Back in St. Pete Beach, there is a place called Hell’s Gym. 24–7, all free weights, no showers, no monitor, profane graffiti on the walls. For about fifty bucks a month, you get a key the the club and a small locker. There is a duffle bag of dirty towels near the door to the toilet.The stink is on the house. It sits in a block of strip stores between a bail bondsman and a check cashing place. Most the guys who workout there are white, loners, covered with prison tats, serious people. They are working on a lot more than just their bodies. Women are found in the strip club across the street.
Hardly my kind of place, but I think male-exclusive environments are valid—as valid as female-exclusive environments. We should all be free to associate with whom we wish and if a man feels a need to remove himself from the company of women, or vice versa, I see no harm in that. But what is termed as a “Gentleman’s Club” in the States is usually a very expensive strip club with high-end booze and girls available in the VIP Room where the prices triple and anything goes. Also not my kind of place.
For me, I don’t wish to segregate on the basis of gender as much as common interests. I find yacht clubs homey. Some are bare-bones and blue-collar and offer fine camaraderie of a serious seagoing sort, but others are as comfortably appointed as the Harvard Club in Boston, complete with overstuffed leather chairs, a formal waitstaff, and a fine library of charts, reference books, sea fiction. Good food. Tradition. There are slips and fuel docks. This is where you will find the man or woman who has been to wherever you are heading and can tell you what the charts and travelogues can’t. There is also the chaff, the weekend shoal sailor, but these harmless social butterflies are always glad to introduce a serious sailor with a member who has a sailing history. These places are expensive to the visitor, but worth it, to me anyway.
I think excluding women from these clubs of common interests are a mistake. IMO, women are different than us and they bring to the table important qualities men either lack or haven’t developed in themselves. And vice versa. We could probably argue this till the end of time, but this opinion is a result of observing them under many conditions for many years. But when I work out I am so self-absorbed that women, like everyone else in the gym unless they are my spotter, are inconsequential. But I understand if a man feels more comfortable working on his body without the feeling that women may be watching and evaluating. Some guys are like that.
Composing members:
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Composing members:
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