March 21, 2024 - 10:00am
Is it really shameful to seek out single-sex social space? Apparently so: when the Guardian published the Garrick Club’s famously secretive all-male membership list earlier this week, the resulting brouhaha prompted the heads of MI6 and the Civil Service to resign their memberships.
The Garrick Club, founded in 1831, is notoriously one of the few remaining elite membership clubs that excludes women. A long-running campaign, backed by Cherie Blair and other high-powered women, has sought to change this. But so far the club has remained obdurate, last month expelling a member who called for the policy to be revised.
The wider contemporary consensus, though, seems to regard a revealed preference for single-sex company as a matter for public shame. That is the clear inference of the decision by Civil Service head Simon Case and MI6’s Richard Moore to resign their memberships following publication of the list.
Old-fashioned liberals might be wondering at this point why we can’t live and let live. Very simply: because a principle is at stake. This idea, articulated as far back as 1851 by the Victorian liberal feminist Harriet Taylor Mill, understands sex as “a distinction as accidental as that of colour, and fully irrelevant to all questions of government”. Men and women, then, should be understood as functionally interchangeable, meaning an older default of sex segregation across most areas of our common life must give way to a modern presumption that both sexes can and should coexist in all contexts.
From this, it has followed that women should be admitted to all previously single-sex arenas of public life, from which they had formerly been excluded. In this vein, too, the principle of interchangeability dissolved most previously all-male social groups, from the Boy Scouts to nearly every private members’ club — except a few holdouts such as the Garrick.
The change has most markedly benefited elite women, who now flourish across almost all areas of public life. Over time, though, the ineluctable onward march of formal interchangeability has begun to reveal some negative second-order consequences for certain groups of women, mostly further down the social scale. If sex is “incidental”, as Mill puts it, being a woman shouldn’t even require you to be female, meaning there are no grounds for excluding males who identify as “women” from all-female settings. This has prompted a wave of demands for male “women” to be included in female single-sex spaces, triggering a ferocious gender-critical feminist fightback.
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SubscribeFirst rate, as ever. Thanks.
Well that was surprisingly easy. Sauce for the goose…
Labour Women’s Network.
“To be a member of LWN you must self-define as a woman. Self-defining men can support LWN as donors, however, cannot attend training, AGM, participate in our elections.”
Don’t these women have any shame or sense of dignity. What type of people want to impose their presence where they aren’t wanted. Yuck!
Well said Mary!
Been to the Garrick a couple of time. Great place, great company, and precisely because it’s all men. What I find particularly interesting, and puts the lie to most elite feminists, is that men naturally associate with men, and women with women. If one looks at women one will generally find that most of the friends they associate with (outside the workplace) are in fact women. Moreover, if one looks at very small independent women businesses or enterprises, it is my observation that such businesses largely interact with other small female businesses or individuals. Likewise, one will find that men generally associate with other men when it comes to friendships and leisure/sports activities. So I personally give a big thumbs up to place like the Garrick, no matter how anachronistic they may be to current elite feminists.
As for Mssrs Case and Moore, they are simply cowards, and quite clearly Richard More should resign immediately as head of MI6 because he hasn’t got what it takes to head up a spy agency if he immediately caves to completely unreasonable social pressure. The guy is clearly a wimp. And the same goes for Case. Clearly both woksters who should be kept as far away from government and positions of power as possible.
The minor problem with clowns like Case and Moore is that they did not see any contradiction between organisations they are in charge of promoting woke, transgender, feminist nonsense and their membership of organisation which is against that value set.
Major problem is, especially in case of clown in charge of MI6, that they did not think it will leak out.
What planet this guy is on?
If they are looking for new members now these wimps have resigned, I am happy to join. I just need a member to nominate me. Charles Stanhope?
The Guardian’s Garrick Club campaign strikes me as extremely out of touch. We are in a cost of living crisis, why in the world do they expect the public to give two hoots about who is and isn’t allowed entry into an elite private member’s club?
Left-wing people tend paradoxically to be highly competitive – so there is a ratchet whereby every time the mainstream left adopts a position hitherto advanced by the extreme left the latter is forced to find something even more extreme to differentiate themselves by. The Jacobin of the 1790s was the perfect example of this process, going from liberal egalitarian to hysterical totalitarian mass murderer in the space of three short years. We’re seeing something similar now.
Exactly.
As we can see with feminists, like Ms or Mr (who knows?) Stock of this parish.
When they advanced their anti men ideas (why? without man in your mummy life you would not be here) it was all dandy till she became Danton to Robespierre (or Bucharin to Stalin) or more extreme feminism.
Then she came running to sensible people asking for help.
Which she deserves, because we believe in free exchange of ideas and equality under law.
