Same sex spaces the good and bad

[MissEyre]

I was remembering being younger and how I disliked same sex spaces. Not sure whether it was positive (I wanted to be the footballer not the cheerleader, the priest not the congregation, etc,etc) or negative (internalised misogyny). Probably a complex mixture of the two.

I think as a youngster I saw same sex spaces as holding pens. And wondered whether many young women feel the same and so don’t value them?

Anyway if anyone has any wise words I’d be glad to read them.

Most of the men I know are between 50 and 60. None of them want to share a space with a teenager.

I worked in a religious environment where men and women were separated by a wall screen for assemblies. At first, I was really angry about it and wondered why the strong intelligent women I worked with settled for that treatment. But in a very short while I actually liked being separated from the men. Being in a space just for women felt safe and freeing. It was a very very strange conflict.

I went to a funeral where the men and women were separate. I thought it was odd to start with but it felt quite nice as the relatives were bawling their eyes out and going comforted by the rest of the congregation. All the women were increasingly nice to us (obviously just visitors) and made sure we were fed and watered).

I worked in a religious environment where men and women were separated by a wall screen for assemblies

There is no justification for that. It has nothing to do with safety or privacy.

I worked for a company where some clients were very religious. They were just incredibly rude - refusing to speak to you (or in my case as I must look likely - speaking in a language I don’t know until they realise I don’t know what they are saying - refusing to shake your hand, refusing to take a cup of tea if you poured it, needing a whole tower of plastic cups to be extracted from a dispensed then presented to them before they would select one from the centre of the batch (lest your foul hands had contaminated it). Just rude and absolutely unnecessary.

I went to a funeral where the men and women were separate. I thought it was odd to start with but it felt quite nice as the relatives were bawling their eyes out and going comforted by the rest of the congregation. All the women were increasingly nice to us (obviously just visitors) and made sure we were fed and watered)

I don't see any justification or need for this either tbh. All that is doing is enforcing the female role of being responsible for looking after people- which I thought was generally frowned on by the feminists on here.

Women , or men, choosing to socialise in single sex groups is fine.

Women , or men, choosing single sex spaces for dignity or privacy- fine.

Being told that men and women at a public assembly have to be divided by a screen - not fine at all.

No - the men were left to their own devices. It felt more ‘free’ to be able to sit their with mascara running down your face or chasing after a toddler. If I’d wandered into the men’s section I wouldn’t have been chased out (but then I’m obviously not ‘one of them’).

Same sex spaces are for privacy and safety (mainly of females). Activity segregation by gender should be banned. Why shouldn't boys sew?

I went to a mixed school from 13, and we had a partially enlightened headmaster. While he made ALL sixth formers do art, sewing, woodwork, metalwork and cooking, he DID advise me that only boys study Architecture. I ignored his advice.

I did woodwork at school and I recently learned that DH had to do sewing. This was news to me! Even my dad learned to sew in the army.

I do think these can sometimes be complicated and a mixed blessing. Not so much things like change rooms or prisons, which are pretty clear. But in most areas of life there can be trade offs.

If I try and think of a few examples I know of personally:

My son is in scouting, my daughter in Guides, the later is girls oly and the former mixed. Theoretically I would like both to be single sex, I think it's good for kids to have some mentoring groups of that kind, boys as much as girls. On the other hand, I think the Guiding program is a lot poorer than the Scouting one, and I totally understand why some girls would rather do scouts.

There are also some sports things for kids that are mixed in this regard. I know one young girl for example who likes boys lacross and wants to play on the boy's team - the rules and style of play have differences. At her age it doesn't really matter much to have mixed sex teams, but for adults it does. The differences in play reflect the physical differences between male and female players. The tendency for the clubs is to want to have two streams reflecting that to keep both healthy.

Didn’t you know - guides may be single sex but is multi gender these days 🙄

Guides is no longer single sex. They now include young males who self-ID as girls. At least they no longer encourage female Guides who self-ID as boys to leave. But Guides are no longer to be relied upon for the nurturing, empowering single-sex spaces they once provided.

Unless you are a m2f person.

I'm not in the UK, and so far this has not been a practical issue in our Guiding in my area. In any case, theoretically Guiding is single sex while scouting is not, which really was the distinction I was making - getting into details didn't really seem to be helpful to the discussion.

In any case, theoretically Guiding is single sex while scouting is not, which really was the distinction I was making - getting into details didn't really seem to be helpful to the discussion.

In practice, GG is not single sex, that is the point.

Another one I've thought of is university residences.

I lived in a women only residence, something which seems to have become quite unusual since then. We also had a rather strict male guest policy - all had to be signed in by a resident, and to have a male stay overnight you had to have your roommates signed permission by 6pm, and other guests had to be out by 11 on weeknights or 1 on weekends. There was also one area of the residence which allowed no overnight male guests.

They used to vote on this policy every year, at the end of the year, for the next year, and when I was there the vote was always overwhelmingly to keep the policy. Since then it's gone by the wayside and they have also increased the number of co-ed residences as students have demanded them.

I guess the women no longer feel that they want those policies, but I always really liked them,you didn't have total strangers wandering off the campus into your living space, and it was nice to know when you got up at 3pm or whatever to pee, you weren't likely to meet strange guys wandering around. Even when people did have male guests there was a sense that they could not wander about unescorted in the night, and I would imagine that now that doesn't exist either.

In practice, GG is not single sex, that is the point.

It is if there are no male sexed people there, that's what in practice means.

But it's really not very relevant to what I was saying.

Goosefoot

Do you know if all Scout troops are mixed these days? I have some sympathy for girls who don't want to be locked out of any group they wish to join while at the same time would suggest there is a place for at least some boys only Scout troops for similar reasons given by those advocating single sex Guiding (which sound reasonable enough to me).

I was the worst Scout ever. Took me a ridiculous amount of time to learn my six knots and lighting a fire with only two matches was a virtual impossibility.

To superloudpoppingaction thank you. Yes, I meant “girls studying sewing while boys study woodwork”. That sort of single sex space. I expressed it badly.

Separating the sexes so that one studies sewing and one studies woodwork is discriminatory. That’s entirely different from, say, separating the sexes in sport so that boys compete against boys and girls compete against girls.

It might be an issue if girls are barred from playing football and made to play hockey instead. That would be discrimination.