I say this as a former dude who has spent the vast, vast, vast majority of my life as a man, socializing with men and not-men, in public. I have never had a single issue.
I have seen this ever since the moment me and my friends hit puberty in high school, to this very day. When a group of men is hanging out they are more relaxed. The moment a woman is in the space the vibe changes
I cannot be the only person who has noticed this
A lot of people baulk at this sort of arrangement/tolerance - but I bet it's quite common.
5 dudes chilling is a different dynamic than 3 guys 2 girls. People who keep insisting it's about some weird need for men to be offensive don't seem to have ever observed basic gender dynamics.(not saying you are, other responders)
The US marine corps noticed this and it was a huge point of contention (kind of still is).
> offensive to others
Sound like you have issues. It's a club. They meet up to play board games. Maybe you could start a club of people who are offended by everything.
They can, and thats not the point of having men’s groups and men’s spacing. This only reveals your assumptions and biases.
There needs to be some place men can just spend time with other men. Yes, it’s a problem if those men only places become important to business or politics such that it disadvantages women, but there’s got to be something else instead, then.
Women should also have places where they can be together without men.
And there should be a majority of places where men and women can spend time equally.
This is literally anytime, anywhere though. Do just not meet up with their friends? You can go to dinner, get drinks, go hiking, play sports, bike, ski, sunbathe, play videogames and many more things in single-sex groups without raising an eyebrow. The real classic for men of a certain persuasion from a western cultural POV is golf right?
I think there's some strange cultural hangup I'm missing where the entire place needs to be single-sex.
What friends?
What you described is unrelated. Yes, people can and do go out and do stuff.
If one has never spent any time in all male spaces or has and thinks that men are defective women, like the average male therapist or counsellor this may not be obvious.
In the US by the 8th grade, 48 percent of girls receive a mix of A and B grades compared to 31 percent of boys. More tellingly, Boys account for 71 percent of all school suspensions. The gap remains through high school and in college, with females representing nearly 60 percent of all college graduates.
“If you treat girls as the gold standards and boys as defective girls, that’s going to be demoralizing,” Thompson says. “What do elementary and junior high girls always say about boys their age? ‘You are so immature.’ If that’s the norm, then this system is just rigged against the boys.”
There's a wonderful bit in a 2013 Time article which illustrates that this predominant viewpoint is often indelibly coded on the (majority female) teaching staff, to the grave detriment of the male students:
https://ideas.time.com/2013/10/28/what-schools-can-do-to-hel...
//Peg Tyre’s The Trouble With Boys illustrates the point. She tells the story of a third-grader in Southern California named Justin who loved Star Wars, pirates, wars and weapons. An alarmed teacher summoned his parents to school to discuss a picture the 8-year-old had drawn of a sword fight — which included several decapitated heads. The teacher expressed “concern” about Justin’s “values.” The father, astonished by the teacher’s repugnance for a typical boy drawing, wondered if his son could ever win the approval of someone who had so little sympathy for the child’s imagination. ... If boys are constantly subject to disapproval for their interests and enthusiasms, they are likely to become disengaged and lag further behind//
I don't know that "girls" remains the gold standard so much as girls are more able to conform to broader behavioral expectations. This is not to say teenage girls are immune from hormonal-driven behavior issues, but it manifests in different ways. I have a 13-yo daughter and let me tell you it's no walk in the park. But it's absolutely not a surprise to me that boys account for the majority of problematic behavior.
If societal expectations are things like: kindness, respect, agreeableness, calmness, paying attention, not talking back, not fighting, and so on... and girls tend to conform to these while boys tend not to, that doesn't necessarily indicate a conspiracy against boys.
