In this thread, it was more-or-less decided that Freemasons have a core tenet that women are not allowed to be members. Women not allowed as Freemasons seems to be confirmed at this site.
From this site which is the web site of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights:
{bolding mine}
Sorry, WeRSauron, other Masons, and other members of discriminatory organizations on the board, but your organization discriminates against people based on gender, and I can’t think of any good reason for this. Can somebody give me a reason for an organization that is not intrinsically self-limiting (such as the La Leche League, which is concerned primarily with breastfeeding) to not allow members based solely on their gender that isn’t discriminatory?
It’s a shame the UN doesn’t place the same emphasis on freedom of association as does the US Constitution. In my vision of a free society, I am free to form a private association and invite whomever I please. Government-sanctioned and funded organizations should, of course, never discriminate on the basis of gender. A private organization should be able to admit or reject whomever it please, for whatever reason that strikes its fancy. Living in a society in which the government had the final say in who can join my private group strikes me as very scary.
Bricker, can you show me where featherlou called for legislation to outlaw private organizations from discriminating on the basis of gender? One can be opposed to a practice without seeking to legislate against it.
An organization might discriminate based on gender when its memebers want to be assured that they’re only associating with people of their own sex. Isn’t that obvious?
Because you, like enough other people, don’t like socializing with members of the opposite sex outside of a sexual or romantic context (if that, even). Or maybe you want to avoid any sexual distractions within your organiztion. Or maybe you just plain don’t like the other sex and would not like to be reminded of their existance while participating in your organization.
Well, Freemasons including or excluding women was not something that concerned me much.
Is Freemasonry discriminatory based on sex? Yes. (For the record, it’s also discriminatory based on faith: one must believe in a Supreme Being to become a Mason; which Supreme Being one believes in doesn’t matter, though.) The same may be said about college fraternities and sororities, about the priesthood or religious authorities of certain religious organizations, about sports teams. Is this good or bad? Neither. If people want to create a group wherein only men are accepted, it’s their prerogative.
Now, why would someone want to join an organization only for men? Or only for women? I believe it’s because some people are more comfortable amongst people of one’s own sex. Why this is so beats me. It is my understanding that Freemasonry is a gentlemen’s social club with ritualism and moral lessons: men formed this group for men. Since it’s a social club, and not a benefits organization or a charity or government service, I do not see anything harmful in this discrimination. Women neither gain nor lose anything from this.
Even more important than Freemasonry excluding women, I believe, are college fraternities and sororities. The stereotypes perpetuated by certain fraternities are very detrimental to women. (One fraternity in particular at my university seemed to always be in trouble for denigrating women. They were also seen as the most fun fraternity.) I don’t see how sororities help women’s self-image either: they give the impression that women cannot live alongside men, or (stereotypically) that the role of women is to serve men (when fraternities go out to woo sororities with the goal of sex), or that admirable women have certain very feminine qualities. For what its worth, the place where our university had the most eating disorder problems was at sororities.
Well, the last line of the OP asks for a reason that isn’t discriminatory.
She’s either using the word “discriminatory” in a legal sense, in a plain meaning sense, or some other way. Since the plain meaning of the word makes it obvious that each and every reason to select by gender is discriminatory, by definition, I assume she is not using the word in this sense because if she were her question becomes an absurdity.
I thus responded in the legal sense.
She may be using it to mean something else… but I have no idea what that something else might be.
The League of Women Voters will have to go too, I guess.
Why would a woman need/want to be a Mason anyway? They can always join the Eastern Star and avoid wearing funny hats
As for the UN quote, pfft. This is the same organization that put the Sudan on the Human Rights Commission and condemns Israel every time they pee without asking permission. I’ll take them seriously about “discrimination” when they get their own house in order.
The UN quote is completely irrelevant. UN does not supercede American law inside our borders (and no piece of paper you google up from the UN will change that fact one iota, UN and other international trade regulations basically are accepted when the U.S. has something to gain, they aren’t etched in stone or more intrinsic like a lot of American legal principles.) So the UN’s definition or opinion on discrimination is completely irrelevant to the question originally asked.