Read Fay Weldon – After the Peace
From the witty and mischievous mind of Fay Weldon comes this delectable account of family life as we live it now.
How many parents does it take to make a baby? In the case of Rosalind Melrose Smithson it took four: one birth mother; one legal father; one interfering neighbour and one turkey baster filled with the defrosted essence of an anonymous donor.
Or not so anonymous as it turned out. For donor no. 116349, ‘6ft 1in, blue eyes, blond hair, BA (Oxon), action man…’ is the 9th Earl of Dilberne, who gave his seed back in 1979 as a stripling of twenty-two, and has now conceived a daughter – unknowingly – at the riper age of forty-two.
As they say, the truth will out. And what will our Rozzie do when she finds out about her patrimony? All we know is that as a true Millennial, she will not take it lying down…
A gross oversimplification peppered in intellectual-sounding language which I’m not sure is relevant to what I said, but I appreciate the theory.
Surely the Garrick need only present some members who identify as women and the problem is solved to everybody’s satisfaction? Unless the Guardian is so gauche as to insist that we should consider biology when talking about sex.
Or incorporate a rule where random members have to wear a wig:
“Good afternoon, Sir. I believe it is your turn to wear the wig today.”
“Ah, thank you, Grassmore, yes, I’ll just pop it on.”
“Nail varnish, Sir?”
“No thanks, Grassmore, I think the wig will suffice.”
Just a wig?
What about suspenders and funny handshakes?
I guess it will be judges and senior police officers?
Did we have “Carry on in Garrick” movie?
Maybe not, Barbra Windsor could not get in or most likely out.
Or, any woman who wants to go could simply identify as a man? Problem solved.
I am happy to do it, short of surgery.
I hear they have great bar.
Cheers
Me thinks these elite women are all Blobettes having overpaid @@-jobs. Of course, they support the trans agenda. It is hard to convince a woman when her job depends on not understanding you. There. I just composed the feminist version.
In a culture war, as in other conflicts, ‘Never interrupt the enemy when s/he is making a mistake’ is probably the way to go.
The Guardian crew surely want male spaces to be invaded by women because they are perfectly happy for men to colonise the spaces reserved for vulnerable women.
Yes, The Guardian (Australian edition) is doggedly pro gender ideology.
What is wrong with dogging?
I guess you Australians have just bush fires.
Whereas England had the wettest winter on record, so plenty of bushes to do dogging….
As someone who has spent way too much time in private (historically men’s) clubs, mostly playing snooker to a terrible standard, I found this an interesting article.
Most clubs where I grew up switched from allowing only men as full members (typically access to the games room) in the nineties to full membership to men and women in the early two thousands. In the league I used to play in up to ten years ago, there were perhaps one or two holdouts remaining.
Although this could be a result of liberalisation and the changing attitudes of the members as older generations die out, generations for whom a private space was a very different concept,* it could just as well be a function of trying to get more members. Pub, club and bar culture has definitely been in decline in many areas this past generation, meaning clubs can’t be so discerning. The last club I joined didn’t seem to require much by way of forwarders/seconders or being deferential to the wider of the club: conservative/labour clubs etc. are really just that in name.
*Many years ago, a club I was a member of before it opened full membership, had a snooker table booked for a private tournament game. The away player turned up with his partner and sat by one of the tables. One of the much older members walked over to her, asked her to follow him and proudly presented the sign entering the game room asserting that “no women allowed.”
Interesting and fair observations… people may want single-sex spaces less than they used to. (Maybe, I’m not convinced.) Regardless, people that do want them, should be allowed to have them.
The madness of DEI nutjob Femme Red Guardz well exposed. But soon we must turn our collective and the Mary gaze to less comfortable and far more important complex issues confronting modern women. Compelled now to work by the Progressive State”s ongoing housing/unaffordable living Nakba since the 90s, women now form a giant often majority gender bloc within the public sector (80/90% NHS, GPs). Guardiany feminists snd unions are simultaneously insisting that hospital work is fundamentally ‘anti-women’- such are the acute pressures especially on super stressed working mothers (who also confront the childcare Nakba too – a bit more salient than drinks at the Garrick). In response, they are driving the disastrous WFH campaign which sees women vanishing from offices and therefore lined up for the mega chop when AI devours all such tasks in 10 years or so. One day someone is going to crunch this data and explore whether there is a connection between the identitarian insistence on yet bigger gender quotas and the alarming fall out in performance in many areas of the public sector.
It won’t be that long, Walt.
It is not even AI, yet.
During covid my former employer asked employees whether they like working from home or office.
I strongly advised my colleagues to say office.
Many laughed at my face.
They are not laughing now when heading for a chop unless they work in the office 100 miles away.
