[All these points apply to sex and to gender, so for ease of reading, I’ll just discuss gender]
Gender-exclusive groups are common in many societies, such as men-only and women-only social clubs and casual activity groups like a men’s bowling group or a women’s reading circle.
Sometimes this is de-facto, but sometimes this is enforced by rules or expectations, treating the club as a safe space for airing issues people have with other genders, or avoiding perceived problems with other genders.
I came across this old comment in a garbage subreddit by accident when researching. The topic is Men’s Sheds:
“Here’s the thing. No reasonable person has an issue with women having their own women’s activity groups. The annoying part is that whenever men try to do something similar, that’s a problem. Women either want them banished or demand entry, EVERY time.”
I think their claim is nonsense, grossly exaggerated at best. I also know of many counterexamples of men trying to get into women-only groups (as an extreme case, the Ladies Lounge of the Mona art gallery in Australia was taken to court for sex discrimination, with the creator claiming they would circumvent the ruling by installing a toilet). But nonetheless, I can understand why they feel this way, patriarchal social relations change how most people see men-exclusive spaces vs. women-exclusive spaces.
But my response to their claim is that, I am reasonable and I do have an issue with any group setting up places which discriminate based on gender. These safe places can form as a legitimate rudimentary form of protection, yes, but they maintain and often even promote sexism, and should all be challenged and turned into something better which serves the same purpose.
Of course, I’m limited by my own experiences and perspective, so I’d love to hear your opinions on the topic.
Bonus video: “Why Do Conservative Shows All Look the Same? | Renegade Cut” - a discussion about fake man-caves and sexism.
This thread is the best evidence of why Men’s groups exist.
I don’t see the point in having women in the micropenis support group, and vice versa for the stinky vagina group. So, at least one valid case comes to mind, and I’m sure we can make small generalisations from there, right?
You know trans people exist right?
If the groups are based on gender as written by OP, I wouldn’t see any issue for trans people to participate in these groups.
Downvoted you for this stunning example of cultivated ignorance:
I think their claim is nonsense, grossly exaggerated at best.
One only needs to look at the scouts of America to see this in play.
Boy Scouts were sued to open their ranks to girls. That suit won, forcing them to open their org to girls.
Girl Scouts were then sued for the flip example - to open their ranks to boys. The suit was almost immediately thrown out for “misogyny”.
After that “victory”, the then-head of the Girl Scouts admitted in private and off the record that she would rather destroy the org in its entirety - essentially razing it to the ground and permanently locking up the name “Girl Scouts” from being used by anyone else - before admitting a single boy.
Now, because they have both boys and girls, the Boy Scouts have tried to drop “boy” from the name, to be called only “Scouts”. This precipitated another lawsuit from the Girl Scouts in that dropping that part of the name will only accelerate their own membership decline.
You literally cannot make this sh*t up.
Men’s-only spaces across the country, like private gyms, are being attacked from all sides on the claim that their very existence is “misogynistic”, and yet service-identical women’s-only spaces in the same city are immune from those same “rules” under the claim that any attempt to apply those same rules to them is also “misogynistic”.
One of the best ways to uncover bigotry is to flip the term in contention and see if it reads any different after that from before. If it does, you’ve found a bigoted pattern in play.
True equality reads identically regardless of how the term in contention is flipped.
Edit:
I have zero issue with women’s only spaces. They are needed. But FFS you cannot eat your cake, and have it, too.
Real equality can only be achieved by applying the same rules equally. If women are to be allowed to have their own women’s-only spaces, men must also be allowed to have their own men’s-only spaces.
Hence the term, equality. Because if things aren’t equal, why even use that word? You might as well call it for what it truly is - anti-male gender bigotry.
liberals trying to understand equality: “what do you mean we need to give only to the poor? it’s only equal if we give the same amount to the rich!”
you need only ask yourself for what reason men-only groups exclude women and for what reason women-only groups exclude men to understand why protecting and elevating women’s groups and dismantling misogynistic institutions are both valid
liberals trying to understand equality: “what do you mean we need to give only to the poor? it’s only equal if we give the same amount to the rich!”
That comes from a fatal and corrupted understanding of what equality is.
Equality represents equal opportunity:
- A young adult who is wealthy has the intergenerational resources to pay for university, pay for their own housing, pay for essentially everything without having to work a single job.
