I don’t think that I realised that the phenomenon of Gentlemen’s Clubs still existed until I’d left university and started work. A male academic friend was invited to lunch at a particular club recently, and told me it was full of judges and barristers and prominent business men. I was fascinated by the concept: social clubs to which women could not be invited as members, and where prominent businessmen and lawyers met. It just seemed so antiquated. Then it struck me that this was a concentration of power which I would never be able to access.
One of these Melbourne-based Gentlemen’s Clubs, the Athenaeum Club, has been split by a proposal to admit women as members. Some prominent members began a push to include women as members:
The group wrote a discussion paper for the club stating their case. “The Athenaeum Club was founded to provide a venue for civic, business, academic and political leaders of Melbourne,” it said. “While such leaders may have been predominantly men in the past, that is clearly no longer the case. Such leaders who also happen to be women should also be admitted. To do otherwise is to relegate the club to decreasing engagement with this city and country.”
They also argued that by moving first on the issue of women, the Athenaeum would embarrass the city’s other large men-only clubs, the Melbourne Club and the Australian Club, making them look outdated and sexist.
But the push to include women was greeted with open hostility by many Athenaeum members. Surprisingly, the strongest opponents were younger men - dubbed the “young fogeys” - who attended several heated meetings in the club, arguing that women would “change the culture, demeanour and openness of the men’s environment”.
A comprehensive majority of the members decided against admitting female members when the proposal was voted upon in December 2007.
I’m in two minds about this kind of thing. On the one hand, it causes me to feel resentful that I can’t join an organisation in which powerful men come together, just because of my gender. I feel that they should take women, and I am impressed with those men who have made a stand.
On the other hand, do I really want to be a member of a club where over half the members resent my very presence there? I’m not going to get much out of it in that situation, and if they resent me because I’m female, they are probably not people with whom I want to socialise with anyway.
To be honest, I’m not the kind of person who is comfortable in exclusive groups. It reminds me unpleasantly of cliques in the schoolyard. In fact, the whole thing seems…well…a bit childish to me. A bit like boys retreating to the cubby house and putting up a sign saying, “NO GIRLS ALLOWED”. It would be laughable if there weren’t some powerful and influential people involved with it. Incidentally, I breastfed my daughter during a function at the Melbourne Club once. It gave me an immense amount of satisfaction to do such a female thing in such a male space (childish, I know, but I couldn’t help it).
Hopefully the culture of these clubs will gradually change. The fact that there was a push by members for women to be admitted is encouraging. My understanding is that some of the Gentlemen’s Clubs tacitly excluded Jewish men from joining, but have now reversed that position.
Presumably maybe one day these boys will make it into the 20th century and realise that we of the female gender don’t have girl germs.
Note to international readers: “Gentleman’s club” means a building where only men can enter and can eat nice food and drink good wine. It does not mean strip joints, lap dancing venues or anything like that. A man who attends the latter kind of venue could not be called a gentleman…
23 Comments
You might need to clarify for an international readership, LE. I think in the US a “gentleman’s club” refers to a lapdancing/strip club. In the UK it can be either.
DEM, oh dear! I’d better make that clear. A lawyer friend has come across businessmen who organise lunches in the less savoury kind of men’s club - the effect is still to exclude women, but for a totally different reason! Fortunately, I never came across it while in practice. How anyone could think that was appropriate in this day and age…!
Does the Country Women’s Association have ANY males members?
The role of “gender equality officer” at my old local uni advertised the position as being for females only. They didn’t quite get the irony that having to change the title from “Womens rights officer” also meant some confusion with the qualification gender. I just lol’d.
It comes down to this:
- sometimes blokes like to behave in childish ways, such as burping, farting and swearing, and they can’t do this with women present (well, gentlemen can’t)
- sometimes blokes like to talk about their wives / girlfriends without worrying if that lady over there overheard them
- sometimes blokes are just more comfortable going somewhere they know they can let down their guard - or they just need a break from women in general - or they just happen to enjoy social situations with blokes only, but not in the gay sense
- sometimes a tradition becomes established
If a group of blokes want to run a club, for blokes, what is the problem? If it was the local bowls afficiandos, would you give a toss? What about the wood turners of Lawnton?
Why does it make the slightest difference that it is so called “powerful” people that makes it different? Are you saying unless you belong to this club you will not get position X, or title Y, or business opportunity Z? How does this prevent you from the plethora of other networking opportunities out there?
I have far more issue with the old school tie, than any club or association of women or men.
Where have you been living?