A convincing new explanation for the apparent irrational decision by elite women to affirm men colonising women’s spaces. MH deftly shows how it’s in their self-interest to do so. And so we can step beyond unsatisfying explanations like “they’re crazy”. I’d love to know what Victoria Smith (over at The Critic) thinks of this.
The change has most markedly benefited elite women
That’s really the takeaway here. These “battles” involving board seats, entry into exclusive clubs, and admissions to high-brow universities are irrelevant to 95% or so of the population.
Reality is that most really talented and high achieving women got to whatever position on merit.
The second raters are moaning about 50% on that or the other board etc because they know they do not deserve it on merit.
Just so as to ensure at least one woman enters this debate apart from the brilliant Mary – absolutely agree with her. I am an old school feminist who has never really had a problem with private clubs other than they tend to be elite(its) and there are hardly any for women. I would have loved one when I lived in London. Private spaces are, however, essential and need defending.
Thank you Pat. If there are hardly any for women, then create your own. There is no law against it.
My wife and I run a business where she is the face of the business and 99.999% of our clientele are women. My daughter goes to a girls only school. Sitting on the sidelines so to speak, women only spaces are very backstabby places. Add to this “transwomen” who are often the worst of men, and you have an unbearable place to be. So I get why they have not taken off.
These elite women are horrible people trying to bring down the Garrick and other men’s only spaces, which is purely destructive.
Why can’t people just be left in peace to enjoy a little safe haven?
Men backstab very ably and in fact better than women very often.
“the liberal-feminist drive for universal human interchangeability”
Such as there being… female journalists?
Women’s toilets never have been female-only spaces, nor have men’s been male only. When in need, traditionally, either will do for either sex. Until five minutes ago nobody minded.
I will not look at a chap askance if he needs to use a cubicle, fill your boots (not literally – please sit), trans identification notwithstanding. Likewise I and many other women are quite comfortable using the Gents if necessary due to a long queue for the Ladies’.
Accessible loos have always been unisex.
By all means allow folk to assemble according to sex, at the Garrick or in gay bars (or both), this is a basic tennet of freedom of association, but no need for sex ID checks to have a pee thanks. [The logical policy consequence of transactivism is gender ID cards and the logical consequence of gender critical activism is sex ID cards – no thanks to both forms of authoritarian surveillance].
Handwringing about female spaces infantilises women. The majority of women who are not elite athletes or prisoners and have probably never used a “single-sex space” (maternity wards certainly are not given the presence of male doctors, nurses and partners). Most of our ancestors pee’d in a field for most of history, unless you are descended from aristocracy, in which case they pee’d in a (unisex) corridor.
The Romans, who we can thank for indoor plumbing, didn’t need segregate loos by sex. The current government of Iran, by contrast, has plenty of well enforced single-sex spaces, and is by the metric of this article, not at all “breathtakingly authoritarian”.
There is just one bog at the Arnolfi Gallery in Bristol, and instead of a sign on the door it has a lecture, explaining the stance the establishment takes. I’m not sure which stinks more, the sign or the toilet, but assuredly both do.
I’m a gender critical feminist, and I’ve never heard of sex IDs. Anyway, I find your lack of compassion disturbing. Some women train for their sport most of their lives only to have a male who has gone through puberty (hormone levels mean very little) beat them and smash records. The swimmers who competed against Liam Thomas had the extra humiliating experience of changing with a 6’4” man, and he made sure they saw his genitalia. These women were naked. They were also told to get counseling if it bothered them so much. In Both Britain and the U.S. 50 percent of trans women in prison have been convicted of at least one sex crime. Women have been raped. Female inmates in California have been given condoms(always handy when you’re being raped) and morning after pills. The fact is that single sex spaces are necessary for women, as they are more vulnerable. If we’re talking about single sex clubs, I’m all for it. Let Garrick be a refuge for men, and likewise for women.
I wish I could give you more than one uptick for this comment! Very well written.
Not even in the slightest is this convincing. All it does is to show that if, as a school debating exercise, you were to argue for “interchangeably” on anything but weird Judith Butler grounds, there’s no substantial talking points at all.
Isn’t it time the BBC bins its Radio 4 Woman’s Hour programme at 10:00am on weekdays? Or creates a Men’s Hour programme to ensuresure equity in this DEI era?
God, can you imagine it? Yuk!
All hours are men’s hours.
Okay, you can stay home with the kids and watch the Men’s Hour.
It would be a bit difficult for chipoko to watch it if it’s on the radio
A certain amount of schadenfreude is justified, now the hardline feminists have completely undermined their argument to keep women’s spaces single sex.
Have they noticed that, while it’s apparently high-status women who want to enter male spaces like the Garrick, it’s mostly male misogynists and/or sexual predators who want to access women’s spaces?