- A young adult who is poor and has no resources should, in order to apply true equality, be provided with said education, housing, food and other resources as deemed necessary to put them into the same level of opportunity as the wealthy one.
See how that equality of opportunity works? It’s not opening up a spot at that university for the poor, but ensuring that they have just as equal of an opportunity to apply, learn, and succeed as the wealthy. And without constantly worrying about things the wealthy - by virtue of their wealth - don’t have to worry about.
And honestly, this equality doesn’t end at application acceptance. It should really go all the way way back to birth, with the disadvantaged family getting UBI, psychological parent’s counselling, parental guidance, healthy school district funding, affordable housing, and a lot more. Because systemic inequality is generations in the making, anything applied to only the current generation is a band-aid approach to a broken leg problem.
But I digress.
you need only ask yourself for what reason men-only groups exclude women and for what reason women-only groups exclude men to understand why protecting and elevating women’s groups and dismantling misogynistic institutions are both valid
Yes, that’s called anti-male gender bigotry, and there is just no other way to spin that.
Why do men want men’s only gyms? Not to oppress women, that’s for sure. Because, to beg the question: WHAT WOMEN?? There are no women at that gym to be oppressed.
There are far more women’s only gyms than men’s only gyms - women should go there. That’s what those gyms are there for - to allow women a place to exercise without men.
And conversely, men want to go to a men’s only gym to get away from the distraction of women.
Seriously - stand in front of a men’s only gym, and interview the men going there. A significant number will cite a variation of this as their primary reason for switching.
They want the camaraderie of men in a place without distractions. They don’t want the gym thots doing thirst traps on Instagram. They don’t want to be interrupted in the middle of a set by some woman fondling their buttocks (I’ve actually seen this happen, with zero repercussion only because it was a guy who was the “victim”). They don’t want to deal with unjustified accusations of harassment and other assumed slights. They just want to work out in peace.
And if they cannot work out in peace, why should women?
As in, why call it “equality”, when it is most clearly nothing of the sort?
Wow I’ve never seen anyone actually argue their own hypocrisy with hypocrisy.
Motivations are irrelevant. Equality is equality, you can’t give rights to one demographic and deny to another because you think the other is ‘icky’. That is discrimination. Kinda the very thing we’re trying to argue against, and yet you used it as part of your reasoning.
you can’t give rights to one demographic and deny to another because you think the other is ‘icky’.
Literally nobody said this. My whole point is that equality isn’t achieved by “applying the same rules equally” (as the person I responded to said) to people who aren’t on an equal playing field.
You don’t solve inequality by giving both those who have less and those who have more the same amount. That just maintains the status quo.
edit: Y’all really need to learn about substantive equality.
I do have an issue with any group setting up places which discriminate based on gender.
That is your problem. Let people create the groups they want.
My anecdotal 2 cents:
I was in boyscouts and I think it was a space to develop positive masculinity, and to learn things by looking up to older boys who had been through the same experience. I think girls being present would have changed the dynamic, because teenage boys act differently and talk about different things when around teenage girls.
Now that being said I’m certain not everyone in boyscouts developed positive masculinity. Boyscouts is far, far less uniform than people seem to think. There were 2 troops in my home town that were wildly different.
But at least from my anecdotal experience, Boyscouts was a good thing that benefitted from being a boys-only experience, and I wonder how it has changed now that girls can join boyscout troops.
Sure, of course they are.
I’ll even go so far as to say that even more fine grained groups are okay. What becomes a problem is when every group excludes people that really shouldn’t be.
You get a chess club, why the fuck can’t a woman join? Right? Calling it a men’s club is just exclusionary for no purpose. Even the girl/boy Scout divide was pointless in any real sense, and was a missed opportunity for those scouts to have guidance on how a scout is supposed to treat others.
Hell, when it comes right down to it, even a specific cis organization is fine, just the way trans specific ones are. The problem, again, is when a club is exclusionary just for the sake of it.
We all have aspects of our lives that aren’t shared by people with other genders and/or types of genitals. There’s struggles and discrete experiences that a trans man can have that I never will, and vice versa.
But, again, once it ceases to be about that kind of specificity, it starts being bigotry in disguise and needs to fuck right off. Ain’t no good reason women shouldn’t be allowed into things like community action groups. A gender division there is just pointless and stupid. If they also exclude trans men, it’s as bad (maybe even worse).
