Personally I would have no interest in being part of any club that would admit someone like me as a member :)

When I met my second wife about 27 years ago she was a life member of a health club which had unsegregated sessions and also separate sessions for men only and women only. She preferred the women only sessions for various reasons. One reason was that nudity was optional in the pool and sauna and also for walking between these areas and the changing/showering areas.

For anyone who is comfortable with their own body and the bodies of others [and this has nothing at all to do with the imaginary concept of "perfection"], being nude in wet areas makes good sense, and wearing clothes for swimming, sauna or showering makes no sense whatsoever, but is a product of conditioning, or brainwashing, or whatever you want to call it. This concept should be able to be applied to mixed sessions also [and can be in some European countries] but, except for nudist sessions where people are comfortable with one another, it unfortunately wouldn't currently be appropriate in Australia.

Then the management, without any consultation with the members, decided to make the health club totally mixed sex, on the assumption that they'd make more money that way. Most of the women, including those who didn't choose to be nude, but accepted the rights of those who did, were not happy with this change of policy, but their feelings were ignored by management.

I would suggest that this concept alone would be an adequate reason for either "men only" or "women only" health clubs.

Can you give specific examples of where men only clubs have been barred from being established? Otherwise your belief about it being accepted as sexist when men have a men's only club is mere hearsay.
Posted by Robg, Tuesday, 2 January 2007 3:20:22 PM

Misrepresenting somebody else's position so you can criticize it is a very cheap trick - I never said that men-only clubs have been barred from being established. I said there is a huge outcry of 'sexism' when men have a men's only club but no objections or accusations of sexism when women want to establish a women-only club. It was this discrepancy for which I was seeking an explanation.

Did you actually read the original post? The example I gave was Tatersall's which has received huge press - do you live under a rock or something? There was also the case I cited of the 60 Minutes crew flying to England to hassle the Lord's Cricket Club over the sexism of their men-only policy. And perhaps you are very young but there was a huge controversy over the Melbourne Club's Men Only policy as Paul Keating was a member.

Still no-one has addressed the actual question - why is there a huge outcry and a branding of 'sexism' when men want to have a men only club but not a word of complaint or outrage from the media or the sex discrimination commissioner or anybody else, when women want to establish women-only clubs? All that has been posted so far is smokescreening and deflection.

Rob
Following on from the women’s only clubs argument, -are there still regular clubs that charge males an admission fee & allow women free entry?

And , I have noted, it is still very much the norm in office situations, where heavy, dirty or high objects needed to be moved -males are conscripted to do it.

My contention is that we have such enduring anomalies because the whole push to improve the status of women , at least on the part of many males in positions of authority , had more to do with good old fashion CHIVALRY than any genuine commitment to the principle of equality.

Posted by Horus, Saturday, 6 January 2007 4:46:33 PM
"where heavy, dirty or high objects needed to be moved -males are conscripted to do it."

After Pru Goward had been all over the media complaining that women do 15% more housework than men and that this amounted to sexual discrimination I did some research of my own and found some deeply hidden stats that showed that men are 3652% more likely to die at work than women because men still do all the really hard, dirty and dangerous jobs in this culture. I put it to Ms Goward that this discrepancy amounted to a sexual bias that needed to be addressed. Her office replied that it was not a case of discrimination because it was 'traditional' - and women doing the bulk of the housework apparently is not.

Perhaps this is the real reason why men, on average earn more than women, men still do all the dangerous work. In fact if Motor Vehicle Accidents to and from work werent included in the figures the authors of the report I read said that female deaths from working would be virtually non-existent. But there is a better reason: 87% of professional men support their wives - professional women demand men who support themselves. Men need more money because men support women much more than women support men.

"more to do with good old fashion CHIVALRY than any genuine commitment to the principle of equality."

I am consistently amazed by the way women successfully 'play the victim' and men fall for it.There are many examples, Warren Farrell's book The Myth of Male Power is full of them, but to me the most frequently encountered and obvious discrepancy is that women are FREQUENTLY allowed to blame men for their own violence but men are NEVER allowed to blame women for their own violence.

The growth of these women's-only gyms is phenomenal. There is a Fernwood in my suburb and soon a Curves and another women's-only gym opening in the next suburb. So if men are excluded from joining, presumably they are excluded from working there. Is that legal?