Exactly this. Feminists, undermining women and girls every day.
Where political ideology meets biology, biology is going to win. The basic human tendency to self-segregate by gender/sex is going to express itself one way or another. If all formal single sex spaces are banned, people will simply create informal ones. We’d be well served to put to bed the notion of gender equality in favor of something more achievable, like equity. Men’s and women’s spaces is the one place where the old ‘separate but equal’ doctrine still has a place, simply because we don’t have a better alternative. Bathrooms, social clubs, prisons, sports, etc. should remain separate with provisions to keep them as equal as possible. There’s simply no better option.
Mary for the Minister of Common Sense to replace the encumbant who has none
Do mosques allow women through the door.What do all our brave feminists say about this ?
Most of them say nothing. Islam and its adherents get carte blanche. In Leftist thinking there is a hierarchy of victims, and the more boxes you can tick the higher you rank with these brainwashed fools. European white women come last. They may think that the current system benefits them, but others have erroneously thought so, too, and all revolutions eventually eat their children.
Basic problem is obvious:
Women don’t want equality with men.
They want preferential treatment, when it suits them.
Don’t we have women only clubs in London?
Yes, one or two of them closed recently.
So what is the problem with men only clubs?
Crazy feminists keep going on about dominance of men in this or other sphere of endeavour (like science or IT).
Men don’t complain about women dominance in some areas.
Like junior school education etc.
They just accept that women and men choose different careers.
Totally agree with Mary. I am so worn from this whole absolutely ridiculous horse-shite. I actually think in coarser terms than that but can’t put it to page.
It appears no amount of ‘winning’ in egalitarian terms has sated this lust for power from the top of the elite women sphere. This totalitarianism of ideology is no longer concealing the bared teeth of ‘male’ and gender disgust and utter dare I say hatred/fury of ‘norms’ (think male only AND women only spaces). Total and utter destruction to the detriment of most off us.
The original kernels of truth have long vanished from our sphere and open discussion is impossible.
Perhaps we should start a Go Fund Me page group to publish push back about this globally in media and get the silent masses to protest. Something, anything to put counter-narrative to this. I know Mary you and others have been working hard…….
I don’t want this for my coming grandchild.
The “priestesses of interchangeability,” know their privileges, and like all elites, are loathe to relinquish them.
Interchangeability does NOT apply to gender diversity in hiring – particularly in top management: there, women are women and not interchangeable with men. The narrative of women as victims of the oppressors of The Patriarchy is kept alive because it provides precisely a differential that confers preferential treatment and privileges.
Well said, but we are hurrying, I was going to say drifting, but it’s more serious, towards totalitarianism. Why would women want to be members of the Garrick anyway? Are men outraged by the single sex WI?
The Guardian: All-male clubs bad, all-female clubs good.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/mar/01/museums-without-men-gender-imbalance-tate-met
It would be well worth examining the deeper worldview assumptions in the campaign; Feminist philosophy (and, latterly, queer theory) is simply the sphere in which secular materialism has articulated its logical consequences in regards to gender. Materialism will inevitably lead to the diminishment of reality itself (here, the sex binary) into an arbitrary and therefore inconsequential state of affairs. However, secular materialism (and its gender views crystallised in feminism) cannot fool everyone into removing the sense that a sex binary – even in familial roles – is a significant, immutable and beautiful reality.
This is yet another field in which Christianity ‘out-narrates’ secular philosophy. In it we find the best account of the mystery and reason for gender and the best way to navigate the residual conflict and differences between individuals of different sexes. US sociologist Brad Wilcox has even found (to his surprise as much as mine) that it is conservative evangelicals (a group who maintains a gender role distinction) have the happiest marriages of any group in the US.
Further reading:
Love Thy Body – Pearcy
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self – Truman
Soft Patriarchs, New Men – Wilcox
The 4 basic principles of the Civil Service Code:
It puts the Civil Service values of honesty, integrity, impartiality and objectivity at the heart of everything we do and it aligns to the three high level leadership behaviours that every civil servant needs to model: Set Direction; Engage People and Deliver Results.
The marriage bar was abolished in 1946 for the Home Civil Service and in 1973 for the Foreign Service; until then women were required to resign when they married. Having a marriage bar was made illegal throughout the UK by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. There was unsurprisingly no marriage bar for men.
Perhaps Messrs Case and Moore felt it better to meet their ministerial bosses for off the record, after hours chats at venues where the doorman wouldn’t refuse entry if their boss was female.
I’ve spent a lot of time reading and thinking about this issue but I never really put my mental finger on the idea that for elite women specifically the concept of the interchangeability of the sexes is actually a net benefit. Thank you Mary. Always enjoy your work