Hell, the masons are full of shit in that regard. Fraternal orders are hypothetically okay, but since when have the masons actually been about men sharing the unique aspects of life that men share? It’s just exclusionary bullshit (and I’ve seen it from the inside, so I know it’s utter bullshit). They’re the best example of how not to be a gender based organization.
I’m not saying that men shouldn’t be able to gather and just hang out. We should, as should women. There really is a different vibe, and there’s no way around that. But once you start organizing that on a bigger scale, you have a different threshold to meet.
Since, historically, most of the men’s organizations not only excluded women, but actively served to continue oppression of women, being a de facto patriarchal enforcement group, those groups get the worst attention. They weren’t really men’s groups, they were power control groups that men only could use to gain, maintain, and exploit control. That’s why there’s pushback on them, not the fact that they were/are gendered.
Gender exclusive groups are OK when there is a legitimate reason. Unfortunately it just so happens that women-exclusive groups have a legitimate reason very often, which is usually “I don’t want to be hit on in every activity I do”.
Why are there women only career events? Because many women experience going to “normal” career events, have nice conversations, thinking they made a good business connection just to be asked out on a date and ghosted when they decline. They don’t get the same benefits out of “normal” events as men do.
Why are there women only gyms? Because women want to do sports without being hit on regularly.
Now you could say “Well, but that’s a problem of some men not sticking to the rules. Just enforce the rules.” But the problem is, the rules aren’t being enforced, women aren’t taken seriously or just told to suck it up, that’s part of life. You’re in a public space so it’s OK for a man to ask you out. To which the women’s reaction is: “Well, then I’d rather do X in a private space where there aren’t any men who could hit on me.”
As long as there are struggles that men face exclusively it’s totally ok to have men only groups. The problem:
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men do not face the problem of being put in uncomfortable situations by women almost anywhere they go, so they have less topics or activities where they feel like they need a men’s only group. For most topics/activities men can go to a mixed-gender group and have the same experience as they would in a male-only group. Women can’t.
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a lot of men’s groups do not form around “we want to address a typical male problem” but “we have prejudices about women being bad at x” or “we just hate women”.
And lastly historically the reason why women wanted to join male-only groups was because those groups were often used to make decisions and policies. Business is being made in golf clubs and was made in “gentlemen’s clubs”. Women wanting to join those wasn’t about playing golf. Sure, we can have a women’s club to play golf. It was about being left out of the informal decision making process, the deal making. In my personal experience women are more likely to discuss work matters at work with everybody and at any “women only” outing with colleagues work was hardly a topic. Whereas when it happened that men went drinking with “just the boys” the next day important decisions had been made and suddenly Mark was in charge of the new project. Just my personal experience and I’m not saying it can’t happen the other way around in female dominated fields.
Gender exclusive groups are OK when there is a legitimate reason.
What is a legitimate reason though? Consider…
- men do not face the problem of being put in uncomfortable situations by women almost anywhere they go, so they have less topics or activities where they feel like they need a men’s only group. For most topics/activities men can go to a mixed-gender group and have the same experience as they would in a male-only group. Women can’t.
You seem to be saying that a legitimate reason would be a need to escape from people hitting on you or the equivalent. How about if you just want to hang out with people of your own gender? Is that not OK? Men do not have the “same experience” in mixed gender groups. Socializing in a single gender group is different from in a mixed gender group and both are important. You are dismissing the need for men to socialize among themselves on the basis that they might make an important decision that should have included people outside that group. Now I understand that this has historically been (and in some cases continues to be) an issue with work-based men’s-only clubs/outings etc, and it should be addressed in that context. But it’s not a valid reason to reject the existence of male only groups or spaces in their entirety, is it?
Case in point: I sing in a male voice choir. I enjoy it not just on a musical level, but also for the fact that it is a male space. It’s not about hating women, or having prejudices about women. It’s not actually about women at all, which is kind of my point. I have enough women in my life, what I need is to be around men sometimes. Nor is it about “we want to address a typical male problem” either, unless you consider difficulty with socializing to be a typical male problem, which, yeah, arguably it is in some cases. But guys just like doing things with guys sometimes. It’s a different dynamic and it’s good for us.
I’m not talking about friend groups, just groups that are open to the public. Friend groups are OK in whatever constellation you wish.
Your choir has a good reason to be men only, since that creates a certain sound.