Anyways, as Bricker said your question is absurd unless you mean discriminatory in the legal sense. And in the United States legal discrimination has absolutely nothing to do with private clubs and how they are run or how their members are admitted. So virtually any way in which a private club decides to admit members is not legally discriminatory in the United States.
Now maybe if you meant “is there a way this isn’t anti-Woman, or bigoted et cetera” then I could give some explanations. Is it really “bigoted” for there to be almost exclusively men at a lot of bachelor parties (the women there typically being paid for “services”)? Not really, it has nothing to do with men in these situations wanting to subjugate or persecute women.
Same thing with a men’s club or a womens’ club (lots of Women’s Clubs in this region) these organizations just have a feeling of “common ground.” It’s just like say the group of Thomas Jefferson descendants, this group has a common ground of being descdended from our third President. This gives these people a sense of association with one another.
Obviously they don’t allow outsiders in but this doesn’t imply any malevolency.
Anyways most of the accusations made by the OP were in my opinion designed to be somewhat inflammatory and also don’t really address any real issue involved with the group in question.
Sometimes. But then there are cases like Wells College a formerly all girls school which went coed due to low enrollment.
Bolding mine. Also
They don’t sound like women who, in general, have no problem with men.
However, least I make it sound like all of the female enrollees are man hating feminists From Newsday
Freemasonry is a fraternity. As it is with all fraternities and sororities, gender is one (but not the only) restriction of membership.
Regardless of what other’s have written here, Freemasonry’s main purpose is “to make good men better” in a religious context. There are other civic purposes, including charity.
There are “off-shoot” Masonic organizations such as the Order of the Eastern Star and the Whire Shrine of Jerualem that women may join. They serve a similar purpose.
If you have any further Masonic questions, feel free to ask.
Perhaps I should have said “sexist” rather than “disciminatory” in the OP - that was my intent. Laws do not legislate what is right or wrong; only what is legal and illegal. Groups not allowing women to join the membership might be legal, but I do not believe it is right if there is no logical reason to limit membership to men only. The real issue, to me, is why exclude women if there is no logical reason to do so?
I disagree that not allowing outsiders doesn’t imply malevolency. What other reason do you have other than an implied “We don’t want to associate with your kind” when there is no logical basis for the exclusion?
As much as I absolutely hate semantics I’ll have to ask what your definition of logical is. To the people doing the excluding, it’s either perfect logical, or they don’t care. For the masons, from what I’m reading, they feel the only way to make a man better is to do it away from females. This is perfectly logical to them. For the women of Wells College, they want to exclude men because they think that men are jerks and will hurt the learning process. To these women, it’s perfectly logical. For white people in white only clubs, they see minorities as less than human. To them, it’s perfectly logical. For minorities who have groups or clubs that exclude white people, it’s either because to them, white people are scum, or, white people can have their clubs, why can’t we have ours?
Of course there’s dozens of other reasons why people choose who they choose and exclude, and to them, it’s all logical.
As for me, I’ve never felt the need to get away from women or minorities and hang out with an all white male crowd, but there are people who do, for whatever reason, hang out with “their own kind” and I think that if they aren’t profiting from public (government) money, they should have every right to do so, no matter how illogical it seems.
There’s also " We want to have a larger version of a “night out with the girls”. If men are present, our behavior will change some, and our husbands will want to come along. It’s not that we don’t want to associate with your kind- after all we do it the other 29 or 30 days a month. " That’s my reason for belonging to a women only group. I don’t see it as malevolent at all. It would be malevolent if it was the sort of organization where people made connections useful in the business world, and men were being excluded from them . But it’s not- it’s basically a social organization that raises money for charitable purposes through social events
I forget who said it, but supposedly the reason men’s clubs (the old, snooty kind) exclude women is not because the men want to get away from women… just from the kind of women who join clubs.
I might also wish to point out that even the most active Masons aren’t involved with Masonry 24/7. Being a Freemason means a few hours a month I’m at my Lodge. However, 60 hours+ per week I’m working. I also spend time with my family, go to concerts and sports event with friends and travel. Most Masons, and most members of just about ANY discriminating group, have many more non-Masonic friends and activities which are inclusive of those things which the discriminating group prohibits.
Being a Mason is a facet of a Mason’s life, not the focus of it.