LE
I am a bit conflicted on this. I think private clubs devoted to whatever group you like (ethnic, gender, class, sport, whatever) are - in general - purely a matter for those interested in joining. I, for one, had a fantastic experience at an all-male university undergraduate college, which would have been spoiled if it had been co-ed.
OTOH, I can understand why “excluded” groups would want to abolish such places. Women do have a point that such institutions have very negative externalities, especially wrt things like professional advancement. Though, as a libertarian, no doubt you appreciate the undesirability of any STATE action.
OTOH, in this case, it comes from the members themselves. So, I say let us enjoy the melee until they resolve it!
DEM
OMG! The image of the Athenaeum as a Scores like American lap-dancing club just made me spit my coffee in laughter!
LE’s not a libertarian - that’s me, JG. I’m the one who prefers to let people do anything legal on their property, and to keep laws that are too proscriptive out of it.
For that reason, if people want to form a club based on gender/race/whatever and do their own thing on the premises - including (shock, horror) smoke - that’s their call.
That said, I do enjoy watching when such bodies collapse under the weight of their own contradictions - golf clubs that suddenly had to admit Annika Sorenstam or Tiger Woods as members, or the male only club confronted with a female mayor/PM/etc. Watching them spin afterwards is always very funny.
As to why it’s the ‘Young Fogeys’ who want to keep the club single sex, I think Pete M has put his finger on the answer. One thing I noticed in my days in the classroom was the phenomenon of kids of both sexes staking out the school loos during lunch. When I was a child, only girls did this. Guys went and ran around the playground, while many girls retreated to the dunnies in a cloud of Impulse.
Over time, as ‘boys’ spaces’ (like the oval) were colonised by women and effectively became ‘co-ed’, the boys copied the girls, and many of them similarly disappeared into the crapper (in a cloud of Lynx).
I suspect that people of both sexes all have moments when they do not want to socialise with members of the opposite sex. They want to be free to be utterly girlish/boyish. The ‘Young Fogeys’ have seen these moments eroded almost completely in their lifetime, and they don’t like it. Older men have a bank of ‘men only’ memories on which they can draw.
The other problem, as JG pointed out, is the extent to which these places become a vehicle for doling out ‘perks’ and deals to friends. In the past, I suspect a fair bit. These days, not so much, because deals can be cut so easily elsewhere, all facilitated by mobile phone.
Pete has a point about ’school ties’, too, and insofar as it’s possible to move towards meritocracy, sweeping that shibboleth away is probably also a good thing. That said, modern market democracies don’t produce a meritocracy (as Hayek long ago observed). They’re - to paraphrase Churchill - actually the worst system, except for all the other systems that we’ve tried
A reasonably close approximation to meritocracy is probably as good as we can ever hope for, but it will never be fully fair.
Pete M, this is why I’ve never really been comfortable with “gender equality officers” who are just female. It’s a woman only thing.
I’d probably be more comfortable with gentlemen’s clubs if there were equivalent women’s clubs which wielded equal power. Perhaps I should start one!
Although as I say, I’m not the sort of girl who likes clubs anyway.
I think SL is right that both sexes sometimes need a place where they can have a break from each other. It’s only a problem when the ties created by such an association gain considerable power and exclude others from power.
I hate the old school tie too. I agree that it is a greater evil than gentlemen’s clubs. Like SL, I am a strong supporter of meritocracy. Schools shouldn’t enter into it.
Men Only clubs were made illegal in NSW many years ago. I was a member and enjoyed two of them for some years. No harm, when the law changed we had women in the BILLARD room!!
fluff
Oh dem and blost wot. They let the dem Catholics in and the Jews! A fortnight ago I was eating my chop and Salisbury-Smythe brought in a dem wog.
Blost and rot!
Is nothing sacred anymore? Next thing you’ll be allowed to wear a linen suit to a coronation. Egad! It’s a bloody disgrace harumph. We need to fight for the decent right of blobby red-faced bigotry and crashing boors everywhere.
Parker where’s the barely bloody drinkable? Fetch it smartly there’s a good chap. And retrieve my elephant gun. Methinks I’d like to blow something furry to bits.
Harumph!
There’s a spectrum. There are men and women who don’t engage the opposite sex for anything, except, well, sex. They have no friends of the opposite sex. They are not interested, perhaps even incapable.
There are others who aren’t all that comfortable with groups made exclusively of their own sex.
I wouldn’t describe myself as such but I don’t particularly enjoy a lot of guy company. Humans are apes, apes are vulgarians and lots of chaps are only too happy to demonstrate this.