It gets tricky when the point of the group or club is something not related to gender. I don’t think an all-female board game club that is open to the public but only lets women join would be OK. Personally I think you can have your meetings for only people of your gender when you organize them only for yourself. But as soon as you do something publicly, you don’t get to say “everybody can come except group X” without a good reason.
That goes for men and women, I’m also not a fan of “xy only for girls” clubs without a good reason.
I would enjoy some male-only spaces. I used to play an MMO game and we all got on great in our guild, right up until a woman joined. Suddenly the banter started having edges to it, people were putting eachother down to try and gain status to/for the woman.
Not in any way her fault, she wasnt playing favourites or flirting or teasing anyone, she was just playing the game like everyone else, but the vibes starting turning.i didnt enjoy that.
I’m not gonna have an opinion, but I’d like to say that it sounds harsh to exclude someone based on other people being weird, no?
I don’t know if you need a male-only space or a normal-person space (probably the latter).
That being said, I could maybe see how people may not want to make certain jokes in front of certain people, but if youre just having fun and youre not racist or something um idk
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Kind of a side note but I want to see peoples opinion. Do boys tend to make friends with boys and girls tend to make friends with girls because that is what is natural? Or is it due to the oppressive nature of our current time?
As a father of three boys. This is enforced far more by the mother’s of girls than anyone else.
My oldest made friends almost exclusively with girls before he was five. Without fail mother’s would move their girls away and toward other girls. This happened in a few situations, both structured and unstructured environments.
When it was dad’s with daughters, it was only about 1/4 of the time, and mums or dad’s with sons never did.
I have seen it the other way also, where boys were steered to other boys, but it was far less often.
I used to go to a men’s only yoga class, I was far more comfortable there than in a mixed class. The class was discontinued, not because of lack of interest… but because the instructor got pregnant, it never restarted. She was a great instructor very professional and targeted the exercises to men’s problem areas.
Men’s only spaces are important, as much as women’s spaces. Men’s mental health is often overlooked, and men’s spaces are an easy way for men to vent about shit that is bothering them.
Also “our current time” is a little strange, history it’s full of segregated spaces, even of just by social convention. Our current time is far more accepting of mixing than a lot of history.
Really young kids don’t care and mingle freely. It’s a learned thing; the latter. Although “oppressive” might be a bit on the strong side.
Im not sure what isn’t oppressive about gender pay gap, domestic abuse/violence and generally treating females as inferior.
Sure. We’re talking about kids playing here, though. Looking at that and saying it’s basically wife beating would sound hysterical.
The latter 100%. Just noticed this with our kid who came home from kindergarden one day and said that he liked playing with friend A there because they’re both boys. We asked him why he think that playing with boys is better when you’re a boy and, well, that’s what friend A said. This never had been a topic before. It’s learned behaviour that reinforces gender segregation.
As ~always with gender and politics, there’s a pretty big gap between what is and what ought.
What is: The people who make and seek out men-only groups have a stereotype of being shitty, sexist people. The stereotypes around women-only groups are a lot weaker and less negative. These stereotypes are not rules, but do certainly lead to some social stigma.
What ought 1: In a better world gender-specific groups might exist for people to find support and connection around their gendered experiences. There’s some experiences that aren’t commonly shared across genders and it can be a lot easier and safer to share with people who you know also have that experience.
What ought 2: In a still better world there wouldn’t be a significant desire for such groups because we are all sensitive and caring enough that such a group doesn’t make sharing meaningfully easier or safer, because it’s already easy and safe.
Not every men’s group is a shitty stereotype. It does seem unacceptably common, though. Not every women’s group is a safe space, and some are just as toxic and abusive as the far-too-common men’s groups. Do we ban them? I don’t think we can. Because women’s shelters need to exist even if men are domestically abused too and never in my fucking life have I heard anyone suggest a battered men’s shelter might even maybe be a good idea. Okay, fine, so violence and safety reasons … Except, shit, not everyone is hetero… A same sex partner can probably find out where women’s shelters are. And men are abused to by their partners, men and women, in alarmingly higher rates than anybody seems to take note of. And what do you do with Trans folks? Because their rights are human rights too and why the fuck do we still need to explicitly say that anymore? sigh
And that doesn’t even begin to cover social groups.
