you’d tolerate from others in a sensitive topic.

It’s wonderful that’s been your experience of women, but don’t invalidate what others experience — particularly with a citation free comment.

For those wondering why my comment is flagged: dang engages in political censorship, and flagged my account because of my views. I look forward to the upcoming rules on social media censorship, and the accountability that will bring to dang’s actions.

We banned you for breaking HN's guidelines (with multiple accounts) and ignoring our requests to stop. Someone breaking the site guidelines to promote opposite views would get banned just the same.

There's nothing wrong with anecdotes on HN. On the contrary, the threads here are supposed to be conversation, and anecdotes are the life blood of good conversation. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

As a group men are our own worse enemy. We aren't fearful of or controlled by women. It is other men that choose to align themselves closer to women's beliefs at the active detriment of healthy male attitudes and behaviours that force other men to fall in line.

Men aren't obligated or motivated to open up men only social groups until other men start to take issue with them (and usually for their own self interest).

What were the men's spaces before? Legitimate question as I may be too young to have known them.

Gentlemen clubs, country clubs, bars (although I don't think it should have been single gender), other than this.. I can't name many of the other ones. They were mostly gone by the time I became an adult.

Anyways, I have heard of discrimination that men have faced when trying to create "safe"/support groups that were men only.

I don't think I understand the desire or the concern here. Look around the BBQ in the back yard at any party anywhere in 'merica and you'll find the guys hanging out and chatting away from their wives. Look at sports teams in your high schools, colleges, and local clubs and you'll find men hanging out together. Look at Men's bible study groups or similar if that's your thing. Go to the local men's barber shop and find a bunch of guys getting haircuts. Invite your buddies to your place to watch the game...

> Look around the BBQ in the back yard at any party anywhere in 'merica and you'll find the guys hanging out and chatting away from their wives.

I don't know about your experience. But my experience: BBQs are typically a party situation with your household and others. If it's just the guys that's a friends thing.

> Look at sports teams in your high schools, colleges, and local clubs and you'll find men hanging out together.

I haven't heard of such of a clubs.

> Look at Men's bible study groups or similar if that's your thing.

I'll agree with you on this. That qualifies for what I was suggesting. It's a social thing and gets people to talk.

> Go to the local men's barber shop and find a bunch of guys getting haircuts.

Is that an environment that guys would open up? Most of these places tend to be "mind your own business and lets not talk that much" kinds of places.

You'd be surprised

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/mental-health/what-is-bar...

The workplace used to be a male space.

The Freemasons are still here, and though numerically shrinking as postwar members pass on, we're experiencing a renaissance as a new generation of men come through with a greater interest in the spiritual and philosophical aspects of the craft.

Would recommend it wholeheartedly.

There were all-male colleges and many all-male secondary schools (mostly private) in the US till the 1960s.

It's worth noting that many institutions you would not have thought of as "men's colleges" per se were indeed all male -- Caltech didn't admit women as undergrads until 1970.

"Male", not "men", but Boy Scouts.

However, MAN spaces are everywhere, Japan especially is having great success creating spaces that are exclusively occupied by a single man for weeks, and sometimes years at a time.

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