It’s worthwhile remembering that gentlemens’ clubs are extensions of the Public School system. This tradition, it might surprise some to hear, is explicity misogynist. You get told clearly and often that women are stupid, weak, repulsive, vile and not to be trucked with except when absolutely necessary.
It’s all part of the plan called: give us the boy at 7 and we’ll ensure that he never has any fun.
As a friend of mine who actually considered becoming a lawyer and wanting to challenge the sexism of such institutions as the Melbourne Club said of the pubic school system: it teaches boys to be arseholes and girls to put up with it and marry it.
But as Skeptic has said if people want to congregate sans boy/girl germs they will. What can you do?
I am a member of several clubs, both male only and otherwise. The reason for admitting women in those that have chosen to do so, has, in every case in which it has occurred with one exception has been financial. The clubs have prospered and, what is much more important standards have been maintained. The barbarians have been repelled.
OMG! The image of the Athenaeum as a Scores like American lap-dancing club just made me spit my coffee in laughter!
John,
Silly. That would be the Reform, surely?
LE, it looks like the traditional London clubs have started to call themselves ‘private members clubs’ to avoid the confusion with titty bars. Many have now gone co-ed, new ones like the Groucho for the arty set have sprung up full formed and automatically mixed so the influence of the male only traditional clubs has been diluted somewhat. In these circumstances I have no problem with gender defined spaces, even chaps need a ’safe’ space sometimes, it is when the male bastion is the ONLY source of social/political influence (the only local golf club as much as The Queensland Club if you’re a barrister in Brisbane) you get the ‘gents loos’ problem.
Interesting, David - and not surprising, either. Port, silent reading and squashy chairs are not all blokes’ idea of fun these days, so finances do start to come into it.
groucho marx:
“I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member!”
I agree with JG - they are after all intended for men. You also get stuff like mothers/wives clubs too.
Speaking of Gentlemen’s Club - have a look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggyRUNTZhSo
We have a Mother’s Group, but we let fathers in too if they want to come. Only one has ever joined us (he shares childcare responsibilities with his wife). But we’d welcome them all with open arms…if they wanted to come. My husband refused when he had a day off, despite my coaxing.
My main problem, I think, is not the fact that some groups are restricted only to men or women. That’s fine.
It’s the fact that something like a Gentleman’s club has such power. No man ever wanted to crash the Country Women’s Assocation or a mother’s group. Why bother?
I’ve been thinking further about how my husband says men never “catch up for a chat” (unlike my female friends and I). They need some kind of pretext - and maybe clubs like this provide a really useful pretext. From that point of view, they are positive.
The other thing I was thinking was that the more women infiltrate public life, the less power such clubs will have. For example, in Victoria, we have a female Chief Justice and a female Police Commissioner. If one wanted to hobnob with them, one wouldn’t go to the Melbourne Club (contrary to former days). So such gentlemen’s clubs have two options: let women in because women increasingly have sway in society or to cut women out (and reduce the usefulness of such clubs) but maintain a “male space”.
JG and SL, although not a libertarian, I would agree that state intervention in a case like this is totally inappropriate. It’s up to the particular group to decide.
LDU - that’s hilarious!
I would agree that state intervention in a case like this is totally inappropriate. It’s up to the particular group to decide.
How are you going to intervene anyway? There’s countless karaoke clubs in Chinatown where you’re not exactly welcome if you’ve got a pale face.
Can’t say I blame ‘em really. Westerners in general act pretty badly in karaoke clubs. They drink to much and sing out of key.
Having been invited to one of the clubs in Melbourne (not sure if they have female members, but females guests are allowed) I can report the comment about ‘good food’ is not entirely accurate. The first time, we all had corned beef, mash potato and brussel sprouts. Now I like corned beef and have it at home a lot, but to have to don a tie and jacket to eat corned beef is too much; and bussel sprouts are simply a crime against humanity. The cheese and biscuits and wine were suberb.
The members of these organisations probably all went to boarding school and the food choice is nostalgic.
bussel sprouts are simply a crime against humanity.
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Chuckle.
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In Hell the English are the cooks.
Apparently there’s a chemical in brussel sprouts which some people can taste, and others cannot. Those who cannot taste it (ie, my Dad) think brussel sprouts are quite nice. Those who can taste it (ie, me and the rest of my family) think brussel sprouts are a form of torture.
Ugh. And don’t even get me started on English cooking.
Ugh. And don’t even get me started on English cooking.
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It’s very simple. Take a huge bunch of lovely green vegetables from a nice English garden. Take a bit of red meat. Pop into a pot o’ water. Boil ’til grey.
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Or if you’re Jamie Oliver soak it in about a gallon of oil first.