I guess if you’re not an asshole, a bigot, an abuser, or whatever … best you can do when you encounter these things (and you will) is ask yourself whether something gendered is reasonable or not. The answer might be yes, or no, or conflicted either way. I’d like to say that it should be okay if we don’t agree about the answers. I’d like to say that people should be able to accept that the other person is making a good faith effort to determine the relative “okayness” in an individual case with an individual perspective. Sadly, we humans seem not to be wired to do that. I’m just gonna continue thinking gendered stuff is pretty dumb on the whole with a couple of conflicted views on a couple of specific things because I know I don’t live in a perfect world.
As a cis man, I think very lowly of men-only groups. Usually (from my admittedly limited experience) if a group goes out of their way to identify as “men-only,” the people there tend to be the kind of men who are very misogynistic and generally insufferable to be around, even for other men. Any group genuinely focused on the hobby or culture they claim to identify with wouldn’t really care about your gender.
Women-only groups though, I tend to sympathize with and respect a lot more, and IMO they are the symptom of the West being a heavily male dominated society rather than an innate desire among women to be exclusionary. If the world didn’t revolve around men and had genuine gender equality, there probably wouldn’t be a need for many women only groups either, but that’s unfortunately not the world we live in.
I can’t really speak on trans/nonbinary exclusion though because I have no personal experience being on the business end of it. I try to only participate in groups where they don’t care about your gender to begin with.
I was in a men’s group once for a few sessions, we talked about everything from anger issues, how to work on improving ourselves, how to handle rough parts of it relationships etc.
It was very nice, we were all very different people with different backgrounds and problems and I believe we all got a lot out of just opening up in a group like this.
This was hosted by the Swedish organisation Man which exists to help men with all the issues modern men are facing, hoping to combat toxic masculinity.
Personally I think a mixed group would’ve worked for me but I am pretty sure some of the people, especially the ones with violent history, felt more secure in a men’s only scenario.
On the flip side, I think men could use more men’s groups because male loneliness is problematic. Women don’t want to feel responsible for men’s loneliness (rightly so), so the natural solution is men need to do better at making friends with men. The problem is doing it in a healthy way
That said, I would suggest the solution is hobby groups without gender exclusion. Like carpentry, basketball, knitting, dance, ballet. Hobbies seem to self select.
Most of my hobbies are female dominated in my conservative area.
This post has clearly brought up a lot of interesting discussion. I just want to add my thoughts…
I never thought of myself as someone who would benefit from male-only spaces as I tend to not like men, but in my mid 20s I started going to bars and clubs oriented towards gay men because I was exploring my sexuality.
I found that often these places have a strong sense of community and camaraderie that I have grown to see as quite sacred. Part of this sense of community is rooted in a shared experience of our gender identity and sexual identity.
Sometimes having women in these spaces could ruin the vibe and sometimes having women in these spaces had no negative effect or was even positive. It really depends on the attitude of women coming into those spaces. Are they there to gawk? Are they there to seek community?
If you made a blanket rule banning women I think it would be very detrimental. For example there are trans men who havent come to terms with this yet, and cutting them out of a space like this is bad.
It would also be disingenuous to claim only women were the ones ruining the vibe. Some men are creeps, controlling, judgmental etc.
To me the important thing isn’t that we ban non-men from entering into the space and say it’s a men-only place. That excludes people who would be good to have there and doesn’t guarantee you remove all of the bad people from coming. But I do think it’s important to have spaces that we say are for men. This is a place for men that caters to men and if are not a man don’t expect it to cater to your needs.
It’s like if you have a Mexican restaurant in the United States oriented towards serving Mexican customers. You can go there even there even if you’re not Mexican, but it’s disrespectful to get angry if people don’t speak English well.
There are always both men and women, who, upon finding out that a space exists that isn’t for them decide to try and enter those spaces out of protest. I think in most cases it’s probably best to let these people in. Either they will acclimate to the culture or they will get bored and stop going eventually. I know that this will make the space less safe or comfortable feeling for some people, but there’s literally no way to have community without also having people be part of that community that are sometimes unsafe or uncomfortable to have around.
By most measures, I’m a pretty stereotypically “manly” guy, and you can say pretty much the same thing about most of my male friends.
I’ve never really felt as though a woman being present in any way impeded anything we were doing. If anything it improved things in a “the more the merrier” kind of way. As long as they’re ok with the cigar smoke, fart jokes, having to pee outside, etc. anyone is welcome to participate in our bullshit.
