Men deserve single-sex spaces too | Georgia L. Gilholy

IA friend informed me that she had been refused entry to a men's club, my instinctive response would be: “Lucky escape…”. Yet the issue of meetings of men without the company of women was so urgent that it was the subject of several criticisms. Guardian splashes in recent days. (Shhh, no one tells my local madrassa).

The newspaper's latest crusade against the Garrick Club, a private men's club focused on theater and the arts, run by award-winning journalist Amelia Gentleman, almost immediately prompted the head of our civil service and the head of MI6 to resign of their accession to Garrick, with a chain others influential men follow in their wake. Doesn't this just prove how much GuardianWhat were the implications of a hateful cabal for women?

Yet even though I have thought about the story for ten yearsit was Popbitch rather than Gentleman's media coverage informing us that his father-in-law Stanley Johnson, who faced widely reported allegations of marital abuse And groping, known for fathering former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was among the club's most high-profile members. It's almost as if the coverage is by and for establishment women, not a forensic investigation into the club's influence.

Most people in London have never heard of the Garrick, let alone the rest of the country. We face serious gender issues that are harming our country, from female genital mutilation among some immigrant communities to the push to legalize surrogacy, soaring child-rearing costs, domestic violence, low rape convictions and much more.

Not only is the presence of gender-specific spaces a matter of free association, but they are often a net benefit to society and are erected organically and informally every day. We all know that sometimes the company of our own gender is a necessary tonic – just ask any gender-critical feminist who is harangued for not thinking a 6'5″ bearded man should have access to women's toilets. I've often heard male friends complain about how the dynamic of a casual evening at a pub with guys changes invisibly when a pretty girl is invited and what was casual conversation turns into a match uncomfortable peacock. What woman hasn't found herself unable to have a wild gossip session with her best friend when her boyfriend shows up unexpectedly? Isn't it true that single-sex schools often achieve better results? Societies in which men and women are typically severely segregated, such as Afghanistan, are generally cruel and dysfunctional, but this is not the case in the UK.

The fact that odd business meetings, and more likely extensive informal networking, can take place at clubs like the Garrick is not a problem. Much more worrying is the liberal bubble's obsession with forcing historical associations to abandon their fundamental freedoms and yield to power. right-thinking. There are enormous opportunities for such encounters between the two sexes elsewhere, including during formal working hours. It also ignores the fact that an elite has always existed and always will exist, and that it is the quality of this group that should concern us, not its abolition.

If anything is imposing an “unofficial caste system” in our country, it’s not just any boozy Covent Garden dining room.

If anything is imposing an “unofficial caste system” in our country, it’s not a single boozy dining room in Covent Garden. Even more important is the destruction of our industry and productivity by successive governments who would sell their own grandmother, or failing that our energy security, for a quick buck. Then there is the overall system. The latter was such an abject failure that there is no one left intelligent enough to admit it. Social mobility is at its peak lowest in 50 years. The mid-1960s brought Direct Grants, a form of private schooling designed to give around a quarter of places to state-funded pupils and grammars. outperformed ordinary private schools. Since the wanton destruction of these two options, access to “better” schools has become more dependent on one's finances or questionable religious conversion than it was back when we still needed grade books. rationing. Take a look at the history textbook average of 1924 compared to 2024, and the decline is palpable.

THE Guardian's bizarre and indiscriminate campaign is another example of elite bigotry dressed up in the language of anti-establishment courage. This issue has become central in times of national and global crises, because it is easier to address and express outrage than some of the truly dark phenomena that the state has decided to ignore or even support. This is similar to how Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently suggested that the far right was a numerically equivalent threat like Islamism or the decision of her conservative colleague Caroline Nokes to complain about “microaggressions» following an attack perpetrated by an Afghan who was granted asylum despite being convicted of a sexual offense. Our abandonment of meritocracy and this latest obsession with London clubs reveals an establishment that refuses to face reality.