But I do feel like we can get in the way of women bonding and venting it the ways they need and want to. The old “it’s not about the nail” kind of thing.
And of course, there’s a whole lot of guys who are just dangerous toxic assholes who probably shouldn’t be allowed to be around women in general, but trying to figure out which ones can and can’t be trusted is a tall order and it’s a lot easier to just say “women only.”
So I don’t really see much point in men-only spaces, but I do see it for women-only spaces.
There’s some exceptions, sure, like men who have certain kinds of trauma that involve women may need some safe places to work that out. And it’s not that women can’t also be dangerous, toxic assholes, but in terms of numbers, severity, and actual risk, things are kind of on a different level than with men, so it’s easier to deal with that on a case-by-case basis.
What does it’s not about the nail refer to?
I know it as a reference to this video.
In my marriage this is often reversed. I find myself telling my wife, sometimes, “It’s not about the nail!”
Can you help me understand what the video means?
It seems like the guy is right that the nail is causing her the problems, but the woman is right that the guy keeps interrupting her?
I don’t always pick up on social things like this.
Frequently when someone complains about something they are looking not for a solution, but for commiseration. They want the other person to connect with and empathize with them.
This isn’t inherently gendered, but the stereotype is that men always try to fix a woman’s problem without really hearing her.
The video makes the cause extremely obvious on purpose, both because it’s funny and also because in practice it often does seem obvious to the person listening. But learning to empathize before offering solutions is a really important step in learning to communicate, because humans are emotional beings and can feel like our problems are being minimized if the response to them is a solution.
Thank you <3
No problem! Before my wife and I got married our counselor showed us this video and explained it the same way, and it’s been very useful for both of us to be able to gently correct the other by saying, “it’s not about the nail.”
Lol for me personally this mental image would be counterproductive because if someone really did have a nail in their head, I’m calling 911 first and listening to them 2nd while 911 is on the way. We are literally trained to do this for any emergency. (The patient can always decline EMS but we don’t want them to arrive too late.)
But I agree for non-emergencies its good to let people speak uninterrupted and not push solutions, while recognizing your own boundaries and frustrations (if the other person is not trying an obvious solution).
LGBTQ+ Men’s Groups do exist. You know that right?
They are open to trans masc also.
The issue is generally for Men’s Groups which are focused on cishet but “accepting” (begrudgingly) of queer folks.
No.
This is a question we’ve faced in the queer community forever. As LGBTQ people there’s a lot of blur between sex/gender. Bars have gotten into hot water with the community over the years for being sex/gender exclusive.
However, in the instance of a sexual environment, like a bath house or fetish club, is such segregation legitimate? For example, I am solely gay and only interested in biologically male genitalia. I completely support trans men politically but if I am in a sexual situation I am only interested in men with penises. However, my husband loves trans men sexually and finds men with vaginas hot af. So IDK. I guess that if I went to a gay sex club and there were trans men there that’s simply not my particular jam, like there are gonna be other cis gender guys there that aren’t going to be my thing either. But ultimately sexual environments would be the only acceptable segregation I can think of off the top of my head.
Also, note that there used to be an incredibly important annual lesbian music event, the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, that ran from 1976 to 2015 that arguably died because of their exclusion of trans women. From 1991 forward the festival, which was on private land, had a trans exclusionary policy that divided the attendees.
But ultimately sexual environments would be the only acceptable segregation I can think of off the top of my head.
the clubs i frequent are more sexually charged than bath houses and the straight women who show up have the unfortunate tendency to treat it like a petting zoo.
it got so bad that one of the places instituted a fetish gear requirement for entry and it was VERY effective at keeping straight women out, but it had the unfortunate side effect of push the straight women to the other establishments and it significantly reduced the levels of sexual charge in all of them.
Yeah I’ve seen groups of straight women on hen parties frequenting gay bars and I’m not sure how to feel about it. A lot of the time it feels like they’re simply there to gawk and treat it like a tourist spot - they definitely wouldn’t come by themselves. And it makes it feel like less of a safe space for LGBTQ+ people
And it makes it feel like less of a safe space for LGBTQ+ people
definitely so, queers have very few public safe spaces while straight women have plenty and it’s the height of privilege that it’s okay to “slum it” w us like rich people “slum it” in poor neighborhoods and end up gentrifying it.
